it is such a joy to be in the presence of those that have started to create a lifestyle that reintegrates them into their nature in the day-to-day of breathing their biome eating nutrient dents and nutrient varieties from Gardens that they've grown or Gardens and Farms that they're intimately involved with these people have a a a spark in the eye a flare to their step a joy and a curiosity that is not seen in the general public today I want to to come back to this understanding that what you're seeing in somebody who's that vibrant person enjoying a lifestyle that's invigorating them is the literal emergence of light in their life I can't say it enough and with enough awe that the food that you consume is the result of a Alchemy between the Sun the moon the stars and the soil systems in their microbes below your feet there's Alchemy between that light energy of the sky solar systems galaxies and Beyond and its interface with the creative capacity of the microbiome the fungi the melium ultimately the micro RIS and the root systems of plants and those trunks that would deliver their foliage into the sunlight the extraordinary populations of chlorophyll that populate those green leaves that will then take that sun energy and turn them into carbon B batteries in the form of carbohydrates fatty acids and the like it is an extraordinarily beautiful Journey from sunshine to Tomato from sunshine to Pepper from Sun and Moonlight into cilantro garlic ginger onions it is a fragrant experience to be in the Alchemy of these elements around us and for all of that storage of opportunity and potential that we see within that vast array of food herbs and the like it is a Workforce within us the gardeners within us the bacterian fungi within our our entire gut system that deliver that then into our bloodstream filtered and packaged by the liver and then delivered out into the entire Matrix of 70 trillion human cells that are imbued with the life and the creativity of for te quadrillion mitochondria a whole another Workforce of bacteria that look extremely similar to the chlorophyll in the plant that captured that sunlight in the first place and now those mitochondria go about breaking down the long chains of glucose fatty acids and like to release the sun energy back into you so what creates Beauty when you look at a person when you look at the skin of a human being is not just a a barrier or an epithelial covering to a human body of meat you're looking at the interface with light I know you have seen this at every age you have certainly seen that Elder at 95 walking into a room that's just got the sparkling eyes and the big radiant smile and if if she's anything like my great-grandmother who passed away at 101 102 years old she's telling dirty jokes all day long just to see if people will laugh it's that joy to Eve it's that exudation of light in everything they do whether it be the laughter and the jokes to the sparkle in the eye to the warm touch of the hand on the face of a grandchild at all ages we can exude light energy as we start to find Lifestyles that combine nature into the Alchemy of human creation human creative potential Ingenuity curiosity we are beings of the Divine and it glows through our skin and so I want you to think about the gut skin AIS as your pathway to show those around you the beauty of the Divine over these recent decades I'm sure you've heard something about the gut brain axis but is likely that you've never heard of the gut skin axis and it follows a lot of the same biology between those multiple systems the gut we've talked about in length of being this giant ecosystem that thrives within the coral reef architecture of the the stomach and the small intestin and ultimately this glorious diversity and density of biodiversity within the colon and those coral reef like environments allow for this microbiology to develop not only in its biodiversity but in its Niche biofunctions every millimeter of that gut provides a a new environment for bacteria to find find their optimal expression and their highest function in which to contribute to this life form that we would call human every millimeter you find a different ratio of carbon to carbon dioxide oxygen to nitric oxide sodium to pottassium silica to your manganese and so for all these differences in the nutrients that you find there the air and the lack of air that you might find there the architecture of its it's local community the diversity around each of those bacteria allows for a different expression and so it's really the understanding of the sovereignty of each being within this gut system finding their optimal expression and their optimal environment to find Thrive State I hope that you find in your ability of life to be as nuanced in your sensing of what is your micro environment of your life that would be optimal for you to express yourself and nowhere else in the body do is that probably more obvious and more visible than the skin if you put the skin under a microscope you find out that there's the same opportunity for extreme biodiversity of Niche environments micro environments within that skin architecture as you would find similar to that of the upper gut the small intestine and the like so the skin is really our second gut in the sense that this is the second largest absorptive membrane that the body has the gut does the workforce on the nutrients and all that but the skin is actually where we will absorb a lot of the electrolytes and a lot of the toxins that are common to our everyday lives electrolytes through the skin are are absorbed largely by the the rec consumption of our sweat so as we exude sweat we can take back in many of those nutrients through the Skin Barrier and through this absorptive membrane the toxins are largely introduced by the Cosmetic industry so the average Western consumer I think is now well over a 100 toxins in their daily experience applied to their skin all of which can end up in the bloodstream these are endocrine disruptors they screw up protein folding they can be carcinogens it's just an extraordinary array of toxins that have been permitted into this cosmetic industry with the perception and belief that well the Skin's a barrier you just put it on top it's not it's not going to your brain ignoring the fact that the whole keratin aite underpinnings of that surfacey dermis have the same characteristics as your bowel does it's a single cell layer thick tied together with tight junctions designed as a barrier and an absorptive membrane just as your gut would and so we need to start to respect the skin as this second exposure to our environment and carefully choose what we put on that skin and maybe you're not thinking about lotions and other moisturizers as part of the Cosmetics but it's critical that you do because the emulsifiers preservatives and strange chemicals that will come in the form of lotions and other moisturizers are pretty extraordinary every bottle of anything you're putting on your skin you need to flip the label around and look at that ingredients panel and make sure you can recognize as much as possible of that list if it's got a long list that takes up half the labels none of which you understand or can pronounce cuz they're all chemical names those are the preservatives emulsifiers colorings and all the stuff that you do not want in your bloodstream so find ingredient list that are as short as possible whether it be a moisturizer a ChapStick or your your makeup let's keep it as clean as possible with as few insults as possible but before you even put that on let's think about your skin as an absorptive membrane as I've been teaching you with the gut the biodiversity of the Flora on that the biodiversity of the the microbiome bacteria fungi protozoa yeast Etc is going to dictate the amount of communication available to that gut that would then Empower it to be in this resilient regenerative State such that it heals faster than it injures so a diverse microbiome is your foundation of a resilient regenerative barrier to the outside world at the skin level so how do you achieve achieve good microbiome diversity on the skin I think the first and perhaps most amazing thing is stop using soap soap as an advent long time back was utilized primarily to remove oils from the skin and so now today we do it as a general approach to Cleansing ourselves at all avenues forgetting that soap is designed to disrupt the walls of bacteria and sterilize therefore the effect of the micr iom's capacity for that that diverse population development every time you wash with that soap so what are we going to use instead of soap you're think going through your brain right now considering how many times you expose your body to this and it's not obviously just your hands but also just the overuse of shampoos conditioners and this kind of stuff on the scalp and so ultimately you're losing microbiome and as you lose the microbiome you're going to start to lose the regenerative capacity those tight junctions and the barrier systems and the result result is dehydration so you start to exude more water out into the atmosphere Through Your Skin than you would with a coherent tight Junction system so dehydration is fundamental to overuse of soap shampoos and all that with that loss of the microbiome with the loss of hydration you accelerate aging 50% of the signs of aging are due to intracellular dehydration and so it's critical that we start to think outside the box of soap and other cleansers and antimicrobials that we would use on the skin to start to think about fostering diverse healthy ecosystems on the skin that would preclude the need for these these intense cleansers to to occur body odor is a sign of disbiosis or imbalanced ecosystems and so by changing the diet and the nutrition improving gut health and diversifying the bofur therein we actually do change skin Flora as well and so nutritional changes can fundamentally change body odor one of the most important things to eliminate from the diet when it comes to body odor is high density protein I have the unique opportunity as a physician and scientist and speaker to be called into action as a microbiome expert to almost every one of the The Fad diet seminars around the country I've spoken at vegan seminars I've spoken at paleo seminars and keto seminars and South Beach seminars and everybody's got their Niche thing and they all see me as pretty benign because I'm just going to talk about the microbiome so I've got invited across all of these and I can tell you that the breath and the smell of sweat in the place where in which you're going to have high meat consumption the the Paleo and also over on the farming side the regen EGS you know beef guys those two sectors are going to have a very distinct smell that is detectable as soon as I walk into that Hall don't even approach a human I can smell it in 300 people that it's a it's an acidic and somewhat bitter smell that comes with the putrification of elements of protein as we consume too much dense proteins in the diet and not enough fiber and complex carbohydrates to balance that out and so if you have body odor look to dense proteins to be eliminated from the diet you can get too much dense protein in in just eating a plant-based diet as well so things to look like out for there would be overc consumption of nuts would be a common one but also overc consumption of cruciferous vegetables you trying to get in a kale smoothie and then a kale salad at lunch and then you know big Brussels sprout you know shaved roasted thing at night those cruciferous vegetables throughout the day especially with combined with with the nuts are also going to be that protein overload and so back off on the dense proteins to improve body odor and reduce your your sense of Need for constantly soaping the body to remove odor with less soap we find the ability for the body to start to rebuild that nutrient delivery system of the microbiome and that protective hydration barrier of the tight junctions that become present as the microbiome recovers its ability for communication and cell cell stimulation of regeneration so less soaps and more water water is a very fantastic solvent in and of itself water can remove nearly everything that you would want to take off of skin with the exception of the oilbased compounds and so in those spaces of the oilbased compounds moving towards neutral pH cleansers a good example is again Dr Bronner but you can also find other soap alternatives on the market now uh there's a number of charcoal products but there's also products that are starting to bring forth glacial clay and things like that that can be beneficial kind of detox and cleansers without having that antimicrobial effect of the soap but way out stripping the the potential damage of soap is definitely the alcohol cleansers and for the last few years we've seen an explosion in the use of alcohol-based hand sanitizers and those compounds are extremely injurious to the tight junctions of the skin just as alcohol is to the gut when consumed and so eliminate alcohol exposure on the skin is a must and other hidden things that I can that I find damaging that skin would include compounds that have high amounts of vitamin C or compounds that will carry high amounts of hydrogen peroxide and so hydron peroxide needs to be watered down severely before put on skin or wounds or the like you're looking at kind of one part hydrogen peroxide to 20 Parts water anything more than that you're really doing damage to the skin microbiome and the tight junctions deep to that similarly vitamin C is a carrier of hydrogen peroxide which can do that same damage so if you have a moisturizer or other compounds that you're putting on your skin that are bragging about their antioxidant quality It's Not Unusual that there's vitamin C in those things so I to eliminate vitamin C from Skin Therapy it's not helpful there and it can be sterilizing and the other additive that we see commonly in skin products is the retinoids these vitamin A compounds retinoids are extremely drying to the skin and do deep damage to that tight Junction system and so I would avoid the retinoids I would avoid the vitamin C compounds and in general go towards water and minerals as your base for cleansing in addition to these things to avoid we can start to work on rebuilding this ecosystem just as we have in the gut and over the last few years our basic science laboratory as well as our formulation teams have been hard at work in designing a skin support system that would mimic the success that we've had in the ion products in the gut and so this last year we've rolled out ion skin which we worked deeply with the keratinocytes the kenoy is the cell that lays deep to your epidermus and produces all of the skin cells that will rise up through the through the desant process to form your skin those keratinocytes have a different nutrient demand but rely ultimately on the same communication Network that we would use in the gut formula but we add the a different compost type mix to the skin product than we would to the gut to Foster support to not just the Keratin aite but also the strep staff aerobic bacterial environment of the skin which is radically different than that of the microbiome of the gut which is a lot more Anor robic in its expression and so this ion skin became you know a scientific breakthrough for us when we demonstrated that we could double the efficacy of the gut product in tight functions and keratinocytes with this new formulation that we had at ion Skin So an extremely effective way to increase the barrier function of skin reducing the amount of toxins that would move into your bloodstream from there and reducing the amount of water leak across that membrane leading to the dehydration of Aging of the skin and Beyond so ion skin has become a fascinating way for us to take a look at this second boundary the second barrier in absorptive membrane as the skin and understand how the microbiome over its eons of development have learned to to demonstrate the capacity to increase your rate of repair versus your rate of injury and so by supporting both the skin and the gut we start to to Really reintroduce you to Nature with a cohesive boundary event that helps your immune system understand who you are and what the insults are outside of you a good boundary of tight junctions is going to improve your self-identity in an natural world or in an unnatural chemical space and so I'm very excited to see what happens as you start to increase this capacity for knowingness of who you are as you support these systems of barrier and Boundary as well as absorption of what is going to be n the nature that you bring into you bathing I want to come back to this go deeper than the soap story and start to think about what we're actually bathing in the water that comes into most houses that are on Municipal Water Systems is obviously chlorinated the reason chlorine is added to that water is to eliminate bacterial and microbial Pres pres in that water to sterilize it to reduce the risk of pathogens or other compounds that that can collect in pipes and other unnatural systems that would deliver the water to you in their effort to sterilize the water to give you a clean glass of of water without you know a green algae in it they end up delivering to you a potent antibiotic right so it's in the water to kill the microbes and then you drink it and you're going to end up killing the microbes within your gut with that same chlorine and so chlorinated water is a real problem fortunately the solution is actually quite simple if you leave water out on the countertop for just a few minutes the chlorine is so volatile that it will actually remove itself from the water and so it's not a bad idea before the dinner party if is to you know go through a process of filtration is ideal the berky water filter probably be my favorite but any carbon based water filter is a good start if you want to move to reverse osmosis and the like then you're going to need to add minerals back to the water but suffice it to say you've got some clean water there if it's come from a municipal Source I would take the time to let it also sit out longer to make sure that all the chlorine has has come out of that compound the carbon filtration will remove the majority of that but the simple Act of leaving it available to the air we'll make sure that we've really eliminated all that chlorine before consumption similar to trying to protect the gut from that that water that's being consumed we want to protect the skin chlorinated water coming out of your your shower head is a much more challenging issue to eliminate very little of the chlorine is going to be removed from the water as it comes from the shower head to your skin and so in this way you may want to think about making sure that you apply that ion skin or some sort of microbial support before or immediately after the shower as you get out and so we want to make sure that the skin has got a resilient you know microbial communication Network before hit with the insult of this antibiotic exposure of the chlorine unfortunately it's not just chlorine that travels in our water systems today that function as an antibiotic all Municipal Water Systems essentially have detectable round up or glyphosate in them now the exposure to that antibiotic of the glyphosate is again injurious to the skin through the shower or the bath as it would be to the gut in its consumption so filtering the whole house against glyphosate is a good idea you can get whole house carbon filters you can get a whole house reverse mosis systems as well quite expensive but they they do work well make sure you're reintroducing minerals to the water if it's an RO system distillation I don't recommend distilled water by and large as far as your daily consumption the only place distilled water can come into skin or gut health is going to be around actions of of real medicinal efforts to to kind of correct a real severe imbalance we do this for example during fasting and things like that we can use distilled water different ways but in general avoid distilled water and and stick to the the carbon filtration or Ro if you want to go to the extreme State there the last environmental exposure of lifestyle that I want to let you know about when we talk about skin health is coming down to the use of anti-inflammatories through the skin so there's a lot of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories and stuff like that that are sold as Skin balms and and things like this that can damage the tight Junction system the barrier system of that skin just as it would the gut so watch out for topical gels that brag to be anti-inflammatory make sure that there's not ibuprofen Motrin type compounds in there and move more towards the natural compounds if you're trying to do pain relief that would be something like arnica as a good example and so we want to get away from the pharmaceuticalization of the skin because it's going to have the same damage that the pharmaceuticalization of the gut is going to have in regards to the Skin's ability to maintain a water barrier and keep the keep the toxins out so be careful what you put on your skin you are what you put on that skin in the end it's amazing how fast everything transits from skin into bloodstream and the danger there is that there is no liver in between it the gut that small intestine and colon that's doing all that absorption of all your nutrients water and everything else has been designed to sit before the liver so that there's a detoxification before all of that milu of absorbed materials goes and distributes to your body but unfortunately there is no liver sitting between your skin and the heart that Venus supply of the skin will go straight back into the veins that will feed the heart without ever having to go through the liver first and so the toxins you introduce to your skin are ultimately far more dangerous than the toxins introduced to the gut in the sense there there is no liver in the action of filtering those out and so you will get cellular damage throughout the human body from something like a cosmetic when in fact some of those compounds that are also found in food systems and colorings and things like that preservative mul fires end up in your food they have a much less damage through the through the gut path and they will through that skin path one of the most misperceived relationships that we have to our environment is that of our relationship to the sun when we think about skin Health most people immediately recoil and Terror to the idea of sun exposure it's accelerates aging and drying of the skin it causes wrinkles there's all kinds of theories out there as to why sun is damaging and there is certainly no doubt that a severe sunburn can be you know an incredible injury to the skin and leave behind a trace record of that injury deep in the dermis that can later in life cause problems sunspots cancers Etc but this idea that daily exposure to Sun as you walk across into your car or whatever is dangerous and therefore every day you need put on sunscreen before you put on your makeup is a ludicrous concept biology on the planet had develop in the context of this solar radiation of the sun if it didn't tolerate the sun we would not be here and so every cell whether it be a microbe within the soil to you know a tree growing in the in the backyard to your child growing within your womb to the elderly adult walking out in the park we were designed to be in the sun where we find that predominance or or propensity towards a injury from the Sun is is when we live a lifestyle that's not connected to the Sun and then we decide we're going to take a one we vacation and go to Hawaii and we haven't seen the sun in two and a half years and we go out there with no clothes on and we get burned like a roast and so that that phenomenon is not a problem with the sun it's a problem with your lifestyle that doesn't have you connected to the nutrient of the Sun in the first place I did just describe the Sun as a nutrient and I think it's critical for you to re Focus your mind into this phenomenon just as the gut is a a an absorptive membrane to bring nutrition into the body the skin also is a nutrient producer and a nutrient absorber for the body's vital function one of the most obvious elements of this is vitamin D vitamin D is not actually a vitamin totally miscategorized by the the pr campaign that was put on by that that department some decades past vitamin D is actually a potent steroid hormone and vitamin D is a hormone produced by the skin cells when exposed to Sunshine and so as the Sun hits it the proopiomelanocortin which is this huge molecule starts to break in down into many different compounds and so that proopiomelanocortin is making steroids that include you know things like Downstream uh ones that will produce cortisol and the like but Upstream you're seeing the simultaneous production of vitamin D from cells so opal anic cortin produces meltin for skin tan but also sets up for adrenal health and things like that critical nutrients for for the the function of the adrenal glands all the way to this phenomenon of the vitamin D itself being manufactured we have nutrients resulting from our exposure to Sun just as we have nutrients resulting from our exposure to the dinner plate and so we want you to be back out in the sun again and consistency is the key to health but it turns out in our basic science lab as we've been developing this ion skin product and studying the impact of by microbial communication networks and our response to Sun we've discovered just like the vulnerability of the gut due to loss of bacteria we develop a vulnerability to the sun with loss of bacteria and so with the alcohol and the Soaps and the moisturizers with their compounds and the lotions and the sunscreens with their and obnoxious compounds and then the Cosmetics we destroy the microbiome and in so doing we make ourselves very vulnerable to Sun injury when we reapply the communication network of bacteria fungi and like through ion we can put it under uvb3 level radiation or even UVB 6 radiation which is kind of that severe sunb brain State and demonstrate that the cells don't have to react with stress that would then lead to the oxidative injury of a burn and in that seems to happen through this extraordinary communication of skin microbes to mitochondria inside the cells the mitochondria inside the skin cell once supported by the microbial communication network does not Spike the reactive auction species the signal for inflammation as it does when it's devoid of that communication so as we put this together we could see that a lifestyle Outdoors bathing in Mineral bass or or mineral Rich rivers or the ocean rather than chlorinated water system systems and soaps we would find the opportunity to reestablish the microbiome that would put us in a healthy relationship to the Sun that we developed in as a species and so reconnecting to Nature at each level is going to radically change your fear Paradigm to the very things that create the nutrients that make life possible we need to lose our fear of sun and start to understand our healthy relationship through the microbiome and its communication Network back to that that glor ious source of life on the planet which is of course that father son and so we got to re-engage get nature involved and start to nutrify rather than block Nature's effects on our skin so stop the Soaps eliminate sunscreens as much as possible if you haven't been out in the sun you're worthy you're going to be get getting that sunburn apply the ion skin and then get the the skin covered at a reasonable time it only takes 15 to 20 minutes of of sun exposure over the course of a day to give you far more vitamin D than you would ever need at the biologic level so it takes very little sun exposure through skin that's healthy hasn't been dehydrated and desiccated by soap hasn't been layered up with sunscreens and all this let that sun bre breathe through your skin and affect the nutrient Reservoir that would make you resilient and strong at the immune system which is the primary effect of vitamin D on a lot of levels and so immune strength ultimately bone health and red reduction of cardiov vaster disease because calcium transits better to Bone when vitamin D is present and the like so we've got lots of opportunities for us to really re-engage without fear the nature that allows us to function I hope at this point I've been able to convince you that the skin is similar to a second gut that second gut is there as a barrier against the outside world a barrier against dehydration and an absorptive membrane to bring nutrients into the body now though we need to turn our attention to the way in which the gut and its ecosystems talks directly to the skin and vice versa and this you've witnessed certainly if you've gone through puberty you've seen the effects of the gut skin axis puberty is this extraordinary shift in the hormonal balance of the body it's very easy to get an excessive imbalance between things like testosterone estrogen progesterone and the like during these big explosive endocrine changes of the 10 to 12 years old and now it's getting younger and younger as we get dysfunction in the brain and we start to stress the organism our children start to try to express sexual function at an earlier and earlier age realizing that if they don't get to to fertility quickly they'll probably be infertile and therefore the species will go extinct you have this amazing propensity to create sexual expression at much younger ages now as we put these organisms under stress these organisms primarily being our children and so to resolve this stress level and start to express healthy bodies we're going to have to understand the communication Network between skin and gut for most kids the introduction to cosmetics and dermatologic skin products that are end up being detrimental to their health is around the issue of acne acne is an expression of sebaceous or oily compounds as well as toxins that are exuded from the skin this is obviously demonstrating a buildup of these compounds in the bloodstream itself and so if you see acne occurring is because you've done something in the nutritional environment that has necessitated the ejection of that material from the body through your sweat glands and through the pores of your skin rather than through the urine breath and other Pathways so there's going to be specific toxins under specific states of stress that are going to be better expressed out of the body through the skin than through these other secretions in this way when you see acne you know there's an opportunity to change the environment acne is going to be treated and eliminated in fact prevented if you do the nutritional approach to balancing the microbiome supporting its diversity at the Food Level before you ever find the need for your retinoids and the other toxins that are being put on the acne all the way to the makeups and everything else that would cover that those blemishes up and so if you see blemishes we can bet there's going to be a gut issue at the foundation the Deep cystic acne is a real demonstration of this gut skin connection so deep cystic acne common in our later teen years but also can occur in adults at almost every age is a demonstration of of inflammatory Downstream consequences of hormonal shift and that inflammation by and large is coming from the liver and so when you see cystic acne you can bet you've got some some degree of liver inflammation typically due to fatty liver fatty liver can incur in in people of all weights and sizes fatty liver does not mean that you're obese fatty liver means that the metabolic Wellness of the liver and its impression of stress on the organism of your entire human body is going to determine whether it allows the calories and nutrients that is taking in from the gut to be passaged out to the mitochondria into your peripheral cells or sequestered and held on to in case things get worse so in the end this is a scarcity mentality of the liver if there's too much stress in the environment we better hold on to resources in case it actually gets even worse so we need to give the liver a sense of abundance and reduce the amount of toxicity that we would present to that liver in our diet in our bathing in our cosmetics and the rest reduce the chemical load and expect things to improve in regards to the hormonal underpinnings of cystic acne these thought processes and these ideas that I'm throwing out around the skin changes in bathing changing changing our relationship to water itself changing our relationship to the toxins and our water cosmetics and Beyond is not common obviously in The American or Western public and so what are the results that we tend to see when we disregard the microbiome of the skin at the population level interestingly we see a an acceleration of the gut skin relationship here in regards to these sterile tactics of the en chemical environment we're in the antimicrobial pressures across our food and water systems compound to to undermine our sense of self-identity and what I mean by that is again breaking those tight junctions so as we get leaky gut we can also get leaky skin and the combination of leaky gut and leaky skin is the the most common underpinnings of these conditions that have gone absolutely Bonkers in the population now which are eczema and psoriasis these two compounds are highly indicative of a small bowel injury that's leading to high permeability or leak in that first section of the small intestine with that high degree of leak there at the intestine we end up with lots of junk and inflammatory milu in the liver and the bloodstream Beyond and ultimately expressing itself at the skin level as nutrient deficiency and excess inflammation so eczema is this chronic severe scaling dehydrated skin that gets set up by the noxious injuries to the microbiome through our bathing through our food Etc with enough of that leaky gut leaky skin phenomenon our immune system can get so overwhelmed that it starts to actually detect our own tissue as the enemy and this is what we see with something like psoriasis psoriasis is basically an autoimmune posi immune which means immune oriented condition that is caused by this complete disorientation of the human immunity where it starts to attack self rather than outside organisms so whether it be the breakdown of nutrients and hydration of the eczema and dry flaking skin all the way to this autoimmune phenomenon of psoriasis we we are seeing globally now the phenomenon of breakdown of our connection to Nature so as you start to see these conditions emerge it's an opportunity as an early red flag de decades before you'll see you know more life-threatening autoimmune conditions type 1 diabetes thyroid disease and like and more threatening conditions such as cancer you're you have the opportunity to to shortcut those long-term outcomes by starting to learn a mechanism by supporting the gut and the skin through your fostering and your co-creation of a biodiverse ecosystem on you and within you the Last Frontier that of the skin gut connection that I want to bring you your attention to today has to do with the reminder that your skin is an extraordinary sensory organ your skin is imbued with a massive amount of neurologic input so similar to what you would see in the gut lining as we've described it and this neurologic network there is to feel the nature around you to make the observations that will teach your body how to respond and integrate into nature such that there is an abundance rather than a scarcity of opportun for vitality and one of the most obvious ways in which we lose this sensory contact with our nature is through our shoes shoes had long been basically there for General protection but not isolation from the earth the shoes that date back for thousands of years in human history in the apparel industry and the like were leather-based or cloth-based compounds in the 1960s with the Advent of cheap Rubber and cheap Plastics we eliminated leather soles altogether and for this last 50 years have created a lifestyle that insulates us as plastic and these other oilbased compounds will do from the Earth itself we are no longer feeling the Earth between our toes we are forgetting what it feels like to walk on the earth and I see this all the time in New gardeners when you start to first get contact with the the soil and you're starting to reintroduce yourself to Nature there's this High propensity and this kind of subconscious fear of that that element and so we put on rubber shoes and we put on rubber gloves and we go out there as if it's a Hazmat type environment the skin is built to be in touch with the nature around you not just to sense its beauty but also share in the beauty because ultimately the microbiome of the soil systems and the plants and animals around you carry an Avenue for microbiome diversification to occur one of the most potent things that we see in regards to microbiome diversity of the skin is your exposure to other species I.E animals and pets and so one of the really cool ways to change the chronic skin conditions in the home is to get the children outside get them breathing real air touching plants get them petting animals get them horseback riding get them petting the the The Goat in the field getting them wrestling around with the dog in the backyard all of this physical contact the intimacy with nature be it the plants or your pets or the the backyard garden itself is your reintroduction to biodiversity the one level deeper that we can go for the magic of barefoot is the magic of electricity in the Earth itself if I was going to boil Health down to to one factor it is how much electrons are available to your body health is a is negative charge the electrical charge of electrons and disease is an overabundance of positive charge a loss of the electrons and it turns out that Earth as a nature has been charged with a blanket of electrons since it's origin and that electron foundation of life hovers just microns above the soil and plant life of the of the Earth itself that electrical blanket is charged and replaced every day by the phenomenon of lightning there is over 100,000 lightning strikes today on the surface of the planet and lightning is a discharge of potential energy or electricity from the stratosphere the atmosphere and the and the clouds that that electricity would culminate in due to its water content and the Earth Earth itself and so lightning is a transfer of electrical potential and energy from the stratosphere to the surface of the planet at a tune of 100,000 strikes a day to keep this planet charged interestingly to me that stratosphere is being charged by the galaxies stars and the universe itself you've perhaps seen in person I hope but also just photographs of the Aurora Borealis or the Northern Light that Aurora Borealis is a enormous stream of electrons coming in through our atmospheres from deep space solar flares supernovas of stars the sun itself bringing this radiation potential of electrical energy to the surface of our Earth it travels from this the deep space to the stratosphere into the clouds into the lightning into the surface of the Earth into our feet this extraordinary exchange of electrical energy ends there at the soil if you're wearing a rubbert old shoe and so taking off the insulation between you and mother earth going Barefoot for at least a few minutes a day on either soil brick concrete even works really well silica based asphalt doesn't work at all it's oil based it's an insulator but most of those surface that you'll find in your backyard or around the neighborhood are going to allow for high degrees of electrical transfer from that deep space Source into your body and you're going to avoid absorb that electrical energy which is then going to serve as a potent anti-inflammatory it also serves to connect you to the biorhythms of the Earth itself a really potent way to help sustain Wellness when you're traveling a lot which My Lifestyle tends to do is to take off your shoes shortly after landing in a new time zone because while my body doesn't have the light sensors having been exposed yet to yesterday's Dawn at that time zone the Earth has and it is hit its biorhythms to to Dawn in that location and can transfer that information into you through this exchange that happens at this electrical level of barefoot contact with the Earth and so it's a a beautiful possibility that your health is just a footstep away less pain in the joints less inflammation in the brain by just touching Mother Earth so in the end as we start to understand the skin as not just a barrier but an absorptive membrane and not just an absorptive membrane but a surface for a diverse microbiome and not just a human microbiome but actually a shared microbiome with the things that we touch the animals we keep the humans we hug that Community reinforces biodiversity at every level of the skin to increase your communication Network to increase your neural Wellness your deep immunologic Wellness you have the opportunity to birth a new reality through your integration into nature through a healthy gut healthy skin and the Beautiful cross talk between those two incredible organ systems it's a joy to be with you through this incredible series that has inspired me at many times as much as I think it has you I'm always in awe that for all the decades that I've studied this stuff something new always comes through every time I sit down with you and what that feels like is that there's a a knowledge field out there in the universe that is waiting to express itself through humanity and it is expressed in its highest form when Community comes together and so without an audience none of the information I have transferred to you would have been available I learn every time I speak because the audience itself is part of that co-creative connection to this inredible knowledge field that sits in the ethers around us and so thank you for being with me on this journey of the gutkin axis it's been a joy to be with you and I'm looking forward to our next steps of an integrated Humanity that has remembered its nature and comes to see ourselves as a beautiful element within her