Last week I told you all about how to naturally protect skin from burns and photoaging.
Today let’s talk about and heal all of your summer skin care concerns holistically… everything from:
- yeast overgrowth
- athletes foot
- cuts and scrapes
- bug bites and more…
I’ve got you covered!
Let’s go:
1. Treating Yeast Overgrowth
First, the energetic imbalance behind a yeast overgrowth… being too sweet!
Literally!
Yeast tend to take advantage of hosts that allow an imbalance to take hold. I always like to ask patients if there are any areas of their life what is out of balance?
- Are you grinning and bearing something that you’d secretly like to say a firm “no†to?
- Are you letting someone walk all over you? Are there any boundaries that need shoring up?
- We know that yeast will take advantage of this and walk all over us if we let them.
Just take a bit of time to double-check that we say no when we need to and we have clear boundaries that allow us to do what we truly want to do and enjoy that without guilt.
If you are sucking it up and putting a smile on your face, your body feels this.
Your skin is working over time to set a boundary that you are failing to make for yourself. There is no way your skin should be having to set boundaries that you aren’t being clear about. It just can’t keep up, and as a result, those yeasty beasties are having a field day.
Let your skin breathe
Yeast love heat and moisture, so you need to give your skin time to cool down and dry out. So no wearing tight sweaty bras or swimsuits for hours and hours on end. If you get clothing wet, whether it’s a swim suit you were swimming in or gym clothes you just worked out in, change them. Or better yet, grab some privacy in your home and go naked for a bit.
You’ve got to love the skin you’re in and give it time to air out.
Besides just changing out of wet or damp clothing, you can proactively routinely go naked to keep skin aired out… perhaps consider sleeping nude?
I remember when my kids were super little and I loved nothing more but for them just to run around naked all day long, no diaper in sight. That is something you should consider if you are prone to yeast overgrowth… lots of time with no undies!
Colloidal Silver topically
Topical silver gels and ointments work because of silver’s antimicrobial properties.
Silver kills yeast as well as lots of other pathogens, so it’s a great topical treatment to have around.
Just as you might spray colloidal silver up your nose at the first sign of a cold, you can apply silver gel directly on skin infections — for example, on areas of yeast overgrowth like on skin folds. Stay naked if possible and allow your skin to air dry after spraying!
I had an elderly patient who used to apply colloidal silver on areas of yeast overgrowth after bathing and then lay naked under the ceiling fan in her bedroom for an hour after each bath, and we just cracked up when we formulated this healing plan together! But it worked!
Decrease consumption of sugar and simple carbs
I’m sure you’ve heard of this one before… and it’s true, even though I hate to admit it. I have a serious sweet tooth and it is nothing to be trifled with!
But yeast love to thrive on sugars and simple carbs like white flour.
If you can reduce your consumption of these foods (and pay particular attention to it if you have an active yeast infection!) and you’ll give the yeast less to feed on and a decreased rate of growth.
You may want to try L-glutamine supplements to help decrease sugar cravings. Take one 500 mg dose of L-Glutamine up to three times a day and you can thwart your cravings for sugar and help dramatically reduce your sugar intake.
Eat sulfur rich foods
Sulfur rich foods like many spices, garlic and onion, help naturally defeat the yeast overgrowth.
Make them a part of your summertime diet on a routine basis!
And the good news is, if you load up on the garlic, you are going to naturally repel mosquitos and other biting insects as well! So load cloves of garlic into spaghetti and pizza sauces, on garlic bread, raw in salads… you name it!
Take yeast fighting supplements:
- Probiotics: 70% of our immunity starts in the gut, and most of us don’t have the right flora in our GI tract to optimize fighting off opportunistic overgrowth like yeast. Taking a high quality probiotic will help reset the balance and provide head-to-toe benefits.
- Proteolytic Enzymes: Proteolytic Enzymes break up the biofilm on pathogens and weakens them… allowing our bodies to effectively clear them out for good. The biofilm is exactly what it sounds like, a film over the surface of a foreign pathogen like yeast, and it’s purpose is to protect the pathogen from being defeated. When you break up this biofilm by taking proteolytic enzymes, often this one supplement is enough to rid you of yeast for good!
- Boric Acid Suppositories: If you tend to get vaginal yeast overgrowth, boric acid suppositories will save your life. Simply insert one capsule intra-vaginally each night for 7 days, or use as needed to reset vaginal pH and beat yeast overgrowth without a prescription.
You can find all my favorite supplements in my online pharmacy here.
2. Treating Athlete’s Foot
Many of the same tips for decreasing yeast overgrowth will also work for decreasing fungal overgrowth as well… so read through the list above and incorporate those things into your fungal line of defense as well.
On top of this, be sure you are not keeping your feet trapped into hot, moist environments like closed toed shoes.
- Wear open toed shoes, or change socks often:
If you *must* wear closed toed shoes, like for your job, be certain to wear socks (no shoes without socks, please! Once the insole is damp your shoes will stay damp all day long) and bring an extra pair or two with you to work so you can change them frequently.
Open toed sandals and flip flops are better, and barefoot is best as often as possible!!!
- Use Apple Cider Vinegar & Tea Tree Oil:
Also, soaking feet in Apple Cider Vinegar and following up with a dab of topical Tea Tree Oil will help treat a fungal infection as well as prevent one from forming in the first place.
Just dry feet extremely well after wearing shoes, swimming or bathing, and soak feet in a diluted solution of apple cider vinegar (or use a cotton ball to dab on apple cider vinegar directly onto feet, especially between toes) and then follow with tea tree oil daily for several weeks and watch your athlete’s foot infection disappear for good, never to return.
- Invest in a UV Shoe Sanitizer:
You can also consider using a UV light shoe sanitizer and deodorizer in your shoes overnight to kill any pathogens that live on the interior of your shoes — shoes can be difficult to fully air out and inserting a UV shoe sanitizer into the shoes will not only completely disinfect them, but they will smell better too.
Although they may be an initial investment, UV shoe sanitizers can save you from countless foot infections as well as double and triple the life of your favorite shoes.
3. Healing Summer Scrapes and Bug Bites
- Use Honey Topically
You already know I love honey to ease seasonal allergy symptoms… and I love honey for wound healing as well!
Summer is filled with little cuts, scabs, scrapes and bites. So it’s the perfect time to recognize the power of honey.
Findings published in 2012 in the International Wound Journal show that when raw honey was used on all types of wounds, it:
- promoted healing
- minimized necrosis
- minimized the amount of skin that sloughed off the wound
- reduced wound size
- decreased affected area around wound
Not only did it help speed wound healing, but it made a measurable improvement in over 84% of wounds!!!!
We are talking:
- post operative wounds
- general skin wounds
- infections
- burns
- ulcers
- pressure sores and more!
Honey has well-known antimicrobial benefits, doesn’t spoil, is easy to have on hand and is portable (no refrigeration required!) so it really makes perfect sense to use as a secondary wound dressing in children older than 12 months old.
To use honey for wound healing:
- First be sure to flush out any wound with lots of water… for a long period of time… 2 minutes ideally.
- Then, depending on wound type you may consider a topical antihistamine, anti-inflammatory, or antibacterial dressing, and then honey.
- For minor wounds, use deep cleansing and then raw honey as a dressing, but be sure to have any deeper or larger wounds evaluated by a physician.
Because honey is so safe and so effective for so many different types of wounds… and because it speeds healing and decreases the amount of skin that is affected by the wound, I feel that honey ultimately will be shown to reduce the appearance of scarring as well.
So for post operative wounds or acne infections or stretch marks or injuries that you want to minimize scarring in… bring on the raw honey! Sweet news, indeed!
And to help prevent bug bites in the first place — I use a two pronged approach:
- Organic Cedar Oil:
Safe to spray directly on skin, pets, around doorways and porches and windows, and anywhere inside or outside of your home that bugs tend to congregate. Child and pet friendly.
Used directly on skin it helps deter biting insects from bothering you at all and is organic, safe, natural and no nasty DEET or other chemical concerns.
Cedar oil is also the tick repellent I recommend most, and I advise my patients to use cedar oil when going outdoors to get grounded.
In fact, I use this so often as pest control around my home that my daughter calls it “the smell of my childhood” LOL!
- Burn sage or incense outdoors:
I like to light a few incense sticks or a sage stick and keep it burning on my outdoor patio area while I eat dinner — to deter flying insects from buzzing around my food and spoiling the meal!
Or, as I suggest in this blog post — throw a smudge stick of dried sage into your summer bonfire to help keep the mosquitoes away all night!
To a happy & safe summertime!
xoxo, Laura