3 Ways Stress Triggers Skin & Gut Issues—And What to Do About It with Christa Biegler, RD

This week on The Less Stressed Life Podcast, I'm talking about something huge that most people don’t realize: stress is often the hidden trigger behind gut and skin issues. If you’ve been struggling with eczema, rashes, bloating, or food sensitivities and nothing seems to help, stress could be the missing piece.

In this episode, I break down three major ways stress impacts your body, from depleting key nutrients to shutting down digestion and suppressing immune function. I also share practical strategies for rebuilding resilience, replenishing nutrients, and supporting your gut and skin so you can start feeling better for good.

❓Questions about your own health struggles? Submit them here: https://www.christabiegler.com/questions

🚨Christa is currently taking clients! Click here to book a Root Cause Clarity Call: https://www.christabiegler.com/fss

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• How stress depletes key nutrients needed for gut and skin health
• The surprising way stress shuts down digestion, leading to bloating & food sensitivities
• Why immune suppression from stress can trigger eczema & chronic skin issues
• The role of gut imbalances, blood sugar stress, and inflammation in your symptoms
• Practical ways to build resilience and support your body through stress

ABOUT CHRISTA:

Christa Biegler has been a registered dietitian for over 10 years, author of The Eczema Relief Diet & Cookbook, host of top-rated Less Stressed Life podcast and was awarded  Dietitian of the Year for South Dakota in 2020.
She worked in a variety of clinical settings, school nutrition, and behind the scenes for a food company and fitness celebrity before starting her private practice focusing on food sensitivities and eczema for adults and pediatrics, which quickly expanded to all aspects of gut health.
She lives in the middle of nowhere with her unicycling husband, children and a flock of chickens. 

WHERE TO FIND CHRISTA:
Website: https://www.christabiegler.com/
Instagram: @anti.inflammatory.nutritionist
Podcast Instagram: @lessstressedlife
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lessstressedlife
Leave a review, submit a questions for the podcast or take one of my quizzes here: https://www.christabiegler.com/links

NUTRITION PHILOSOPHY:

 🍽️ Over restriction is dead
 🥑 Whole food is soul food and fed is best
 🔄 Sustainable, synergistic nutrition is in (the opposite of whack-a-mole supplementation & supplement graveyards)
 🤝 You don’t have to figure it out alone
 💛 Do your best and leave the rest

SPONSOR:
Thanks to Jigsaw Health for sponsoring this episode! Struggling with dry, cracked hands? Try their Alaska Cod Liver Oil for omega-3s + vitamins A & D to support skin and immune health. Use code LESSSTRESSED10 at JigsawHealth.com for 10% off—unlimited use!

TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Christa Biegler, RD: I'm your host, Christa Biegler, and I'm going to guess we have at least one thing in common that we're both in pursuit of a less stressed life. On this show, I'll be interviewing experts and sharing clinical pearls from my years of practice to support high performing health savvy women in pursuit of abundance and a less stressed life.

[00:00:29] One of my beliefs is that we always have options for getting the results we want. So let's see what's out there together.

[00:00:47] when I'm reviewing someone's case, something I'm always looking for is, what happened right before the major thing happened? Right before this started? What happened right before this rash broke out? What happened the months leading up to when you noticed food sensitivities?

[00:01:03] And in many cases, and in my own, there is some form of stress. Now, if you listen to part one of my own health story, you heard me mention that stress was undoubtedly a catalyst before my own major health crisis in 2015 when I broke out in eczema all over my neck and my face. Sometimes it's really obvious what the stress is and sometimes it's a little more subtle.

[00:01:25] For me, I didn't realize that stress was a component initially. I just thought, I'm a mother of two toddlers. I am doing all the normal things. And so I would have thought that was a little more subtle, not like some major event. I remember my mother's autoimmune diagnosis. She was on a trip that should be a positive thing to see my great aunt right before, but there was some.

[00:01:47] other factors that made that trip much more stressful. And so usually the stress is there. Today I'm going to share a few physiological things that happen downstream of stress in the body and how I'm helping my clients navigate this in our very human world. I always say let's not blame ourselves for being human.

[00:02:03] But first things first, how is stress perceived in the body? What is stress in the body? The brain is in charge of all hormone production and it doesn't know the difference between emotional or other stresses. The brain or the hypothalamus perceives stress in a variety of ways. So under psychological stresses, you might have exposure to negativity.

[00:02:25] Like in news, in social media, you might feel unfulfilled or misaligned with your personal values. You might be experiencing major life changes. Unresolved trauma, past experiences, anxiety, worry, excessive overthinking, any kind of conflict in your relationships, whether it's family, romantic or friendships, work pressure or job dissatisfaction, financial debt or insecurity, perfectionism or high self expectation, loneliness or social isolation.

[00:02:52] grief and loss, lack of control over situations, fear of failure or rejection. And how about physical stresses that might include poor sleep quality or not getting enough sleep, overtraining or excessive exercise for your body, sedentary lifestyle, not moving enough or lack of movement, chronic pain or injury, sending these continuous loops to the brain, whether there's an active pain signal or not.

[00:03:16] Hormone imbalances like thyroid and adrenal dysfunction, environmental toxins like mold and other chemicals, poor posture or prolonged screen time, nutrient deficiencies or dehydration. And how about blood sugar stress? That would be like skipping meals or inconsistent meal patterns, right? Working through lunch, been there, done that, and then be starving a few hours later.

[00:03:36] Intaking a lot of processed carbs or refined sugars that stress how your body is able to process those. Lots of caffeine or alcohol, especially all at once. Late night eating affecting blood sugar or reactive hypoglycemia like blood sugar crashes, which can often be related to how the adrenals are doing.

[00:03:54] And lastly, what about inflammatory stresses? This could be one of my most favorite ways that inflammation comes in. interesting ways is brain inflammation caused by head injury or toxins, chronic exposure to allergens like mold, dust, pollen, poor gut health like gut dysbiosis or imbalances. Lots of frankenfoods like processed foods, artificial additives, things that the body is just not made to digest, food sensitivities or other intolerances or just overall infections.

[00:04:24] Why stress is an issue. This is something that we all know, but sometimes we need reminders of the simple way I like to think about stress is that it depletes nutrients So nutrients are the workers for all the systems and all the processes in the body They make enzyme processes, which makes everything work in the body.

[00:04:41] So stress in different ways uses up more energy and more nutrients. For example, increased cortisol dumps potassium pressing on aldosterone depletes sodium. Magnesium is depleted under stress. And so there's many specific deficiencies that can come from stress and these deficiencies and imbalances mean that systems in the body, whether it's gut drainage, thyroid, adrenal, et cetera, Our short staff digestion, and then all of these processes and systems have to borrow from each other or just downregulate.

[00:05:11] They're like laying off people on the systems. And we'll downregulate the least important processes. And so very often that's reproduction or other sex hormones. Like it's not the most important hormone that your body must produce, especially progesterone and testosterone, which support mood and muscle repair and libido.

[00:05:30] All things I hear people complain about quite often. So when systems are not working optimally, things just slow down that aren't even picked up by routine blood testing. So unfortunately it's just, education is the answer here to me because you're not going to see this stuff show up very regularly on testing.

[00:05:47] It's just that you're going to see yourself not feeling as well or have some interesting symptoms. So for example, I talk about drainage and detoxification a lot. with my clients with skin issues. And if the body doesn't have the raw materials or the workers to show up and perform drainage operations at that machine, then the entire system will just slow down.

[00:06:08] And that might look different on different people. It might look like on some people, low energy or brain fog or trouble focusing or sensitive skin or sensitivity to smells. Or hives or rashes, or just being stiff in the morning or increased body owner, you name it. There's all kinds of symptoms that don't show up on blood tests.

[00:06:25] There are tons of messages that show up just long before any lab results would flag anything. 

[00:06:30] In past winters, my son has gotten dry hands that can crack and bleed. I found that giving him at least 300 to 600 milligrams of high quality fish oil really resolves this in a few weeks. This year, I started him on Jigsaw's Alaska Cod Liver Oil because it's the best value for high quality U. S. sourced cod liver oil.

[00:06:48] Just one teaspoon gives him 1, 000 milligrams of total omega 3s, which just means faster results with nature's natural dose of synergistic vitamin A already found in cod liver oil to support immune health. Jigsaw sources their cod liver oil from Alaska, where line caught fish are flash frozen on the boat.

[00:07:08] This keeps the fish oil very fresh so it doesn't require more processing and deodorizing like other fish oils, which can disrupt the oils and nutrients. So when you combine Jigsaw's incredible cod liver oil with some of their other wonderful electrolyte mineral products, it's a winning combination to keep your skin beautifully hydrated year after year.

[00:07:25] You can get a discount on all of Jigsaw's products, including Alaska Cod Liver Oil, electrolyte, Supreme Adrenal Cocktail, and Potassium Cocktail, formerly known as [email protected] with a code Less Stressed 10, which you can use on each and every order. That's Code Less Stressed, 10.

[00:07:44] So the first way that stress impacts gut and skin is just depleted nutrients. The second way. Stress impacts these systems is more by shutting down digestion. So not only does stress dump the nutrients that are partially needed for digestion, but it also decreases the body's ability to digest and absorb nutrients.

[00:08:04] When the stress hormone cortisol increases or you're in fight or flight nervous system state, your body preferentially moves blood away from the abdomen and into the arms and legs so that you can respond and run from that threat like running from the tiger. So the first thing that gets compromised is digestion and especially stomach acid.

[00:08:21] Stomach acid is the first line of defense to the gut. So I would call this like the gates of the gut. And so stomach acid serves lots of purposes from breaking down proteins. to killing unwanted bacteria and other organisms that are coming in from the outside. I always have this joke that in college kids could leave a pizza sitting out all night and then eat it and be quote unquote fine.

[00:08:42] That's, you can thank stomach acid for that because the stomach acid is bathing the pizza covered in bacteria from sitting out all night. In stomach acid, so that way that bacteria doesn't go downstream and make itself at home. When stomach acid is depleted, which is most often pretty much always related to stress, the gate is wide open.

[00:09:04] That just means that these pathogenic organisms that would normally be killed in a bath of acid just head right on into the gate because the gate is wide open and then they set up residence downstream. So second, when you're not breaking down your proteins, you're not getting the amino acids, which are also critical for detoxification and for skin healings.

[00:09:26] Amino acids are the building blocks of tissue. And so that helps the skin healing. So shutting down digestion impacts more of these raw materials for healing. for drainage and also allows those pathogenic organisms to set up shop downstream. And then that becomes these gut imbalances that feed on your nutrients.

[00:09:45] So taking up more of your nutrition, which is going to cause slower healing, more exhaustion, loss of energy, maybe even sleep disturbances. And those organisms are going to give off their own waste. So you're going to have more trash that needs to be taken out. Sometimes that waste from these pathogens.

[00:10:02] looks like rashes on the skin. And sometimes these organisms just impair all types of digestion or they ferment foods and that causes gas and bloating in a regular bowel movements. Third, stress suppresses immune function. So we've all experienced where we had this period of stress, like staying up late to study for a test in college and then getting sick the next day.

[00:10:25] That's because stress is suppressing secretory IgA, or what I call immune system soldiers, in the gut. This is the frontline defense of the immune system that protects our mucosal surfaces from infections and other substances by neutralizing viruses, bacteria, and other pathogens. So if you have low amounts of, immune system soldiers because they've gone to battle for you.

[00:10:46] They've been depleted and you haven't repleted them. Let me tell you how to replete them in a moment. This means you may get sick more often. It may mean that you're unable to fight off this inevitable exposure to pathogens, and it also allows low grade organisms that can be a little more severe. to just hang out in your gut and cause intermittent issues.

[00:11:02] Maybe just having issues that show up every few weeks or maybe causing some cramping or bloating or dumping. And these things can also play a role in skin rashes as well. issues can relate very much to skin issues. 

[00:11:15] So supporting these immune system soldiers is one to quit depleting them under stress. Remember all those types of stresses I was talking about earlier. And other things that can help improve immune system soldiers include Saccharomyces boulardii, a type of spore based probiotic, retinol vitamin A, And immunoglobulins like colostrum or other bovine immune serum immunoglobulins.

[00:11:36] Another place that I see stress causing issues, even though I've given you three ways that stress impacts gut and skin function already, is that in general, as we've talked about, it overall reduces resilience and communicates to the nervous system that there's a lack of safety. And so one place I see this showing up more and more in clients is that they might have exposure to some kind of major environmental toxin.

[00:11:58] Like mold and they can be okay. But after a period of stress, maybe that lasts more than a month, we usually call anything that lasts more than a month chronic instead of acute or short term. So if they're having chronic stress that lasts more than a month, I find that their resilience is lower, their nervous system is more on alert and they start to have more severe symptoms as a downstream impact.

[00:12:17] So what can you do? The good news is that you can totally change how you process stress with the body, the. Not bad news is that we're onions that on layer how we're processing stress. So I think that this is a lifelong thing of awareness for some clients that are very unaware of stress.

[00:12:35] I might recommend that they buy devices to help them stimulate their vagus nerve to do some work when they feel like they cannot do work. In an ideal world, we want to really just create more awareness and consciousness around stress of where stress is coming in and start to shift that. There's something that I do in practice called results coaching.

[00:12:55] It's not easy to explain, but it was so profound for me after doing it for months. And I saw this. Huge shift in my nervous system. And as a result, mineral test results that were impacted by stress. So in practice, I use a couple modalities the ones that I found really helpful. So this results coaching, it shines a light on stress that you don't always know is there and allows you the option to feel completely different in about 20 minutes.

[00:13:20] I found that it's just one of the most valuable things I can share with clients because we can actually change how we're processing and ruminating on these stressful thoughts and experiences. Even if we don't realize we're doing it in a very short amount of time. So the results and achievement oriented part of me just loves it.

[00:13:36] So I had to rearrange things to start doing this weekly with clients because I was seeing the downstream impact of stress on there and my own nutrient and mineral status and knew that until they were changing how they were processing stress. differently in the body or until they started feeling it differently in the body.

[00:13:53] I knew that these results wouldn't shift even if we were giving them the nutrients and feeling better. I wanted them to feel better at long term. So the good news is there are so many options for unraveling stress. These are just a few. I use in my own practice. I'd love to hear what you're using for stress.

[00:14:09] So if you would share with me, there's a spot in the show notes and then there's a spot on our podcast page where you can click and ask a question, but I'd love for you to share with me, what do you do to start to unlayer that, that whole onion of stress in your own life? And I'd love to share on the podcast recording on the next recording, some of the things that you guys do to reduce stress in your own lives.

[00:14:31] Thanks for hanging out with me today and we'll see you next time.

[00:14:33] It's bones but they just keep breaking. I gotta get myself a little more faith, a little more love.