The Beauty Chef's Carla Oates on her biggest gut health learnings

Published Oct 3, 2024, 12:09 AM

The Beauty Chef founder Carla Oates shares her biggest learnings around gut health, how she feeds her skin and the importance of beauty from the inside out. 

 

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Oh hey, welcome to Extra Healthy Ish. This, of course, is the big sister podcast to a Healthy Ish Frombody and Soul. I am your host, a Felicity Halle. Carla Oates joins us in the studio today. Now, in case you don't know who she is, she founded the ingestible beauty brand, The Beauty Chef back in two thousand and nine. It is a hugely successful company and today she's going to share her biggest learnings around gut health and the importance of beauty from the inside out. Carla, thank you for coming on Extra Healthy Is today.

Thanks for having me Forlicity.

How are you? You had a pretty hefty morning I did.

I did a class with Leah Simmons.

Yes, she's done on the podcast before.

Yeah, she was absolutely amazing. She's just opened her own studio in BONDOI Junction Kaya and it was strengthening. It was enlightening and rejuvenating and I'm a little bit sore.

I was going to ask you how you stay extra healthish, but you kind of just add it by doing.

Lee as classes. Yeah, absolutely mistakes you healthy.

I eat well, play well, move well, and connect well.

Good answer. What do you do for play?

Play well.

I mean, even my husband's very funny and it's one of his best attributes. So he makes me laugh a lot. So we're kind of really silly, and I think in partnership it's actually something in terms of longevity of relationships. I think humor and play is really important. We don't do it enough, but my husband just enforces it because he's just such a natural comics.

It's got a photo on your Instagram of your husband. Was he like with his arms up in like a he man pose?

Yes. Absolutely.

Sometimes I feel like he's my third child, and you know, whenever we have Sometimes if we have a tiff and I'll be really annoyed and then he just says something so funny.

I'm like, that's so annoying.

I'm so annoyed with you and I can't be and it just completely dissipates. So I think being playing is important. And we have some really great friends that we'll just go I'll say, come over for dinner and then let's just dance and have fun. And having fun is super important, and you know, I know there's lots of studies around, you know, being playful in relationships and how important that is for health and mental health and relieving stress, and I don't think we have We're not I think kind of embracing the child within. I know that sounds like a bit of a cliche, but I just don't think we do that enough.

No, I think we get stuck in our well especially when it comes to health and wellness. Oh, I must go and do this class, I must eat this, I must do this, and then we don't forget that actually having fun, connecting with others, bringing people together, that's actually the most important thing.

That's exactly right.

And even with diet, Like I'm really good with my diet and I love by love healthy food. But if I go to a friend's house and they make a delicious pasta dish, and you know, I try not to eat gluten, but I'm not going to say no. And if someone makes a delicious cake, I will enjoy that piece of cake, but in moderation.

Yeah, Now you'll begung Gut health obviously, and beauty. It's your whole shebang. It's how you've become well known. Talk to us about the link between your gut health and then the whole beauty aspect.

So it's so interesting because there's a bidirectional pathway between your gut and your skin, So your skin and your gut are in constant conversation, and more and more studies show that where there's gut inflammation, there'll be skin inflammation. So whether that's acne or eization, or autoimmune skin issues like psoriasis or exma, or even premature aging of the skin known as inflammating is fueled by inflammation. So we know that there is you know, in terms of skin health, how our inflammation and our immune system can impact the state of our skin, and that's regulated by our gut health.

How did you come about this because before we press play, I mean, we probably bought the same halls when we were in magazine land. You're a beauty editor, yeah, how did you get interested in gut health back then?

When it wasn't even cool?

When I landed a job as a beauty editor from mainstream newspaper, and I was sent lots of different products, so products from mass market skincare companies, and because I was internatural health and a bit of a researcher, I started looking all of the ingredients and I became really disillusioned by the questionable chemicals in skin care products. And from my own experience from having EXMA, I knew that looking after your skin was an inside out job. And so I decided to quit the newspaper. And I remember bitises at the time saying, what are you doing? Like this is the best job in the world.

I mean it was, it was, well, it probably still is. But send off around the world all these junkets and.

I get picked up by limousines, go to fancy restaurants.

Helicoptered into the mould knives. I think one beauty theater I sat next to it wasn't.

I don't know how I missed out on that one. But for me, I wanted to do something that was, you know, help people. And I found it really hard to write about these products that I didn't believe in. So I wanted to make it my mission to help change the paradigm in the beauty industry. So I quit my job and I started writing for Well Being magazine, and I wrote a book called Feeding Your Skin, which actually the revised edition is coming out in December after twenty something years and it's more relevant now than it was then, which was really niche and kind of hippie, and I became the ambassador for the Biological Farmers of Australia and I wrote a column in Sunday Telegraph Body and Soul called do it Yourself Beauty and then the beauty Chef for maybe eight years or something. So I did a complete turnaround in terms of wanting to really focus on how do you look after your skin from the inside out and also topical products that were more plant based, nourish the skin and not deplete the skin.

You really were at the forefront of this. I mean you're one of the first ingestible beauty brands around.

Yes, we were, absolutely and it was tough. I have and I still have an unwavering vision and passion for what I do, but there were a lot of naysayers who were and I guess it just came from not understanding. And again, there wasn't that much research around the connection between gut health and skin health. I just happened to stumble across the research and I'm a little bit of a nerd. I love looking at nutritional papers. A lot of my friends and people that I was working with were natural paths.

So how can we better feed our gut to in turn brighten and heal our skin?

So I think, yeah, diet is incredibly important.

So talk us through some of the main foods perhaps you eat or that we can eat.

So fermented foods. So, fermented foods are rich in probiotics and postbiotics. But what's really important about fermented foods is its broad spectrum probiotics. And we know that microbial diversity is really important when it comes to good gut health, and so fermented foods are naturally rich in a whole array of different types of microbes. Then secondly it would be eat fiber, and a lot of us aren't getting enough fiber in our diet, and fiber is really important because fiber feeds our gut microbiome, and gut microbiome they ferment fiber and they create these compounds called short chain fatty acids, and they're anti inflammatory and they help us. They're absolutely vital for us to regulate our metabolic, immune, gush and brain health. And so those anti inflammatory compounds are super super important that are created by our gut microbiome. And also just because a lot of people ask me what is the difference between your gut and your gut microbiome, and that's kind of for a lot of people interchangeable because you've got microbiome is a mini ecosystem of tens of trillions of microorganisms that we are host to, and they are basically they help to regulate your gut health and so being. You know, it's the most important relationship you're ever going to have with those bugs if you think about, they help influence how you feel, how you look, your immune health, your metabolic health. So those gut microbes, we know they love fiber, your leafy greens, your nuts, your seeds, your legumes. Then you've got foods like you you know, proteins which are important for repairing the lining of the gut and keeping it nice and strong and robust. Things like bone broth are rich in amino acids, which are really important for healing your guts and repairing the gut lining. Foods rich in polyphenols like your berries, green.

Tea, cacw like.

More and more research is showing how amazing cacao is for your gut health and helps to promote microbial diversity. It's so interesting every bodies into cacau at the moment because if the stems cell research and also because of its impact on gut microbiom and we use beautiful Rocker car and a lot of our products and something there's a shortage in the market.

It's like it's the kale problem ceremony.

When I was in Bali last time, beautiful, No, I haven't. It's quite amazing.

Yeah, I've heard it's amazing. Yeah.

What about foods to avoid? What should we steer away from when it comes to well, the things that perhaps are detrimental to our gut and inturn our skin health.

Yes, so that would be anything process we know, you know, your processed vegetable oils, hydrogenated oils are inflammatory. So anything that's inflammatory is not great for our skin health and wellbeing. Sugar is feeds pathogenic bacteria that contributes to dysbiosis and causes imbalances with our gut microbiome and our gut. And we also know that sugar is bad because it really, you know, encourages glycasia, which is where you know, sugar sticks to collagen and damages it. So sugar is probably one of the worst things that we can consume for our skin and overall well being. So yeah, and processed foods, processed foods, sugar's alcohol, well, coffee, is interesting. There's so much interesting, you know, research on coffee. It does have some antioxidants in it. So I think coffee in moderation is fine.

I feel like you can pick whichever study you want on coffee to validate whatever you feel.

I think so yeah.

And I think the people that yes, you can drink coffee.

Yeah, all the positive studies, I think they're probably all coffee drinkers.

And alcohol as well is.

Not great for your gut microbiome. I love red wine and I often try and find good studies. And there was a good study I think it was King's College in the UK, and they said that, you know, red wine, because it does have some polyphenols, is good for your gut health. But it was something crazy like fifty meals every two weeks or something.

So it's absolutely nothing. And so I think alcohol generally is not great for liver health gut health.

We'll be back after this short break with more from Color. Amongst your clients, I mean, you have hundreds of thousands of clients. What are the main skin concerns that people come to you about.

There are so many different and so I guess from a ruddy complexion rosation to skin breakouts and acne to wanting to rejuvenate their skin and keep their skin you know.

Younger for longer.

I always try and avoid the anti aging term so for so many different reasons, and we've had incredible results with people using our products and following a gut healing protocol and that, you know, I'm just such a big believer in when anyone has a skin issue, whether it is any kind of inflammation, redness, breakouts, premature aging of your skin, it really you're starting with your gut, You're going to have the most profound results, and.

Not just for your skin, as you said, for everything else.

Well that's it.

And for me, you know, I think that I'm such of the philosophy that it's not just about looking good, and that's very much the Beauty Chef philosophy.

It's about feeling your best as well. What about you?

What do you do for your What are some non negotiables in your week when it comes to nourishing your gut?

So eating lots of fermented foods and beauty Chef products, so definitely diet making sure that I get lots of vegetables and plant based foods. So I try and aim for thirty different types of plants per week.

How do you do you log those in your head?

Or I love vegetables.

Yeah, so I'm like lucky now way, but I didn't always, but I fuck, I've trained my body to just love. I love the feeling when I feel nourished. So I have a vegetable garden, herb garden. So having a herb garden makes it really easy. I just will collect so many different herbs from my garden, shop them all into salads and to stews. And so I'm just and I always love going to when I go to my local health food store, what's in season. And I'll experiment with different foods as well, but just and people ask me how do I get all of that stuff?

In?

Soups and stews are a great way just to pack lots of nutrient dense food.

In salads, I mean, salads are grown. I'd love a herb garden. But you can add like five six different herbs into a salad.

Yeah, exactly, that's right, and so it can it can be a spice. So I try and eat a lot of plant based foods and again stay away from processed foods. In terms of dud drink, water. I have lots of bone broths. Bone broth is so good for your gut. And again I'm just mindful, you know, green tea, the polyphenol.

Sort of story.

I love blueberries like they're one of my favorite foods, and I think they're one of obsessed with.

I know, I feel like sometimes I got.

A punet right right in there, right near us listeners.

And they're so good, like they're loow and sugar and.

They're a bit cheaper right now, so they are.

I know, eat lots of blueberries. And also your healthy fats are really important and good sources of protein, but I try and have more plants on my plate than protein or meat. Although getting your daily dose of protein is super important for gut health, for lean muscle mass, and as we age as well lean muscle mass, we lose it, and it's so important for health and longevity.

You said something in there that really struck me, and that's the feeling of feeling nourished. And you know, I want to ask you what beauty means to you, but I just want to pick up on that because I think there's something when you feel nourished, if you've had a week of good.

Eating because we all have weeks of bad eating. Yeah, we've all been there. You just feel a bit crap. But when you eat well, you feel good, and I feel that radiates a for me, a definition of beauty.

It's absolutely And you know if you think that there's not just a link between your gut and your skin, but there's also a highway between your gut and your brain and influences how you feel and your mood. And as I was saying before that there's such a huge percentage of your feel good hormone serotonin that's made in your gut, so you actually do feel better when you eat well because you're producing more of those good neurotransmitters the gabber as well. So there's all that science now that's coming out on the importance of eating well for mental health. And there's a woman who's just amazing, doctor Felice Jaka, Professor Felicie Jacka, have a Food and Mood Center and she's done so much research into the connection between diet, gut microbier and mental health. So I think, yeah, and I would love to see more of that information come out and also into even schools, like talking to parents and families about you know, kids that have you know, learning issues. Not to say that it's own like there's so many factors, but absolutely in terms of the increase in anxiety and depression and with young kids and teenagers, and there's so much that goes on, I mean.

Social media, there's so much.

It's not just one thing that's exactly right, but definitely just getting the foundations of diet right would make a huge impact.

Now for those who didn't listen to Healthy, you should want to ask you again because I thought your answer was brilliant. But what's perhaps the most important thing or something that you've learned over your years of running the beauty shef when it comes to gut health.

That beauty really does begin in the belly, and feeling good and looking good is about nourishing and nurturing your gut health. And also that the impact that your gut health can have not just on your skin but everything in your life from your immune, metabolic, brain skin health is so profound and you can actually change it now. And you know people might say, oh no, but you know my mum had that, or my mum had roseatiha and my dad had acme. Absolutely, there is going to be that genetic influence. But when we know that we have more microbial genes and we have human genes, and I know that through having EXMA, and that when I don't look after my gut health, I can start to feel my skin itching, and I know, okay, I've let it go. You know, when I travel sometimes and I'm away for three or four weeks and I'm not in my regular routine, I'm eating foods I don't eat usually eat, I'm more stressed. I can start to feel my EXMA start to come up. I'm like, okay, that is my sign I need to start to, you know, focus on my gut health.

And it is quite simple, and it's so.

Simple, it really is.

I mean, I always say low gie foods, but low HI foods, low human intervention foods. Eat real foods, whole foods, fiber.

Rich food.

I'm not sure.

Maybe I made it up.

I'm not sure, but it's so simple, clean, war to exercise. We also know it's not just about diet lifestyle habits. We know that lack of sleep, your interruptions to the sleep cycle could also disrupt your body's ability to maintain a healthy gut microbiome. Stress is the same. So I know it's hard, but how do we prioritize some of that balance in our lives to reduce some of the stress, get better sleep.

And eat better.

Carla, thank you for coming on Extra Healthy.

Thanks Felicity, It's been a pleasure.

Hey, thanks for listening it to this chat with Carla. I hope you enjoyed it, you got something out of it, and of course you can also well us tips to not only better your health, but better your gut health, which really is, as we said, the foundation of good health. If you did enjoy it, tell us, rate and review this podcast. You can also subscribe any ideas for any upcoming people you want to hear from anyone else, Just stem me at Felicity Hai, or you can contact us via sol dot com dot You follow us on socials. Gra print edition which is out in your local Sunday paper and until tomorrow Stacks You Healthy Ish