Jodi: Hi, I am Jodi Cohen, your host, and I’m so [00:01:00] excited to share my dear friend Dr. Trevor Cates, who is the author of the U S A today, an Amazon bestselling book, clean Skin From Within, and she just is launching a new book. Go ahead and hold it up.
Trevor: Oh, it’s right here. Natural Beauty Reset.
Jodi: Natural Beauty Reset, which is gonna be available everywhere very soon.
We’re gonna talk all about that. Um, Trevor received her medical degree from the National University of Natural Medicine and was the first woman licensed as a naturopathic doctor in the state of California. That’s impressive. Thank you.
Very impressive.
She currently lives in Park City, Utah, where she helps patients from around the world with a focus on skin and hormones.
She’s been featured on various TV shows, including the Doctors and Extra tv. She’s interviewed over 250 experts on the Spa Doctor podcast and hosted her own p pbs special Younger Skin from within. So let’s dive into your [00:02:00] seven day program to harmonize hormones and restore radiance. Um, tell me a little bit about like, how did you kind of pick this topic?
Trevor: Yeah, well, my, uh, my last book, clean Skin From Within came out about five years ago and it was u s A Today bestseller. Amazon hit number number one, Amazon in a couple of categories, and all of that good stuff did, it did well. But what I noticed is people, especially women, kept asking me about their hormones because I talk, I touch on hormones briefly in the book, but they’re, they’re so complex and especially for women because they change.
Throughout our lives, even throughout the day and the month. So yes. Um, and so there were a lot of questions about that, so I wanted to really dive into it in this book. And then also give, give women an understanding of how to reset and how to do a seven day reset for each season. Because each season.
Summer, winter, fall, you know, [00:03:00] spring. These seasons, they give us an opportunity to get back in harmony, back in touch with our, the, our body’s innate ability to heal. And a lot of times our lifestyle choices cause us to be disconnected from these natural rhythms. I love that.
Jodi: I love that. So walk us through kind of the book and your approach to, you know, is this primarily for older women?
For younger women, for all ages and
Trevor: stages. Yeah, it, it’s really for women of all ages and I think it’s particularly important for, for women to who know that they’re gonna be going through certain transitions. So really this is all of us because, um, you know, transitions of. For young people, you know, of course that’s puberty.
I don’t know that they’re gonna be a lot of teenagers reading this book, but, um, it is, it is an interesting time. Right. And then also fertility when women are trying to get pregnant and also pregnancy, postpartum, and [00:04:00] menopause. These are major transitions in our lives and I think a lot of times we don’t realize that we have these hormonal imbalances until.
We hit one of these stages. The other types of women I think who really enjoy this book are also women with concerns about their thyroid and their adrenals and their sleep, like melatonin as a hormone, insulin with blood sugar as a hormone, and all of these are really important to help us stay healthy, to help for have a good metabolism.
Energy, weight, sleep, all of these things are impacted by our hormones and they can just start to get off just a little bit and then that triggers another hormone to get out of balance and another one. So we just need to just realign because our hormones are actually fantastic and they work for us when they’re balanced and so, and we just need to just get that realignment.
Jodi: So how do you help people like walk? Let’s walk through the book a little bit. Yeah. Like how do you [00:05:00] kinda help them assess where they might be out of balance and, and how to return to balance?
Trevor: Yeah, in, in part one of Natural Beauty Reset and, and the subtitle by the way is a seven day Plan to Harmonize Hormones and Restore Radiance.
So it’s what we’re we’re talking about here. So in the first part of the book, it’s a lot of under. Standing, how our hormones work, how our neurotransmitters work, and how that plays a role in how we look and feel, and how we go through these transitions and how our food plays a role. Our diet plays a role in this toxins and our environment and, and our, our sleep and our ability to.
Get that balance of resting and restoring and then activity. And so the, the first part is really understanding that, because I always feel that if you don’t truly understand how your body is working or how these things affect you, it’s harder to make the change, right? It’s once you get it, you’re like, oh.
Oh, [00:06:00] that’s why I need to, you know, that, that makes sense why my hormones might be related to the way I’m eating, or the toxins I’ve been exposed to in my environment. And that’s why it makes sense to make a change. And then in part two, I walk people through each season. So starting with fall, because the book comes out in fall.
Start with the fall reset. And in a lot of ti, a lot of ways fall is a great time to start a reset, to start something new because, um, we’re going, it’s a great way to prepare for winter. Winter can be a challenging time for us. With our hormones, we can tend to have a. Lower levels of certain neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine.
And also we can tend to have higher cortisol that can make us feel more stressed. And also for women trying to get pregnant, their estro uh, you know, estrogen tends to be a little bit lower in the winter compared to spring and summer. So it’s a good time. Fall is a good time to sort of [00:07:00] transition, is to get ready to winter and, um, start making shifts and.
Fall harvest is also a time when produce is abundant. We can eat so much in season that where, where we live, and it’s a lot easier time to kind of build up to do that. So for each season, I talk about food, movement, mindset, and skincare. I love it. Yeah, so I mean, of course we know food changes we’ve talked about, a lot of people have talked about seasonal eating, and of course it’s not always easy to do this, but is even if you can do a little bit of eating more seasonally and eating more locally, it’s going to make a difference.
Because your foods that you eat when they, you eat them in season and closer to where you live, they’re going to be more nutrient dense. You’re going to get more nutrients. And we know there’s sort of actually research showing comparison of broccoli and kale and, but different produce in season versus out season.
And [00:08:00] the big difference in nutrient qu quality and quantity. And then also, It tastes better. Food and season just tastes better if you can get it from your locals farmer’s market. Or maybe you can start growing some fresh herbs or whatever you can do. It just, it makes a difference. And then, so that’s, you know, food.
And of course we have to remember that part of the. The difference with seasons is the distance of the sun and how the sun changes. Um, you know, in the wintertime we have shorter days. In the summertime we have longer days, so it impacts our, our food, but it also impacts our, our. Our mental emotional state and it affects our sleep.
So mindset and movement are another big parts that I talk about because certain times of the year we might be more, we might have more energy, might be feel more motivated. Summertime, a lot of times we wanna get outdoors and we wanna be more active. So the, [00:09:00] the movement and mindset practices that I have in summer months are different than in fall and winter and, and even in spring.
And then also, Skincare. Our skin changes throughout the year and our needs change. We get more sun exposure certain times of the year than others. We’re exposed to dryness, cold, less humidity, more humidity, different times of the year. So that means our skin needs change. So we might need more exfoliation at certain times.
We might need, of course, more sunscreen at certain times. We might need, uh, more hydration, or we might feel like we’re getting too oily or, or perspiring more at certain times. So then we can adjust our skincare for the season. So for each season, this is a seven day plan, so I give recommendations for exactly, you know, foods to eat.
For seven days, I even have recipes in the book. I have d I y [00:10:00] skincare recipes in addition to food. Um, and then I give seven day examples of, of movements, seven examples of mindset practices and seven examples of skincare practices so that you can really do this whole reset to each season, get back on track.
Jodi: I really love that. You know, I, I think I need that book immediately because I just do the same thing year round. I just tend to use more moisturizer in the winter cuz I’m drier, but
Trevor: that’s brilliant. Right. And I think a lot of times too, people think, oh, I’m healthy. I’m, I’ve got this healthy routine. I exercise this way, I use this nostril skincare product.
I eat these super foods, but they’re still not, something’s still not right. Well, part of that is we need to change this up cyclically and then if we’re always eating the same super foods all the time. It may not actually be that healthy for us. We may end up creating food intolerances or food sensitivities if we eat the same things over and over [00:11:00] again.
Or we may be getting too many like oxalates and oxalates. You get too many oxalates. It’s been linked to, um, developing like kidney stones or. Tinnitus in the ears, the ringing in the ears has been linked to getting too many oxalates in the diet. But if you’re eating seasonally, you’re not gonna get too many of things like oxalates, or you’re gonna be less likely to develop food sensitivities because you’re not eating the same thing every, every day all year long.
Jodi: No, I love that. How did you go about developing kind of the different seasonal plans? Is that from your practice, your own practices? What? Tell
Trevor: me about that combination of that. I started to really see things with my patients of, a lot of these people are super healthy. They would be coming in to see me and they’re doing the same things like I was saying, but something just wasn’t right.
I’m like, I said, well, let’s mix it up. Let’s talk about. What are you doing? Um, and what season we’re in? What is [00:12:00] available for you? What, what’s, how is it working now and then, and we would set up a plan for that, and then they would come back in. I’m like, okay, well it’s a different season. Let’s change this up.
And then they, you know, they realized that it was making a difference and noticed it in my own life as well. Now, you know, again, it depends. It depends on the where on the world you live. Sometimes it’s easier to do this and sometimes it’s harder. Wintertime can be a tough time if you live. And a places like where I live in Park City, Utah, where really there’s nothing growing because we’re covered in the snow for a good four to six months.
And so we, we kind of rely upon our neighbors and people where it’s not quite so cold to, um, to get fresh produce, but still, Even if you can make some changes. I think also what happens is we get stuck in these ruts and it’s an opportunity for us to change it up and to remember, um, you know, the, the seasons of our bodies.
I mean, if you [00:13:00] think about the female body, Throughout the month, we have our periods, which, you know, are, we’re ovulating, we’re having periods, and we go through these changes. And even after menopause, we still have these cyclical changes. And throughout the day our cortisol levels change, be, uh, so we get higher cortisol in the morning to get us up in the morning and lower cortisol at night.
At least. This is ideally what’s supposed to happen. Um, when people get burned out, sometimes it goes flat or it’s backwards. Um, and then also melatonin. We, we have, uh, our melatonin increases when the lights go down so that that changes throughout the year. Our melatonin production will change, our sleep patterns change, and even, um, I mean, you know, it’s interesting light, even during a full moon, it can impact our sleep.
So there are all these cyclical changes that can happen that can affect us. And I, [00:14:00] I think we find, yeah, yeah, yeah. We find one thing that works and we’re like, let’s just, I’m just gonna keep doing that over again. Yeah. A lot of rinse and repeat. Yeah. And then we wonder why isn’t it working anymore? Yeah.
Jodi: Yeah. And it’s probably good. Maybe you can speak to this about kind of how the body reacts to variety, because when it, I mean like exercise, if you keep doing the same thing, it doesn’t
Trevor: really yield results. Right. And oftentimes we’ll, we’ll wake up and we’ll feel like, yeah, I just don’t feel motivated to do that.
Yeah. And we can beat ourselves up about it, but if we understand that different seasons, our hormones change and like understanding. If you’re, if you’re feel good neurotransmitters like, like dopamine and serotonin aren’t as high, you may not feel motivated to go for a run or go to the gym. And so there are other things you can do to kind of mix it up and still get a good workout.
But maybe doing some restorative yoga is, is what your body [00:15:00] needs at that time, and then wait until you feel more of that motivation on a sun of your day. Yeah. And um, and then when you’re, you know, when the weather’s better outside, you can get outdoors and do more outdoor activities using, of course, good sun protection hats and things like that.
Um, but, you know, it’s, it’s nice to, to mix up.
Jodi: So before people rush out to buy your book, which is coming out like this
Trevor: week, right? September, September 13th. Amazing.
Jodi: What kind of things are you advising people to do in the fall? The fall season? Like what’s kind of the, the
Trevor: highlights? Yeah. Well, so fall produce are, uh, they’re, there’s so much.
Um, available in the fall as far as so many types of greens and, you know, apples and, um, uh, so many pears and so many different types of, of produce. There’s a big focus in summer on fruit because we have so much more abundance in that. [00:16:00] And then as we shift to fall, we’re shifting more. To, um, a lot of vegetables because we can get a lot of fresh vegetables.
And then as we go into to winter, we, we need to rely a little bit more on dried beans and nuts and seeds and, and if you eat animal protein, animal protein to get, you, get you some of those nutrients and things. I mean, of course we still wanna to eat some, some vegetables year-round, but it, it just, it changes with the season.
So with fall, we get this fall harvest, it’s. That’s so fantastic. And then we shift away from, from some of the cooling foods like watermelon and, um, you know, strawberries and things like that to more of the, the warming foods and winter squashes and are starting to become more in season and yams and, and things like that that tend to be more warming types of foods and warming herbs and spices.
You might wanna start, Getting some cinnamon and nutmeg and, and, and ginger and those [00:17:00] types of things as, as we warm up and, and tea and food. And then also with skincare, being aware that you may have just had a summer full of a lot of sun and having some hyperpigmentation, a lot of, a lot of women will develop that.
So what can you do with your skincare routine, kinda even at your skin tone? So a lot of antioxidant rich. Serums like we have at the spot doctor. We have the, the spot doctor. Um, step two antioxidant serum part of we, that’s a, a big one. Or using a gentle exfoliant too, can be good to kind of get your skin rejuvenated after a lot of potential sun damage and ingredients like aloe that are soothing for the skin.
So as you tr transition from summer to fall, that’s, those are some of the things that we think of with, with, um, With, uh, skincare and with movement, we can get outdoors and enjoy. The in [00:18:00] nature in a different way and movement in a different way. Like if, you know, the, the leaves are falling, then raking leaves is actually a really great exercise.
And I think so many people just like have a leaf blower or so have somebody blow. But, you know, getting out there and, and enjoying, um, you know, a fall hike. Enjoying the, the, the leaves changing colors if you live in a place where, where you get to enjoy that. Um, and, and, you know, things like that. Just taking in the, the changes of the seasons and how that might be helping you.
Also, the other thing that you think about in fall is that we wanna boost our immune system because we’re exposed to more, um, viruses and being indoors more as we go into the winter months. So we want to. Eat foods that naturally boost our immune system. And what’s interesting is a lot of the, the foods that are abundant and fall are naturally, have naturally [00:19:00] occurring, um, nutrients that help with our immune system like vitamin A or beta beta quarantine from things like pumpkin and, um, Sweet potatoes and yams and you know, things like that that actually helps support our immune system.
And so we can, you know, get some of these in nature. And then things like zinc. Zinc is also important for our immune system. So making sure we’re getting some nuts and seeds that are rich in, in zinc can, can also boost our our levels with that. Amazing.
Jodi: So remind everyone the title of the book and where they can find
Trevor: it.
Yeah, it’s Natural Beauty Reset The Seven Day Plan to Harmonize Hormones and Restore Radiance. And it’s available September 13th. But you, you know, you can. You could pre-order, you could get it, um, at the, um, the spot doctor.com/book. That’s where you can find all the different, we have all the different links, the different places you can buy it.
And also we have, um, some, some, uh, bonuses when [00:20:00] you go to that page and you, you know, give us a copy of your, your receipt. We have some bonuses for you. And then also because there’s. So much to learn about hormones. We have the hormones, health and Harmony docuseries put together a nine part documentary series with over 50 experts.
And I know, Jodi, we tried to track you down to interview for this, but we couldn’t, we couldn’t get ahold of you. We were only doing these interviews in person, which I know was not an easy thing to do during these times. So, um, but we, we interviewed over 50 experts for this, all different aspects of how our hormones work.
Throughout our lives as women and, uh, you know, we talk about estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, thyroid, adrenal, um, even appetite hormones like leptin, ghrelin. We, we, we cover it all. So, um, it’s, it’s, um, really practical tips so people can learn about that too@series.com. And I’m sure you’ll be able to provide these links too.
Yeah, the links [00:21:00] will
Jodi: be in the show notes. Thank you so much for your time, and congratulations on this amazing book.
Trevor: Thank you so much. Thanks, Jodi.
Jodi: Thank you again.
