Season 6, Episode 5: Aligning Gut Health and Aesthetics with Jenna Hilton

Evelyne: I’m so excited to talk to you today. Jenna has been practicing since 2009. She’s the co-founder of Vibrant Skin Bar in Phoenix, Arizona. She’s a passionate educator and her holistic approach bridges the science of functional medicine with the art of aesthetics to enhance beauty from the inside out. So that’s what we’ll be talking about today. So, Jenna, to start the show, what is lighting you up this week?

Jenna Hilton: Oh yeah, I feel like just the start of the year is always fun. It’s like my patients get all excited about their detoxes, so I feel like detox conversations about gut health, that always lights me up. I love that.

Evelyne: I love that. That’s amazing. I’d love to hear a bit more about your background. Tell me a little bit more about your journey as a PA.

Jenna Hilton: Yeah, it’s interesting because I feel like my journey actually started before I was a PA. It was how I got to this place. I was in my senior year at Arizona State and my roommate and best friend, she developed this rash all over her body and she was taking an antibiotic called Bactrim for acne, and it ended up having kind of an autoimmune reaction. She had full minute hepatic necrosis; it caused her liver to damage. She passed away at 21 from using an antibiotic for acne. And so that was a few weeks before she passed away.

In October, I started doing PA interviews and got into PA school, starting in May. And so back in 2007, early 2000s, we weren’t talking about gut health, we weren’t talking, we were using medications all the time to treat.

And so, I always had that kind of in the back of my mind of how these things can really affect our system. And so, it kind of threw me on this path of just understanding skin health and how to support it in different ways than just antibiotics in the traditional ways that we were doing in the past.

And so, when we started, I started mostly in an internal family practice, and we treated from the inside out. We were called Complete Care Medicine, so we were doing skin biopsies, we’re doing IV therapy, really the way medicine should be in my opinion, when it comes to primary care, I was able to support people and patients from the little babies to the grandmothers and knowing their families, knowing how their bodies were working and supporting them in all of the ways. And so, aesthetics just became this fun procedure-based treatment.

But then I found that I couldn’t take the internal medicine side of me out of it. And so being able to treat someone’s skin in the appearance of how they looked on the inside was completely associated with their internal system, and I couldn’t turn that off. But what was really interesting was when we started Vibrant Skin Bar, we really were ahead of the curve of what people are now talking about. I mean, we talked about skin from within, helping support our vibration to help support others and being able to rise above our health so that we’re going from internally and then having an improvement in our external surface. And so that really helped what I found that people are now really diving into that because we’re kind of getting sick of the old way of treating skin, the old way of treating medicine, of just putting a Band-Aid on it and really getting into that functional side.

And so, the fellowship I did in functional integrative medicine really helped to support that internal surface and kind of bridging what the natural paths were doing and then that gap that we had from that Western side of medicine and bridging it together.

Evelyne: That’s beautiful. And thank you for sharing that story. That’s really sad and crazy.

Jenna Hilton: Yeah, it is, right. Unbelievable. And that’s what happens, just starting antibiotics for acne. We don’t think it’s a big deal, but then we can have some pretty serious side effects. Yeah.

Evelyne: Why do you think nutrient therapy is needed in aesthetics? And I’m also curious, you said you were doing it for a long time, but has your approach evolved over time?

Jenna Hilton: Yeah, nutrient therapy really, we’ve really understood, especially from a functional side and functional medicine, we know that nutrients having a nutrient deficiency is kind of the stem of all diseases, even hypertension, hyperlipidemia, how functional medicine practitioners practice is based on nutrient support.

And so being able to, if you know your B vitamins are low, that B vitamins are going to affect how you metabolize things out of your system, and it’s going to be how you make energy and produce energy. And so being able to support those nutrients, if you know have a deficiency, you’re going to see it within the tissue for sure. But then within the rest of the system as well.

For the second part of that question, find that we didn’t really know any of this before. So, starting 15 years ago, we didn’t talk about the role of B vitamins. Yeah, we knew it kind of helped if you had some neuropathic issues, but we didn’t really help see the bigger picture of how it helped support their immunity and their overall health.

Evelyne: I’d love to talk a little bit more specifically, and we’ll start with acne because that’s the first one you brought up. How you decide which nutrients or supplements you pair with specific treatments for optimal outcomes in your aesthetics practice.

So, I’d love to know as we go through what are your favorite supplements for each of these and what are you looking for? And I am curious about since you do work in aesthetics, what’s the kind of laser that you use or red-light therapy or things like that?

So, let’s start with acne. How do you dress that from a functional medicine perspective and what role do certain supplements play?

Jenna Hilton: Yeah, so I think acne, you almost have to pair acne in who’s the acne patient. Is the teen acne and is it the perimenopausal female acne? Because those are totally different. Our teen acne is going to be associated with those hormonal surges, kind of that crappy diet. We’re having that oil production and having all of that inflammatory response that’s helping.

So, for them, yes, it’s going to be, it’s a gut thing, but they have a pretty healthy gut at that point. They might eat and choose things that aren’t necessarily fabulous for them, like dairy or other things. And so, you might see that they might have an inflammatory portion that we take out of their diet, so you might want to do food sensitivities and kind of figure that out. But for my teen acne, I’m going to be kind of focusing more on maybe doing BBL to kind of help support the blue light therapy to help break down that acne. And then I’m going to try to make sure their system is nice and clear out and try to have conversations about that.

The supplement support for me comes more into the older patient with acne, the perimenopausal, the hormonal patient who’s not necessarily getting rid of their hormones well.

They may have a little bit of a liver buildup based on hormone excess, and so we help support pushing that through. Glutathione is my favorite for doing that, it just kind of clears out the liver and helps support brightening of the tissue if there’s a redness component. I really like to look at food sensitivity testing, being able to take down some of the inflammation, and you just have to have a conversation with all of your patients.

I have certain things that I’ll do for every single one. Okay. Yes, you probably need glutathione to help brighten your skin, but really having a conversation about personally, what are the issues. If we know all of their acne is kind of starting in this area, it’s going to be more of a testosterone, estrogen, hormonal base. If they have acne on their forehead, that’s going to be a yeast.

A lot of times it’s a yeast and candida issue coming into the nose. You get into H. pylori in different areas of the gut. So, depending on where it’s placed on their face, then we have to talk about how are we going to treat the yeast? Are we going to look for yeast and then kind of go from that approach? And so being able to look at the types of acne is really important because it’s not a one size fits all, and it’s not an easy answer either when it comes to nutrient therapy.

Evelyne: You mentioned glutathione for skin brightening, and I’m curious, how much do you use to actually get that effect?

Jenna Hilton: I love the liposomal glutathione. I feel like you have to just as it’s recommended doing, just holding it in your mouth for 30 seconds, I’ve done with my patients utilize different types of hyperpigmentation and what’s the best treatment for most of my melasma patients that are kind of in that perimenopausal range or premenopausal and having babies and they have this excessive estrogen, I feel like glutathione is the best option when it comes to that. So, they’re going to always be on glutathione and my patients felt that that works the best. It’s just being able to be compliant.

And I think that’s kind of as a provider where a lot of us fall short. I think a lot of us just recommend this long line that just is like, okay, you got to have this for the brightening this for this. Really talking to them about what their skin needs are and then prioritizing what they’ll get the best benefit, who wants to spend their money and then just not know what they’re specifically utilizing it for. So being able to kind of pair it with each thing that we’re trying to help or even do one at a time that’s going to help improve their skin appearance for sure.

Evelyne: Yes, you brought up, I know that hyperpigmentation in general is a concern for a lot of people. Age spots of course are more serious, but what in addition to glutathione do you recommend for that? And what are the treatments that you use alongside that?

Jenna Hilton: Yeah, so melasma is hard, and so it might be an issue of supporting, in my opinion, melasma is caused by excessive hormone that’s not necessarily getting sent through the liver. So, for them, I like to do the two-week detox, that comprehensive two-week detox for both stages of detoxification, both phase one and phase two. And what I love about the two-week detox is it helps neutralize those breakdown products that become such an issue that we can’t get through phase two. So, the two-week detox is one of my favorite things to recommend for those patients.

So, we have to think, internally, how is their liver supporting their skin? And then at that point then what type of peels or soft things that we can do to help support the topical surface. Treatment of melasma can be a very difficult thing to treat, but treating it internally out is the most important thing. You have to focus internally instead of trying to go for those lasers, trying to use different things can sometimes even cause worsening symptoms of melasma, so we’re very careful to go towards the heat-based products.

Evelyne: So, I’m curious, what are some of the procedures that you like to use or what kind of laser?

Jenna Hilton: So MOXI is a really good laser that’s kind of in between a HALO and a BBL, and it can sometimes improve the appearance of hyperpigmentation. Now these types of procedures are, again, in about 10% of our patients will worsen their pigment. And so, we try not to, as much as we can, go for those heat-based devices with patients with kind of uncontrolled melasma, but you’re definitely going to want to turn off those melanin cells with topical treatments.

So, you might want to use a compounded cream first, apply that to the skin, get their skin prepped, turn off those kinds of melanocytes before we start with any type of treatment superficially.

But BBL, HALO, MOXI, tends to be the one that is the one that we go for hyperpigmentation.

Evelyne: So, going along with procedures, a lot of people go to an aesthetics provider for things like filler or Botox or similar things like that. So, do you automatically recommend when a patient comes in for one of those to use supplements alongside that? And what supplements do you recommend for those patients?

Jenna Hilton: Yeah, so I’ll walk into a room and a patient just is tense and irritable and stressed out and clenching, and we’re going to have a big conversation about healthy eating and magnesium just to chill the energy. And sometimes I need the energy to be good before I even engage in a procedure with them. So, if they’re feeling like they’re running crazy and just stressed out about things, we’re going to have a conversation.

I did a talk in Miami for the Global Aesthetic Conference, and we talked about, I had a patient who came in for her under eyes. She felt like she looked tired, but when I checked on her, when she just checked in, she was having a hard time filling out the paperwork. Her hair was all disheveled. She didn’t know what was happening that day. She could barely remember her appointment time. So, she’s getting her photos done and she sits down, and she wants me to do her under eye. And I’m like, no, we need to reset your whole life. There’s some internal, she’s telling me about these surgeries that she’s scheduled for, that her pain is so bad in her hands that she can barely move.

She’s getting this surgery done, but she just needs something to refresh her. And I’m like, we got to talk about hormones. We got to talk about how these hormones are, have you had your hormones tested? Are you postmenopausal? And so, when we were able to see the nutrients that were depleted within her support, her hormones, by the time she came back to me, she was beaming with vibrancy, and I did nothing for her on the outside. So, then we were able to step in and really support the aesthetic appearance.

And so, I think that’s the key is I kind of have to be this observer of being able to recognize the type of patient that’s walking in and speak to them in their language and give them enough information so that they have clarity. And that once I see that clarity, then we go through this journey together.

So, it’s not about me paving out everything that they need to do to change their life because they’re going to be overwhelmed. So, I need to step by step give them the tools for them to see an improvement and to reinforce it.

So, for her instance, it was hormone support completely. And so that’s the conversation of when I see someone and I’m talking about their skin, when was the last time? Are you having normal cycles that the cycle conversation comes into it? How are your bowel movements? I talk about bowel movements on the first visit, and I never wanted to do stool testing at my office, but I have to do stool testing. You do have to. So as much as I try to compartmentalize my role as a provider, I really need to take care of their body systemically.

Evelyne: Absolutely. Thank you for sharing that. And what about what you call the ‘skintelligent patient’, like the patient who wants to age gracefully? What are some of the things in addition to talking about how they’re pooping, how is their gut health, how is their hormonal health? What else are you looking at?

Jenna Hilton: Yeah, so the skintelligent patients are a lot of my patients within the market of Scottsdale, Phoenix, but anywhere over the country, because we have social media, we have TikTok. And so, when I’m talking to, when I go out and train different providers and we’re talking about GLP-1’s, I like to talk to them about the role of estrogen within the tissue of GLP-1. So, we know that GLP-1 reduces the expression of estrogen within our face. We have more of a testosterone appearance within our tissue, so we lose that fat within our tissue, and then we also break down our collagen and our elastin because we don’t have as much of that estrogen.

So, my skin intelligent patients want a topical estriol cream. They come in hearing about it, they’re buying it online, they want that improvement. And so, to be able to support some of those conversations with those patients, we know that as you’re losing nutrient deficiency, we need to help support protein supplement. We need to help support glycine in the production of collagen. Those are easy ways that you can, I would say, impress your patients by being able to speak to them on their level because they really have been very well educated online by podcasts like this that are having conversations about their skin.

Evelyne: Yeah, it’s interesting how much more every patient is doing research, whether that’s on Google or social media, but I mean, some of the patients really do want the studies and want the information, and that’s why they go to providers who like you, who do have additional education in these topics.

Jenna Hilton: And honestly, you just have to be able to at least know of the trends and the things that they’re hearing and have an opinion based on that. I mean, either if you don’t agree with it, that’s fabulous, but if you haven’t heard of it, that’s a red flag for them.

Evelyne: Since you brought up the GLP-1’s. So, you are seeing weight loss patients who aren’t just seeing you for aesthetics, right? They are coming to you because you’re a PA and you provide all of these services. So, I’m curious, you mentioned the protein, you mentioned nutrient deficiencies. What are some of the other things that you’re talking to them about?

Jenna Hilton: Yeah, I think that’s the biggest issue is the hormonal change. Those hormonal changes that happen within their system. And I like to talk about their body types. Are they naturally going to have an estrogen type body? So, they’re estrogen type bodies are going to require specific supportive supplements. Maybe they need DIM within that space, or maybe they do calcium D glucarate to help support detoxification pathways. Maybe with testosterone, maybe they need a little bit more of that estriol cream like we talked about. So being able to see through what their body type is naturally, what they’re losing, the deficiency and what they’re eating in the in-between is really important.

We’re lucky because a lot of the way that we get our GLP-1’s, they actually pair it with glycine and combine it with a B12, but that is not common with a lot of different compounding places. And so we have a product that we actually helped label, we call it Boost, and it has glycine in there that will help support them and to make more muscle mass and support muscle mass because we know that even when you’re losing weight, the signaling that comes from your body, whether if you’re more of a muscle dominant, you have more muscle mass, or if you’re more of an adipose tissue, an adipose tissue is going to signal more of an inflammatory signal to the rest of their body.

So even if they got to their goal weight, but they’re kind of a skinny fat, they’re going to gain the weight back and have that inflammatory response. So, it’s really important to still modify if they’re more estrogen dominate with being able to support their supplements and being able to get rid of that excessive estrogen out of their tissues.

Evelyne: Yeah, thank you for sharing that. And I’m sure you’re also looking at thyroid, pancreas, adrenal health. Tell me a little bit more about that.

Jenna Hilton: Yeah, so I always say I do my hormones and usually I have different triads of hormones. And so, one of the biggest ones that we have is our thyroid, our cortisol, and our sugar. So that’s a big triad. So those three areas, if I’m hitting that, those three areas, if I have one issue with the cortisol, I have to make sure that I’m addressing their thyroid and how they’re processing the sugar.

Another triad that I like to look at is the gut-brain-immune system. And so, when I’m hitting those gut-brain-immune, those two triads are probably most of my patients. So, I’m looking at the patient, I’m like, oh, I think they’re gut brain immune. I think they’re cortisol, sugar and thyroid, and I’m supporting that first. And then we go to lungs, heart, and then we go sex hormones. And so being able to kind of compartmentalize that treatment is really important. And then I make sure that I’m supplementing in that.

So for instance, if I have a patient who has a GLP-1 deficiency and they’re really stressed out, so I know I’m going to be testing their cortisol, but then I may need a little bit of support for their thyroid. So that’s why I love that myo-inositol to help support a little selenium to help support their thyroid, so that triad is great.

When I look at actual full cortisol, so once I get their hormones fixed or if I see a deficiency within their cortisol on their serum levels, then I’m going to do further testing within their cortisol with saliva testing and within the saliva testing. So, then I’ll look at their cortisol curve. If it’s really high, maybe I’ll use a little phosphatidylserine to bring it down at certain times during the day, or if I just need to balance it, I’ll just use a supplement that has adaptogens support. So, to give an overall help support their stress on their adrenal gland.

Evelyne: And speaking of stress, I assume you obviously talk to your patients about lifestyle factors like diet and sleep and stress management. And I know you’ve mentioned a couple of times that you’re big on patient education. I’m curious, are you the one in your office who’s always doing that with people? Do you have health coaches or other PAs who do that part? What does that actually look like in your office?

Jenna Hilton: And we’ve tried outsourcing so that I refer the patient to someone else to kind of help with their diet or their exercise, and it tends to kind of get lost if it’s not in-house. So, we do have nurses that really kind of follow up. If they, in our practice, they’ll have a cell phone number to a nurse that they can talk through with any of their providers, and if they have questions about anything, they can get results, get a response from them. So, if they are really struggling with their diet or really struggling with their supplements, they’re going to have support. So, I think that’s really important.

But I do think when it comes to lifestyles, especially for my patients, it’s working women that kind of overdue their lifestyle over their hormones. We don’t have testosterone; we don’t have a lot of things that’s going to support us. It’s kind of our cortisol level. So sometimes it really takes seeing those health changes happening that are black and white for patients to really change their cycle. And luckily, we have so many different technologies that allow us to keep track of our patients. So the Aura ring is really helpful for me to monitor sleep and for patients, I kind of put them on different prescription plans and our being able to check body composition is so important. So, we use the InBody to do that, but being able to quantify things for patients, for them to see things in black and white is really important. I think that, in my opinion, kind of motivates change more than anything else.

Evelyne: Yeah, absolutely. And I think it helps people well, especially the ones who really like to see things like that on paper, the lab testing and tracking everything is so important.

Jenna Hilton: Right. Yeah.

Evelyne: I want to go back to something we were talking about earlier with the graceful aging, but also post-procedure and talk a little bit more. I’m really curious just what are some of the nutrients that you recommend specifically for that? And I can tell that depending on the patient, you are very individualized, but if somebody was coming to you and they’re going to get a procedure or not, what are some of your favorite things to use with them?

Jenna Hilton: So I do have a few standard protocols, and the two standard protocols for sure is any post-procedure patient for bio stimulation and my hair loss patients.

Evelyne: Oh, yes, about that.

Jenna Hilton: So those patients for sure are my two that we have to go to. So, anyone that’s getting Sculptra, which is PLLA, or Radiesse, we’re kind of wanting collagen production. And when you’re in a caloric deficit, especially with a lot of people taking GLP-1’s, it’s very rare that they’re going to have the amount of nutrients to be able to support the production of collagen.

And so when patients are spending $2,000 a treatment, you want to make sure that your results are being able to be seen. So, I think it’s really important. And all of my patients, we used to start kind of a nutrient shake that they would get from Walgreens, and they would take it for three days and it had the worst ingredients you’ve ever seen. What we did is we kind of paired with Designs For Health to make our own, to help support glycine to make sure that we’re getting enough glycine and recovery, and then I want to make sure that I’m getting a liposomal vitamin C and then that they’re taking either collagen, like a collagen peptide afterwards. And so, it’s really important with some types of protein, collagen peptide, Vitamin C, and glycine, so that is going to be for sure with any of my bio stimulation, and I just package that and they just use that. It’s like we’re going to be spending this and just that comes with this.

The other one is the hair loss. And so, the hair loss is, it’s important. We’re playing around with platelet derived growth factor, PRP, PRF, trying to improve the inflammation at the hair follicle, stimulant angiogenesis, which is blood flow into the hair follicle. And then being able to block kind of the conversion to DHT of that testosterone that converts and causes a lot of male pattern baldness.

And so being able to utilize supplements, yes, like we’re using biotin, but then topical treatments too that will help support and stimulate growth. And hair, skin and nails is always a good option, but something that supports the stress and then also supports the hormones when it comes to hair loss is really helpful. And I find that if I don’t pair it together, you don’t get the best results. So, the hair is something that, it’s almost like I throw everything in the kitchen sink at it to help support the growth in overall appearance.

Evelyne: I’m curious because I feel like hair loss is such a big topic, especially post Covid. What are some of the best treatments topically that you see working?

Jenna Hilton: So that’s a great question because topically is topically. Is it microneedle in? I find that topical treatments, in my opinion, anytime that they’re taking an oral, when we talk about oral like Propecia, our ability to grow hair internally, 10% of those patients are going to have erectile dysfunction issues that they’re going to deal with for a period of time just by taking that. So topical treatments are really helpful. So, I always do a compounded prescription of a serum and then a shampoo that they’re going to be able to use that’s going to help stimulate, and that medication’s going to be applied topically.

Then using platelet derived growth factors, things that can increase growth factors or PRP or PRF to help support the growth of the hair is really important in that area.

And even patients that are doing transplants, it’s important to, if they’re going for a surgical transplant, that they’re still supporting the health of their hair, and so they’ll additionally need different treatment and supplement support to help them.

Evelyne: Yeah, absolutely. So, I want to also go back to hormone balance because there’s so much more to talk about there. On the show we’ve talked quite a bit about aesthetics in millennials, both from a business perspective and just treatment, but of course, those in perimenopause and post menopause represent a significant portion of the population that you see. So, I’m curious about more of the hormonal changes that we see in perimenopause where it’s all over the place and then in post menopause where we have that estrogen drop. So, we obviously see changes in skin texture and elasticity and hydration. So, I’m curious, in addition to bioidentical hormones, what are some of the best nutrients and also maybe procedures for them?

Jenna Hilton: Yeah, that’s like the million-billion-dollar question. I feel like it’s like how do we fix this from a nutrient standpoint? And I think one of them comes from inflammation. I think that inflammatory response that in general, we all start to have around that period of time comes from our leaky gut that we don’t talk about with our hormones. And when we have those gut changes, we don’t get rid of our hormones as well. And so, I think getting back to getting food sensitivities, being able to prescribe a really good probiotic to help support the gut health because we know that those that bacteria is helping to support and nourish all these signals to the rest of our body.

So, getting rid of hormones and being able to make neurotransmitters is really helpful. So gut health is important, but then being able to get rid of some of that excessive hormones and support detox pathways, so DIM, calcium D-glucarate is really helpful. And then reducing some of that inflammatory response, whether it’s from vaccinations, whether it’s from plastics that we’re exposed to environmental stressors. So really helping to support a really nice tight junction within the gut, improving inflammation like with your omegas, supporting the gut lining with glutamine and aloe and papaya enzymes. Those can be really helpful that we’ll start to see within it comes into the skin. After I’ve done with that baseline, then I’ll get into the resveratrol. I’m going to help with helping with those antioxidants, vitamin C, liposomal vitamin C, just to help the brightening of the tissue from the inside out and to reduce free radicals is huge.

And so we have to make sure that we’re supporting that gut stability, that inflammation, and then glowing externally, and then it gets to our diet, then it’s collagen support and being able to support our adrenal so that the stress doesn’t cause a significant change within our skin and our tissue. And so, managing and balancing all of that is difficult, but I think starting with the gut conversation first with patients will help get them in a good space, and then you can kind of tier it up to higher level support.

Evelyne: I’m curious, do you have any cool patient success stories on where you paired an aesthetic treatment with a supplement and got an amazing outcome?

Jenna Hilton: Yeah, I feel like a lot of my bio stimulation is part of that. I feel like being able to see improvements with biostimulators is huge, and patients want to see that at that six-week mark. And so being able to see this huge growth, I had a patient, she was in her seventies, and we didn’t really know if we could get enough growth. She’s a really tiny patient, and so once we were able to supplement, we did the Sculptra, and then we also added in some collagen peptides, some Vitamin C. She needed a little iron support, her skin thickness and plumpness. It was amazing. We started measuring patient’s thickness within their ultrasound, and so being able to see if things have changed over time and the significance of her tissue and that growth was beautiful. And so being able to kind of powerhouse some of the treatments so that you get the best results, and the best outcome is really my whole career. And so being able to measure that and have a considerable improvement is really, really helpful. That’s really cool.

Evelyne: What a cool thing to actually be able to show them, again with data, that things are changing and improving.

Jenna Hilton: That’s really cool. And it’s her tissue.

Evelyne: Yeah, that’s great. I know that the aesthetics industry is constantly evolving, and I’m curious about your thoughts in general on what role supplements and functional medicine and lifestyle medicine will play in this, and where do you see this going in the next five years or so?

Jenna Hilton: Yeah, it’s amazing. Even in the last five years, I mean, Vibrant now is five years old, and I think people, it went from no one talking about this to now, everybody wanting to talk about it. And even in the last few years that I’ve been training, I didn’t find anyone in other offices that we’re doing what we were doing. But that’s changing right now. I think there’s going to be this big division with more people doing injectables, whether it’s going to be an undetectable injectable or an augmentation, and our goal is going to be an undetectable injectable.

And so, when you see people like Demi Moore who are just aging in reverse and her skin looks fabulous, it’s not just the procedure, it’s nutrient support, nutrient health, hormonal balance. So that is huge.

I also like to look at what the world is doing, and a lot of the world is using polynucleotides, which are kind of fragments of DNA, building blocks of DNA, that help support collagen production healing, and then nutrient support. So there’s also injectable nutrient supports that wanting to get into the market. And it’s only a matter of time before this happens, but our skin is wanting nutrient support at the target tissue. And so being able to utilize that in the next couple years is going to be huge. But I feel like there’s going to be so many of me, there’s so many providers that are wanting to try to do functional med. I think it’s only going to keep growing, and I think there’s this trend to really support detoxification in our world just to help support our overall bodies.

Evelyne: Yeah, that’s great. And it’s really inspiring to be part of that trend, right?

Jenna Hilton: Yeah, absolutely.

Evelyne: Before we wrap up, I want to ask you a few rapid-fire questions. Are you ready?

Jenna Hilton: Okay. Yeah, I’m ready.

Evelyne: Okay. What are your personal three favorite supplements?

Jenna Hilton: Ooh. Okay. Well, personally, right now, what I’m loving is my, well always I have to have magnesium. I don’t care if it’s an IV, I don’t care if it’s oral magnesium all day long. It helps. It just helps calm everything. L-theanine is my go-to for clenching. It’s good just for that calm focus. I always say anyone over the age of 35 needs to be on L-theanine as a female just because our brains are just doing too many things at once.

And then around this time of the year, I love any type of histamine support. So I love this product that has Vitamin C, bromelain, stinging nettles, ways of naturally supporting your histamine that aren’t necessarily an antihistamine because I feel like we get that inflammatory response and I tend to pull a little red, more rosacea, and so I always got to keep that inflammation on check.

Evelyne: Great. Next one. What are your favorite health practices to keep you healthy, resilient, and balanced? You also have three kids, right? In addition to running your practice?

Jenna Hilton: Yeah, three kids. And we have a host child that’s training here with us too, from Switzerland. He’s awesome.

Evelyne: Oh, how cool.

Jenna Hilton: Yeah. So, I got the best gift this year from Christina who works with me, and she got me a grounding mat that has different frequencies that I lay on. It has negative ions, and then frequency. So, starting the day with a higher frequency that helps with focus and then ending the day with a lower frequency. Both her and I also love to do light therapy and frequency therapy, and then I swear by sauna. My husband’s a former NFL player, and so concussion is a big conversation in our family. And so we’ve always been sauna lovers, and so always getting into the sauna three to four times a week is really helpful.

Evelyne: That’s great. And what is something you’ve changed your mind about through your years in this field?

Jenna Hilton: So, I remember when we first started Vibrant, we have a holistic esthetician called Tina, and she’s kind of like the leader. She has so many thoughts, and I remember her when it came to talking about skin, we would put different steroids on there. And she’s like, well, that’s going to cause an autoimmune condition. I’m like, what? No, that doesn’t cause an autoimmune condition. And she’s like, well, covering the tissue from the skin, the skin is telling you what your body’s doing inside. And so, by blocking that signal, it’s going to find its way into other things.

And that’s what we know now is, yeah, these things, we know that autoimmunity comes from gut health support, and the skin’s just a manifestation of that. And so, my feelings about the gut, my feelings about autoimmune conditions have changed over time. And I do feel like all of us are a few steps away from autoimmunity. And so, we really need to keep our bodies in balance with the foods that we’re eating, with our lifestyle and what we’re exposed to so that we don’t develop these autoimmune conditions.

Evelyne: Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. And thank you so much, Jenna, for sharing your expertise and insights with us today.

Jenna Hilton: Thanks for having me.

Evelyne: Yeah. I love your integrative approach to aesthetic medicine, and where can practitioners learn more about you?

Jenna Hilton: So, you can learn about me. Vibrant Skin bar is our office. We actually have, I started a Patreon account, Jenna Hilton, and it helps support people that are wanting to get into functional medicine as aesthetic practitioners. And we have a really nerdy mentorship group program that we work together, and we really nerd out. Even last night we were talking about gut health, elimination diets and different lab values that we discuss, and then it’s going to be peptides next month.

So, anything that kind of supports the community kind of working together and building up this practice, because if we have one bad account, it’s going to take us down. So, I want to help us all kind of buildup and level up the playing field.

Evelyne: I love that. A rising tide lifts all boats.

Jenna Hilton: Yes. Right.

Evelyne: Well, thank you so much for joining us on Conversations for Health, and thank you for tuning in today. Check out the show notes for resources from this episode. Please share this podcast with your colleagues, follow, rate or leave a review wherever you listen or watch. And thank you for designing a well world with us.

Voiceover: This is Conversations for Health with Evelyne Lambrecht, dedicated to engaging discussions with industry experts, exploring evidence-based, cutting-edge research and practical tips.