Healthy Skin Comes From A Healthy Diet
How Diet Affects Skin Health
How healthy your skin is depends on many things, but one of the most important is the type of foods you eat.
The importance of eating healthy food for good looking skin can often be very obvious just by looking in the mirror.
If you eat lots of junk food your skin will most likely react badly in the form of redness, inflammation, breakouts, dry skin and many other types of common skin conditions and complaints.
The only exception to this are people with a normal skin type, as their skin tends to react less to what they eat. But eating an unhealthy diet will still make their skin look worse than it should do.
In this article we are going to be looking at the types of foods you should and shouldn’t eat if you want good looking, young and healthy skin.
To make things easier we will break these foods down in to proteins, carbohydrates, fats and artificial foods.
As you read each section try to think about how your current diet compares to what you are reading, and how your skin currently is as a result of your present diet.
If your skin looks good with the foods you eat and you don’t have any real skin complaints, then you are probably eating the right type of foods for your skin.
If however you have many skin complaints, then you probably need to change your diet.
Protein Is Needed For Healthy Skin
Protein is very important for the body. Protein helps to form your muscles, ligaments, tendons, organs, glands, nails, hair and skin.
In fact virtually everything in your body is in one way or another composed of protein. Protein, or more specifically amino acids, are the things that the body uses to literally build you piece by piece.
In terms of the skin, the skin contains proteins collagen and elastin. If you don’t get enough protein in your diet, collagen and elastin levels will start to quickly fall causing your skin to age prematurely and lose its elasticity and firmness.
Without enough protein the skin becomes dull and looks pale, and the muscles in the face lose their strength.
The effect of a lack of protein in the diet can often be seen with vegetarians, who sometimes experience very weak brittle hair, hair falling out and weak split nails.
Since your body and skin is made up of protein, it makes sense to get an adequate amount into your diet and avoid the people who tell you to minimise the protein you eat because it is “bad for you”.
How Much Protein Do You Need?
Whilst you can get protein from virtually any type of food, you can only get complete protein from animal products such as meat, fish, poultry, seafood, eggs and cheese.
In case you don’t know, complete protein is protein that contains all amino acids. A vegetarian diet for example often involves combining certain types of foods to get all amino acids.
An average woman requires about 20g of animal protein three times a day, making a total of 60g of protein per day.
20g of protein is about the size of a can of tuna.
Men require a bit more protein than women, up to about 30g 3 times a day or 90g of protein per day.
This works out to about 3 one and half cans of tuna.
When Should You Eat Protein?
It is recommended that you spread out the protein you eat throughout the day, rather than just eating it all in one meal.
The body will find it a lot easier to handle, and eating throughout the day will also help to keep your energy levels up.
One thing worth remembering however is that not all protein is equally nutritious for you.
For example, if you overcook food you are likely to destroy a significant portion of the protein, or change it to a form that the body doesn’t use very well.
So even though you may think you are getting a lot of protein, the reality may be somewhat different.
For this reason try not to overcook meat or fish, and if possible lightly boil them instead as some studies show frying food creates cancer causing chemicals in the food.
In addition to this, supplement your protein intake with protein rich food such as brewers yeast or drinking eggs raw.
If you take a digestive enzyme supplement with the food you eat, you will digest your food a lot better and gain much more benefit from it.
Fats For Healthy Skin
If you are on a low fat diet now is the time to give it up, that is if you want healthy skin.
Fat serves many important functions in the body, and is absolutely vital in keeping your skin plump, moist and wrinkle free.
A lack of good fats in the body will cause the skin to age prematurely, so you definitely don’t want to exclude fat entirely from your diet.
Out of all the fats available, there are three you need for healthy skin.
• Essential Fatty Acids
• Olive Oil
• Butter / Coconut Oil
Essential Fatty Acids For Healthy Skin
Essential fatty acids are extremely important for promoting good general health and health of the skin.
Essential fatty acids make your skin glow, reduce inflammation and can help with dry skin problems (such as psoriasis and eczema) and premature aging of the skin.
In addition to the benefits essential fatty acids provide to your skin, they are also important in helping you to think more clearly and concentrate better as well as improving your mood.
Although you can get essential fatty acids from vegetable sources such as flax seed oil, the best source is cod liver oil as this also contains vitamin A and vitamin D. Both of which are good for the skin.
Olive Oil For Healthy Skin
Cold pressed olive oil is an excellent source of monounsaturated fatty acids, which is excellent for promoting general health, heart health and skin health.
When purchasing olive oil make sure that it is pure virgin olive oil, and not a mixture of different grades of olive oil such as pomace olive oil.
Olive oil should also come in a dark glass container so that it doesn’t spoil when exposed to light.
Butter For Healthy Skin
Butter has unfairly gained a bad reputation over the past decades because it contains saturated fat. This is despite the fact that it contains many vitamins and minerals which are essential to good health and healthy skin.
Despite what you have been lead to believe, saturated fat is actually very beneficial for the body. One of the main reasons for this is that saturated fat is very resistant to oxidation.
Unlike polyunsaturated fats, saturated fat does not go rancid quickly when exposed to the air or when you cook with it.
The reason why this is important is because the cells in your body use fat to build a membrane which protects the cell from its external environment, whilst also allowing the cell to communicate with the outside.
If this membrane is primarily composed of saturated fat it is much more resistant to damage caused by free radicals. This means that the DNA inside your cells is less likely to develop mutations, some of which could lead to cancer.
If however your cell membranes are primarily composed of polyunsaturated fats they are very susceptible to free radical damage, which not only damages the functioning of the cell but also damages the DNA inside the cell.
Using Fat On The Face
Some saturated fats such as coconut oil can also be used on the face. As you can imagine, this highly stable fat is excellent at protecting your skin from free radical damage which means the skin will stay younger for longer.
Some studies also show that including saturated fat in the diet makes the skin much more resistant to the harmful effects of the sun, thereby reducing premature aging caused by sun exposure.
If you are worried about heart disease don’t be. Saturated fat does not cause heart disease, that is mainly caused by too many high glycemic foods (carbohydrates) in the diet which stimulate the body to deposit fat.
If you add butter to food it is best to do so right at the end after you have finished cooking. Or if you prefer coconut oil, you can eat it on its own.
Carbohydrates For Healthy Skin
Lots can be said about carbohydrates, but I will keep it very simple so you remember it.
Carbohydrates supply the body with energy. When you are active you use that energy, when you are not active that energy is deposited as fat.
So if you are going to be very active throughout the day you can eat a fair amount of carbohydrates because your body will burn it off throughout the day.
If however you will be sitting down for most of the day, then eating lots of carbohydrates will cause you to put on weight.
In terms of what types of carbohydrates you should eat for good general health and healthy skin, you need to know about two types of carbohydrates.
Simple Carbohydrates (Bad)
Simple carbohydrates include anything made from white flour or sugar. So that basically that means cakes, sweets, chocolate, chips and soft drinks.
These are the worst type of carbohydrates you can eat because they cause you to put on weight quickly.
They also cause inflammation in the body which accelerates aging of the skin and causes many health problems in the body.
Complex Carbohydrates (Good)
Complex carbohydrates mainly include vegetables, such as broccoli and cauliflower. These release energy slowly and don’t cause you to put on weight quickly.
Complex carbohydrates also cause virtually no inflammation in the body, so they are great for the skin.
To find out more about the different types of carbohydrates you should eat, do a Google search for low glycemic foods. Basically any food that has a low glycemic index and glycemic load is safe to eat.
Artificial Foods
Artificial foods contain ingredients which don’t appear naturally in nature such as aspartame and high fructose corn syrup. Artificial foods can also contain chemical preservatives, food colourings and artificial fats.
Although food manufactures would say that these ingredients are harmless, there have been many studies showing just the opposite.
Research the dangers of aspartame on Google and you will see for yourself the dangers of this supposedly safe substance.
Since many new artificial substances are used every few years, there is no way of knowing for sure if they are truly safe of not.
But we do know that eating junk foods are definitely not good for the overall health of your skin, so it is best to avoid them.
2 Great Tips For Healthy Skin
Get fresh turmeric powder. Fresh turmeric should have a very distinct smell to it. Low grade turmeric you get from the supermarket has a weak smell, and just smells powdery.
Put 1 or 2 teaspoons in a cup and add some black pepper. Poor boiling water into the cup and mix the turmeric. Allow this to cool, and then drink after you have finished your meal.
The black pepper, boiling water and fat from your meal all help to increase how much turmeric your body absorbs.
For even better results take this with a digestive enzyme supplement (digestive enzymes should be taken with every meal - get Now Foods pancreatin x4 as its effective and cheap).
Turmeric has many benefits in the body, but one of its main benefits is that it is anti-inflammatory. This is great news for your body and skin.
Proline & Lysine
Collagen, which supports your skin keeping it firm and tight, is made up of lysine, proline and vitamin C.
Supplementing with proline, lysine and vitamin C is therefore very benefical to your skin, as it helps to prevent your skin from sagging whilst also keeping it smooth.
Most people notice smooth skin within a week after taking these supplements, and they are also very good for the linings of your arteries.
