Healthy Foods For Healthy Skin
It’s so funny that so much of the effort we put into maintaining our appearance and making ourself look beautiful is focused on all the different products we put on our skin as opposed to what we put in our bodies. What you eat has a much more direct effect on your health and the health of your skin than what you put on it and healthy skin is beautiful skin. Making good food choices and eating well can make a huge difference in the way your skin looks along with how it ages and reacts to the environment. This can make the difference between having wrinkles, sun spots, acne, even skin tone, dryness, oiliness - or not and having a beautiful, balanced complexion. The type of food you put into your body directly becomes a part of you and is absorbed into your bloodstream which fuels cell reproduction meaning you literally become what you’re consuming - the whole “You are what you eat.” phrase isn’t just an old saying - it’s true.
Your skin is the largest organ on your body and it doesn’t just hang around holding all your insides in place - it has a lot of unique and amazing functions and it’s a huge indicator of the level of health you have in your body. In fact there are many ancient cultures who took advantage of this ability to see the internal state of the body just by looking at the skin. The chinese, for example, use a technique called Face Mapping, which uses a specific graph of the face showing which areas of the face relate to what parts of the body and any problems they might be having. Such techniques can be used to determine the causes of various skin problems like wrinkles, acne, warts, and so forth. They can also be used to assess a persons overall health level. The bottom line here is that if something is wrong in your body it will show up on your skin.
So what can we do to keep our skin healthy? It’s obvious that good hygiene is important and indeed, many a debilitating skin condition can be kept under control using the products we have on the market alone but anyone that wants to have truly healthy skin absolutely must take into consideration some of the more holistic methods that are so crucial to maintaining a healthy lifestyle. There are many aspects of your life that have a large impact on your skin but the three most important ones are water, exercise, and nutrition. All of these play hugely important roles in how your skin looks and is able to do it’s job. If you stuff your body full of bad foods, never exercise, and don’t drink enough water then not only are you depriving your body of the important nutrients it needs you’re also making it impossible for your skin to produce new cells which means you have sluggish, dry, clogged, and acne-prone skin. Not what anyone wants their skin to be like. Diet, water, and exercise when done properly can completely turn your skin around and make it practically brand new!
First lets take a look at water. Our bodies are designed to thrive off of water and when we deprive them off we slowly shut them down bit by bit. Your body needs a fair amount of water each day - at minimum think of those eight glasses as the rule but really, considering your diet and how active you are it should be more than that. We tend to eat a lot of really rich and heavy (as well as over processed foods) in our modern diet and a lot of that is lacking in water. The amount of water thats in a piece of celery or an orange is pretty measurable compared to the amount of water in some chips or a piece of pizza. So if you’re eating a diet that doesn’t have much in the way of fresh, raw foods that have high water content in them you absolutely have to satisfy your body’s need for it elsewhere and that means drinking a serious amount of water each and every day. You also want to compensate for any water that might be lost when working out and if you live in a highly air-conditioned environment it’s important to drink even more water as those machines can dry out your skin like no other. Make sure to drink a big glass of water first thing in the morning after you wake up and right before going to bed. Drink water regularly throughout the day and try to pair it with foods that will do your body good. The more you drink the better off you’ll be. Water doesn’t just feed your body and keep it young it also helps flush out toxins and impurities which can mean clear, more radiant skin, a tighter firmer appearance to your skin (because water will get rid of salt which can make your retain weight and make your skin look puffy and have an uneven color) and it will help reduce wrinkles and fine lines by keeping your body hydrated and moisturized. Do your best to drink the best water you can and that may mean investing a bit more into something like a water filter or to purchasing a high grade of bottled water. If you do purchase bottled water be nice to the environment and recycle.
Exercise is so underrated when it comes to keeping your skin clear, healthy, and glowing. For some reason people don’t seem to link the two but your skin plays a big role in exercise as it produces the ability to keep you cool through perspiration. When you perspire (or sweat) your body isn’t just cooling itself down its also getting rid of toxins that may be contained in the skin and because our skin is porous (meaning it absorbs everything) there are lots of yucky things that it takes in. Everything you put on your skin is absorbed by it - everything. Lotion, deodorant, perfume, cologne, makeup, and a whole lot more. It may be surprising but our skin can even absorb pollution and all kinds of dirt and toxins that are in our environment. That’s why it’s so so important to be careful of what you put on your skin. Fortunately exercising regularly can help us sweat out these toxins in our skin. Exercise also has another big benefit for your skin and that is the effect it has on the blood circulating through your body. When you exercise you’re sending fresh blood pumping through your body and this also helps to clean out your system and restore things to working order. Try to exercise every day if you can but at least three times a week. The more the better.
While water and exercise are extremely important the very most important aspect of keeping your skin healthy is what you feed it. Like I said before, everything that you eat becomes a part of your body in the process of it’s reproduction of cells. Food is the fuel of the body and if you want your body to “run” well, so to speak, then you’ve got to make sure that you’re giving it the good stuff. Chips, pizza, soda, candy, and even so called “healthy” or “diet” foods that are really nothing but processed chemicals aren’t going to do much for you in the way of giving your body nutrients. What your body really needs are fresh, whole, natural, and preferably raw, foods to sustain it and give it the tools to repair any damage and keep you healthy and strong. That means a lot of fruits and vegetables in the natural state if possible. When you cook your food you’re essentially cooking all the nutrients, the live enzymes, and the vitamins that your food is capable of providing right out of it. Your vegetables are still a lot better for you cooked than a slice of cake or a cheeseburger is but by eating them when they are “raw” or uncooked you give your body the chance to get all those good-for-you things out instead of having them fried or baked out before your body even gets a crack at them. Make a point of trying to eat as many fresh fruits and vegetables as you can during the day especially in the morning so that even if you do eat some other not so healthy stuff your body will still be able to get some good nutrients in before you clog it up with junk food. Your body can’t absorb the nutrients it needs from fruit and other vegetables if you’ve already eaten unhealthy food on prior to it because it’s so busy trying to digest the bad food that you’ve eaten that there really isn’t a chance of it digesting the good food. The basic idea here is lots of fruit and vegetables, as natural as you can get them. Beyond that it’s a little more detailed so let’s get into some of the specific foods you can eat for certain skin problems you may want to get rid of.
For overall skin healthy you want to incorporate lots of fresh fruit like berries and plums that have lots of antioxidants. Dark coloring in fruit like this is a sure sign of an antioxidant rich treat and they’re amazing when it comes to repairing skin, protecting against free radicals, and keeping the DNA of the skin cells healthy. They also guard against premature aging and keep your skin looking young and beautiful! For premature aging you also want to look into eating essential fatty acids and omega-3s. Foods like salmon, walnuts, flax seed and so forth are great sources of these and avocados can work wonders as well. Extra virgin olive oils are good sources of these as well just be sure to get very natural and under-processed brands (think cold pressed with only a fraction of a percentage of acidity) and be careful not to go over two tablespoons a day because even good fats are still fats and that means high in calories.
You also want to make sure that you’re getting plenty of selenium in your diet which is found in whole-wheat bread and muffins as well as turkey, tuna, and brazil nuts. Selenium is paramount in the level of importance it plays when i comes to the health of skin cells. With proper amounts of selenium you’re less likely to get various forms of cancer, sunburn, and it can help keep insulin levels stead which lowers inflammation and sugar in the blood stream making you less prone to acne.
There are many other good foods that are great for skin as well, far too many to list as it is but there are two other important things you can do to keep your skin looking amazing. The first is to take a really good multivitamin - specifically one that’s designed for skin health and includes essential vitamins and minerals as well as omega3’s and omega6’s a well as minerals like selenium and zinc which can prevent breakouts. Make sure that you research what company you buy from carefully though as many multivitamins are little more than fillers. I prefer Synergy vitamins which is inexpensive while also being really reliable and an all around good vitamin. Plus they have lots of options for the types of vitamins you want to take plus how often a day you take them.
Another good thing you can do to give your skin even more of an advantage is to drink green tea. Green tea is full of amazing benefits for your skin. It has tons of antioxidants in it as well as being great for protecting the membrane of your skin and preventing damage from sunburns as well as some types of cancer. Green tea is also anti-inflammatory which means it can help reduce acne and certain skin conditions like rosacea and it can give your skin a youthful, younger look to it. Green tea is amazing but again make sure to get a really good brand and don’t overload it with sugar. You may also want to get a de-caffeinated kind to avoid any unwanted side effects.
There are a lot of things you can do to help your skin but by far the best route to go is to be certain that you are taking care of your body as best you can because the healthier you are, the healthier and prettier your skin will be. Follow the advice above but make sure you do it for at least two months (the length of a skin cycle) to see how your results are. Don’t just go home and eat an apple and expect your skin to magically become perfect. It takes a lot of dedication and patience to keep your skin looking beautiful but if you keep at it and do your best you’ll begin to see some amazing changes in your skin and it will be well worth the effort you put into it.