When it comes to caring for the skin, few people have an hour or so to follow through a skin care routine every morning. This makes the use of diet to manage and keep the skin in good shape a welcome alternative. The reality is the health of your skin is a clear reflection of the kind of food you eat. For instance, an acne problem could be a result of poor gut health as a result of taking too much dairy products. Infact, milk has been linked with acne outbreaks.
A hormone known as IGF-I that is released by milk interacts with other body hormones and confused the endocrine system, leading to an acne outbreak. Other foods that have the ability to damage the skin are junk foods, sugars, trans fats and processed foods. The opposite is true – including healthy foods in your diet and drinking pure water can improve your skin health significantly.
If you’re keen on making your skin beautiful, below are the various ways your diet can improve your skin health:
- Keeping Skin Cell Membranes In Good Shape
A healthy skin should be able to absorb as well as retain water to prevent dehydration and dryness. To be able to do this effectively, the membranes of the skin cells should be maintained properly. This cannot happen when your intake of omega-3 fatty acids is low. Essential fatty acids offer numerous benefits to the body including reducing inflammation and improving eye health.
The fatty acids are also essential in skin health because they help with keeping your skin cells membranes in good health. Including omega-3 rich foods in your diet increases the skin of to remain hydrated by boosting its natural barrier. Some of the foods that provide high amounts of essential fatty acids are fatty fish like kipper, salmon, mackerel, herring, sardines, trout, and anchovies. If you’re on a vegan diet, consider taking walnuts chia seeds, oil from hemp seeds, flaxseeds and algal oil.
- Boosting Production Of Collagen
Collagen plays the critical role of strengthening the skin, and enhancing hydration and elasticity. While it is generated by the body, the amount of collagen that your body produces reduces as you age. This results in dry, wrinkled skin. You can boost the collagen levels in your body by adding foods that support its production.
These include foods that are rich in vitamin C, a nutrient that serves as a co-factor for connective tissues and collagen generation in the skin. Vitamin C rich foods that should feature prominently in your diet are leafy green vegetables. These vegetables offer numerous benefits to your skin because they contain fiber, antioxidants, phytochemicals like chlorophyll that fight ageing and a wide range of essential nutrients including vitamin E that protects skin cells from being damaged by free radicals such as air pollution and UV rays.
Leafy green vegetables are essential to the production and maintenance of new skin cells because they contain folate, an important nutrient that helps with DNA repair. They are also rich in lutein, another effective antioxidant that enhances hydration, protects the skin against sun rays and improves elasticity.
- Improving Blood Circulation InThe Body
Blood plays the important role of delivering essential nutrients and oxygen to all body organs, including the skin. It also helps in removing waste from the organs. Taking foods that support blood circulation in your body and dilation of blood vessels will improve your skin health significantly.
Such foods include nuts such as pistachios. These nuts contain fats, protein, fiber, and important nutrients like thiamine and vitamin B6. Pistachios nuts also have high amounts of L-Arginine, an amino acid that contains a molecule known as nitric oxide that enhances blood circulation and dilates blood vessels. Nitric Oxide is also critical in supporting collagen formation, which helps in repairing skin tissues.
- Giving The Skin A Glowing Look
Your skin can have a beautiful glow depending on the foods that you include in your diet. Maintaining a diet that is rich in vegetables and fruits is just what you need to have a skin that has a healthy, glowing look. Some foods that you should eat regularly are colored vegetables and fruits such as butternuts, carrots, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, orange peppers, mangoes, zucchini and oranges. These orange-colored foods are rich in a compound known as beta-carotene that plays a critical role in giving the skin a healthy color.
Brightly colored foods also contain high amounts of vitamin A nutrients that support the repair of skin tissue and keeps the skin from being damaged by the harsh UV rays from the sun. As an antioxidant, Vitamin A also helps your skin in fighting free radicals that result in development of aging signs such as uneven skin tone, pigmentation and wrinkles.
Since vitamin A is bioavailable in foods that are cooked as opposed to raw foods, consider eating squash, carrots and sweet potatoes in cooked form. Making these foods in oil is recommended because oil increases absorption of this vitamin in the body.
- Keeping Your Skin Moisturized
Your skin needs to be moisturized throughout to look beautiful and healthy. To achieve this, your diet should be rich with foods that contain skin moisturizing agents including tangerines, cucumbers, sweet potatoes, nuts and seeds as well as avocados.
To boost your intake of skin moisturizing foods, you could also make supplements such as astaxanthin part of your diet. This supplement contains powerful antioxidants that enhance skin moisture, lighten dark spots, improve skin elasticity, reduce fine lines and improve the smoothness of your skin. Astaxanthin also has UV-blocking capabilities. This keeps your skin from being damaged by sun rays. Astaxanthin is found in foods such as crayfish, wild salmon, lobsters, trout, algae, and shrimp.
Bottom Line
Diet plays a critical role in keeping the skin healthy. Eating unhealthy foods such as junk foods, processed foods and sugars causes your skin to age faster and become dehydrated. If you want your skin to be well moisturized and have a glowing look, consider including the healthy foods in your diet and get your skin health on track within no time.
