How is your skin looking today? Smooth, fresh and pink? Flat, congested and dull? There is a saying that “what you eat today, you wear tomorrow” which can be applied to many areas of our health, but I find that it is particularly appropriate to one’s face! In fact, I was reminded of this last week when, having spent a delightful – socially distanced of course – evening with some friends and enjoyed a couple of glasses of prosecco and some starchy nibbles, I looked at myself in the mirror the following day and was confronted with the consequences.
Our skin is our own private frontier, in constant contact with the relentless onslaught of the outside world, and it has many important roles to play. For instance, it protects us from dehydration, infection and sun damage. It keeps heat and moisture in and micro-organisms and pollutants out. It releases sweat to cool us down and also acts as a sensory organ, directly involved in our sense of touch. And most importantly, it is our very personal interface with the world, showing it who we are, how well we are and how we live our life. So it makes sense to do everything we can to keep it healthy and beautiful, let alone to help it age well. Nothing will actually prevent ageing completely, and fine lines, even wrinkles, are bound to appear at some stage, so what I am talking about here is more a matter of keeping it youthful as opposed to young, and restoring its glow, vitality and smoothness, because the skin is actually renewing and rebuilding itself on a constant basis.
This rebuilding process slows down as we age but we can support it by providing it with the necessary building materials. And where do these come from? Food of course. What we eat on a day to day basis powerfully, POWERFULLY, impacts our health generally and our complexion in particular, because an over-rich meal or a lack of fresh fruit and vegetables for instance affect it visibly within hours – think how a sluggish bowel or a touch of constipation can result in almost instant congestion! Your skin can literally show you what is going on inside and it has its own specific nutritional requirements – starve your skin of nourishment and it cannot possibly thrive.
So where do you start? How can you defend your precious skin against its countless enemies and keep it fresh, youthful and healthy? Here are some very simple, basic steps which you can take to start improving and caring for your skin from the inside out.
Firstly, increase your consumption of fresh fruit and vegetables in order to absolutely flood your system with all the essential vitamins, minerals and antioxidants which the skin craves. Then some high quality protein in the form of oily fish, nuts and pulses to supply all the amino acids needed by the fibroblast cells to make new collagen, which is in effect the skin’s scaffolding. And then some lovely healthy fats to plump up the skin and make it smooth and velvety - olive oil, seeds like chia, flax and hemp, avocadoes, wild salmon. Make sure that you also drink plenty of mineral or filtered water – at least six large glasses each and every day – to hydrate the skin’s thirsty cells.
My brand new bespoke Dynamic Ageing Skin Protocol addresses skin health at the deepest level and if you would like to learn more about the transformative power which food and lifestyle can have on the way your skin looks, feels and behaves, let’s have an initial exploratory conversation when you can tell me about the challenges you may be experiencing and we can discuss how I might be able to help you to bring youthfulness back into your complexion. Click here to book our initial chat.