Eat Your way to Glow your Skin

Eat Your Way to Glowing Skin

While putting on a fantastic face cream or smoothing a hair serum works wonders, but for beauty that’s more than skin deep eating fruits and veggies rich in antioxidants, vitamins and minerals is the answer. There’s a direct connect to the condition of your skin to the kind of foods you eat. Skin is our largest organ and what you put in your mouth, shows up on your skin.

Foods that hurt your skin

If your diet has too much of salt, sugar or alcohol, you skin will look patchy, dry, puffy and old.These tend to constrict the blood vessels which in turn impact the cellular structure of the skin.

Excess sugar in your diet can actually break down the elastin and collagen structure of your skin, leading to fine line and wrinkles.

A that bag chips or extra sprinkling of salt on your salad might be tickle the taste buds, but they do something nasty to the skin – puffiness under the skin.

Deep fried foods can aggravate excess sebum production in your skin. The equation in this case is simple: deep fried food can raise the acidity levels in your gut, which in turn hurts the good bacteria in there leading toxicity. Your body is unable to flush out the toxins leading to excess sebum production and acne breakout.

Coffee is an excellent pick me up, but restrict it to two cups a day. Excess coffee dehydrates your skin like no other. Alcohol is its other partner. Both are great at pulling out water from your body leaving the skin cells dehydrated. Skin looks dry and is prone to early aging.

Foods that restore radiance to your skin

Eating right is very important for your overall health, and when you fill yourself up with the right kind of fruits and vegetables it shows up on your skin. For great skin and hair, you must remember to add the following food essentials including proteins, essential fatty acids (EFA), vitamins A,B,C,D,E, copper, zinc, selenium, iron, folic acid, and most important of all water. Eat foods that have high water content, it naturally provides the skin cells with the necessary moisture, which gives the top layer of your skin the right hydration.

Foods that cure skin woes

Worry: Dehydrated skin that feels taut even after external moisturisation.

Cause: Moisture imbalance in the skin cells.

Beauty food: Cucumber, watermelon, aloe vera juice

How it cures: These water rich foodshave a thirst quenching and anti-inflammatory properties which provide the skin cells with hydration. Cucumber is a rich source of vitamin B, and is 95% water and rehydrates the body. On the other hand watermelon has 92% water content and is a rich source of lycopene. Both vitamin B and lycopene are important actives for sustaining healthy skin cells.

Worry: Dry, flaky skin

Cause: No emollient on the skin, lack of natural sebum

Beauty food: Tea spoon of olive or coconut oil, handful of almonds and walnuts

How it cures: We need essential fatty acids like Omega 3 and Omega 6 to ensure our skin cells are plump, and body produces natural sebum which forms a protective layer over skin. A handful of walnuts and almonds provide your body with vitamin E, an essential antioxidant that protects the ski from free radicals as well.

Worry: Fine lines that starts as soon as you hit the 30s

Cause: Natural aging process, loss of collagen under the skin

Beauty food: Red grapes, strawberries, pomegranates

How it cures: These three red fruits are rich sources of vitamin A, antioxidants and AHA which all help in slowing down collagen degeneration, fighting cell damaging free radicals, and faster skin cell renewal.

Worry: Patchy skin due to excessive sun exposure

Cause: uneven melanin production, lack of vitamin C in the body

Beauty foods: Amla( Indian gooseberry), tomatoes, kiwi fruits, dark chocolate

How it cures: Amla is one of the most stable sources of vitamin C which is important for balancing out melanin production and has skin lightening properties.Kiwi is also rich in vitamin C and helps fight wrinkles caused by sun damage. Tomatoes are rich in lycopene, an important antioxidant that prevent cellular damage from free radicals. Both tomatoes and amla help in preventing photo damage to the skin caused by sun exposure.

Worry: Acne breakout

Cause: Stress, overactive oil glands, toxin build-up in the body

Beauty food: Chirata, Ginger root, neem, apple cider vinegar, pumpkin seeds

How it cures: Both chirata or Indian gentian, and ginger root help in removing toxins from the body. Soak chirata sticks in water overnight and drink it in the morning daily to detox your body. Neem is a natural antiseptic that prevents bacterial infection on the skin. A teaspoon or two of neem leaf juice might be bitter but very beneficial for clearing out blemishes. Dilute a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar in a glass of water and sip through the day – it has a good amount of probiotics that detoxify the body. Add a dash of toasted pumpkin seeds to your salad to get your dose of zinc which helps in drying out pruritic acne.