Healthy Skincare Diet| Nutritional Supplements for Beautiful, Clear Skin

Diet, Nutrition and Healthy Skin

Your skin is like any other organ in your body. It needs adequate nutrition to function properly. A varied diet with plenty of the right nutrients will help keep your skin healthy. We also need vitamins and minerals - either from food or supplements - to help our skin stay healthy. Vitamin A and zinc, for example are important to the skin.

Getting enough exercise is also important to skin health. It gets the blood flowing, bringing vitamins, minerals and nutrients to the skin and helping flush away toxins.

Getting adequate nutrition is sometimes easier said than done. It is tempting to eat less healthy foods because they might be easier to get or prepare, or they satisfy a craving. Between family and work or school, you are probably balancing a hundred things at once. Taking time to buy the ingredients for and cooking a healthy meal sometimes falls last on your list. But you should know that it isn't hard to make simple changes to improve your diet. And you can make sense of the mounds of nutrition information out there. If your diet doesn't measure up, supplements can be helpful too.

Healthy nutrition for skin

So what makes up a healthy diet? "Eat your fruits and vegetables." You've likely heard this statement since childhood. Research shows why it is good advice:

• Healthy diets rich in fruits and vegetables may reduce the risk of cancer and other chronic diseases.
• Fruits and vegetables also provide essential vitamins and minerals, fiber, and other substances that are important for good health.
• Most fruits and vegetables are naturally low in fat and calories and are filling.

Vitamins for skin health

If you're concerned about aging skin, there are studies indicating that the vitamins in your diet may play a role in wrinkle prevention. For example, one study found that people who ate a lot of vitamin C-rich foods had less wrinkling on their skin, compared to people whose diets contained very little Vitamin C. This study also found that people who ate diets rich in the omega-6 fatty acid linoleic acid also tended to have less skin aging, less dryness and less thinning of the skin. Omega 6 and Omega 3 essential fatty acids are best consumed in the proper ratio to each other. Most western diets are heavier on omega-6's, which are found in safflower, corn and other oils. Omega3's are found in fatty fish and fish oil. Fish oil supplements can also be a good source of Omega 3's.

Minerals for skin health

Minerals are important for skin health too. Get your calcium-rich foods. Get 3 cups of low-fat or fat-free milk - or an equivalent amount of low-fat yogurt and/or low-fat cheese (1 1/2 ounces of cheese equals one cup of milk) - every day. There are many other important minerals for healthy skin including zinc, copper and selenium. Fruits and vegetables are good sources of certain minerals, while animal products are good sources of others.

Vitamin and Mineral Supplements

If your everyday diet isn't healthy, no amount of supplements will give you great skin. But supplements can help with certain nutrients that are hard to get enough of from food. It can be difficult for people, especially women, to get enough calcium, for example, just from foods. You may also not be able to eat fatty fish as often as you should, so fish oil capsules might be helpful. Just make sure you don't overdo it with supplements - too much of a good thing can be dangerous when it comes to vitamins and minerals. Look for a supplement with 100 percent of your RDA or required daily allowance.

More on nutrition and healthy skin

Eat whole-grain foods whenever you can. Make half your grains whole. Eat at least 3 ounces of whole-grain cereals, breads, crackers, rice, or pasta every day. One ounce is about 1 slice of bread, 1 cup of breakfast cereal, or 1/2 cup of cooked rice or pasta. Look to see that grains such as wheat, rice, oats, or corn are referred to as 'whole' in the list of ingredients.

Go lean with protein. Choose lean meats and poultry. Bake it, broil it, or grill it. And vary your protein choices, with more fish, beans, peas, nuts and seeds.

One other thing - don't over do it. If you add extra pounds, you end up stretching the skin. If you then lose weight, that stretched skin can sag and more easily develop wrinkles.

Hydrating Skin

Keep yourself hydrated. Normally about 95 percent of the cells in your skin are made up of water. So it is the amount of water in your skin that determines how moist your skin is. That's why at any age, oral hydration is important, so drinking enough water can help to keep skin moist and healthy, and to avoid dehydration. If the skin cells stay full of water they stay plump and wrinkles are less likely to appear.

There is no concrete evidence that food causes acne. Following the strictest diet will not by itself clear your acne. On the other hand, a few people claim that their acne seems to worsen when they eat certain foods, particularly chocolates, fried food and chilies. It makes sense for these people to avoid the foods that aggravate their acne.

If you want to know more about diet and acne, a recent study also found that avoiding high glycemic load foods could help acne sufferers clear up their skin. It was a small study, involving less than 50 people. The theory, according to the researchers, is that high levels of insulin contribute to acne. So lowering glycemic loads would help acne.

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Updated June 2009

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