Nutrition and the skin.

There are three important ways in which nutrition may affect your skin.

1) Your skin on a strict diet and/or bariatric surgery.
2) Aging and skin nutrition
3) Nutrition effect on acne

You will not find in here “eat chocolate and you will get a pimple”. There is no scientific proof of this, so you know.

There are some effects of nutrition (or rather, bad nutrition), that are quite obvious. Excess alcohol intake will dilate blood vessels temporarily but eventually this effects becomes permanent (and visible) damage, visible blood vessels and blotched skin. Excess alcohol intake is usually associated with a lack of attention to nutrition, another factor that affects the skin.

The lack of nutrition that comes with a strict diet will affect the skin even before you start losing weight. The same is true after bariatric surgery. So it is vital that if you go on such a diet you also prevent skin aging, that you compensate with topical “feeding” of the skin, like that provided by our collagen serum and every lipid serum. Lack of vitamins, essential fatty acids, amino acids, etc. will result in long lasting damage to the skin, including a serious loss in elasticity. This is the same reason why people on a strict diets often lose hair, so it is important to remember the scalp (and eye lashes and eye brows).

A more chronic malnutrition of the skin happens during normal aging. As we lose blood vessels reaching the dermis, the skin becomes a “low priority” for our body when it comes to distribution of nutrients. It is up to us to make up for this deficit, otherwise our skin will get thinner, more fragile and wrinkled than it would otherwise.

We can also improve the chances that our skin stem cells will succeed at replacing dying skin cells if we use antioxidant system like those present in Skin Actives products.

There are more ways in which nutrition interacts with the skin, and scientific research is elucidating some of them.

For example, diabetic people will have a higher concentration of glucose circulating in the blood. This will promote glycation of skin proteins and DNA, changing both in undesirable ways. For a protein to do its job, its structure must be kept intact, and glycation will alter the structure in a permanent fashion. You can prevent this by seeing your MD and making sure that you don’t have problems in managing glucose. Sugared drinks like sodas and Kombucha tea are also problematic. Consult with your doctor if you have any doubts, a quick prick and you will know if you should worry about this particular aspect.

High consumption of sugars may also increase the incidence of acne, so there are many reasons to control this aspect of the diet. High blood sugar seems to have a more direct effect by increasing the levels of male hormone, which is present in men and women and promotes sebum secretion and acne. It seems that both insulin and insulin-like growth factor promote acne, through their stimulation of sebum secretion and androgen production.

In short: eat well, limit sugar intake but don’t forget that the older you are the more your skin needs to be “fed” topically, by using good skin care products.