If you have acne and want to keep your skin as healthy and clear as possible, it’s important that you keep the skin healthy from the inside, as well as from the outside.
The skin is subject to stress from the outside environment as well as from the inside enviroment.
By having a diet that’s skin friendly, and that helps the skin to repair and to protect against damage, you’ll be doing your best to look after your skin’s health.
You would have heard of the term antioxidants.
Yes, it’s mentioned heaps in articles to do with preventing heart disease, cancers and degenerative diseases.
But these antioxidants are also important in keeping our skin healthy and protected from toxins as well. Any form of stress, including excessive exercise, deep fried fatty meals, emotional stress, or environmental pollutants, causes oxidative damage to our cells.
What antioxidants do is to protect our cells from such damage and to speed up its repair if the damage has been done. Antioxidants are found in many foods, but especially natural unprocessed foods.
So that’s why you’ll see that many of the diet tips include fruits and vegetables.
Here are some diet tips to help keep our skin healthy:
Vitamin C
Vitamin C helps our skin produce collagen, one of the most important parts of our skin, as well as acting as an antioxidant. You can get vitamin C from citrus fruits such as oranges and lemons, as well as in pawpaw and strawberries. The vegetables high in vitamin C include broccoli, capsicum, cabbage and spinach.
Vitamin A
This vitamin helps our skin protect itself against bacteria, as well as sun damage. Vitamin A can be found in food such as carrots, spinach, capsicum, apricots, peaches, pawpaw, mango, and oatmeal. As a reminder, vegetables that are orange in color tend to have abundant vitamin A. But always remember to have a variety of fruits and vegetables, so that you get enough of all the vitamins and not too much of one.
Flavanoids
Flavanoids are the plant pigments that have been found to be powerful antioxidants. They iinclude the anthocyanins and proanthocyanins found in many berries. They were made famous when they were found in grape seed extract as a substance that could protect against cell damage and cancer. Blueberries especially, have very high antioxidant levels, including these flavanoids. And strawberries, blacknerries, cranberries and bilberries have been shown to have powerful antioxidants as well.
Vitamin E
This vitamin is fat soluble vitamin and so helps fatty tissues such as cell linings and also our skin, to protect against oxidative damage. We can get vitamin E from these vitamin rich foods: seeds and nuts, green leafy vegetables, almond oil or extra virgin olive oil, sweet potato, avocado, and mango.
So when you use an effective acne treatment regime, also keep to a healthy diet to keep your skin as healthy as possible.