When trying to get clear skin, you should never underestimate the importance of what you eat. A skin-friendly diet should focus on dark, leafy greens and getting a variety of color in fruits and vegetables.
Hydration is essential. Without proper hydration, toxins have a hard time being removed and symptoms like skin irritation, inflammation, and redness can occur.
It’s hard to achieve that coveted glow if you’re not eating the right nutrients—healthy skin comes from the inside out, after all. Here’s where you should start
Eat the rainbow
Supplement with vitamins
Get your daily recommended allowances of vitamin A through foods such as sweet potatoes or carrots
Vitamin B contains the nutrient biotin which gives your skin a healthy glow.
Vitamin C help with collagen production;
Vitamin E keep the skin looking supple and soft.
Healthy fats are key as well – omega-3-rich foods can assist in reducing inflammation, which can subside acne flare-ups.
What to avoid
Avoid carbohydrates with high glycemic index. These ensure that the blood glucose level rises rapidly and rapidly and falls off as quickly and strongly. It is mainly about foods like sugar, sodas, sweets, white flour products, noodles, french fries, chips, cornflakes and pizza. If you suffer from severe acne, you can try to find out if milk can help. This also applies to dairy products such as yogurt, curd, ice cream. Basically, you should prefer fruit, a lot of vegetables and fish – this is generally considered an important part of a balanced diet.
“There is some evidence that suggests that diets containing high-glycemic loads may be related to acne,” she says. “Also, limit consumption of dairy products—the hormone IGF-1, which is naturally present in dairy, is behind several skin problems.” (I’ll co-sign that: Cutting dairy did clear up this editor’s skin.)
A NEW LOOK AT DIET
In 2002, researchers from the University of Colorado examined the diet of two aboriginal and acne-free populations, the Kiavan Islanders from Papua New Guinea and a tribe of Ache hunter-gatherers from Paraguay. A resulting paper (which was met with widespread skepticism from acne experts) concluded that both groups owed their notably clear complexions to primitive diets free of processed bread, sugars, and cereals. Previous research had shown that when similar tribes people adopted a Western diet, acne followed by refined carbohydrates such as sugars and starches cause the body to produce high levels of insulin, creating a hormonal imbalance, which (among other ill effects) can cause an excess of acne-provoking androgens.
Cordain recommends a diet low in sugars and starches, avoiding high-glycemic foods such as:
sugary desserts
white and whole wheat bread.
breakfast cereals and cereal bars.
cakes, cookies, and sweet treats
potatoes and fries
chips and rice crackers
dried fruits such as dates, raisins, and cranberries bread, potatoes
These foods can all raise blood sugar and trigger high insulin production. Low-glycemic foods such as meats, green vegetables, and high-fiber bran products, are less likely to raise insulin levels and create the internal climate that can lead to acne.
High-glycemic diet may affect acne not just because high carbohydrates raise insulin levels, but also because they release pro-inflammatory chemicals, which add to the problems with inflammation.
Inflammation, exacerbated by sugar and other refined carbohydrates, accelerates aging, leading to wrinkles and other age-related conditions—and causes acne. Basically, that’s sugar or anything that can be rapidly converted to sugar and has a high glycemic index .Instead try a anti-inflammatory diet high in omega-3 essential fatty acids (found in cold-water fish, especially salmon, some nuts, and olive oil), combined with antioxidant and anti-inflammatory nutritional supplements and topical treatments.
Acne is an inflammatory disease, and you have to address its inflammatory component. And if you can control your blood sugar and your insulin, you can keep inflammation way down. So when people are on an anti-inflammatory diet, their acne improves.
Also dairy is one of the most common causes acne. Milk contains hormones. About 80 percent of the cows that give milk are pregnant, so you have a lot of progesterone-like hormones in milk. That can affect the androgens that act on sebaceous glands. Plus, nowadays they’ve thrown in bovine growth hormone, too, and we don’t even know what that does. The bottom line with dairy foods is that you’re providing a hormonal climate that can promote acne.
When you’re dealing with a multifactorial problem like acne, it’s always hard to get to the bottom of it. Nature doesn’t give up her secrets that easily. But, if a woman has acne, and if she’s drinking milk two or three times a day, and she’s eating a lot of cheese and other dairy products of all kinds, I think somewhere along the line, before she takes Accutane, or spends two years on tetracycline, its appropriate to ask, ‘What would an elimination diet do?:”