When you experience skin inflammation (acne, redness, breakouts), it can feel like there’s a mess on our face!

Together with the right skin products, you should always look on how you feed your body, it is an outside and inside job…there are ways for you to support your skin’s healing response through nutrition:

Ever since Hippocrates stated “let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food,” humans have used food as a way to support their health.  Over the past century, our food has become more mass produced to accommodate larger populations. Fewer families are growing their own food, and the innate wisdom we’d garner about food has inevitably taken a backseat to our now super easy accessible take away options, digital delivery apps and prepackaged meals.

How skin inflammation reflects immunity

Before we dive into how food can help your skin, it’s important to remember that the skin is a vital organ in our immune system. It has many important roles to help protect our internal organs including working as an active barrier from the environment.

Because of this, your skin can reflect the state of your immune system. Whether it’s a rash from a brush with poison ivy; acne when our hormones start to quickly change in our teenage years; or even the dark circles under our eyes after not getting enough sleep, our skin does a great job of reflecting our immune health. These symptoms are red flags for something that needs to be address internally and they can range from minor to severe, from a small breakout to a chronic full body rash.

When looking to treat inflammations, we look at theses two:

  • Address both internal and external inflammation.
  • Maintain a healthy skin barrier, use clean products.

Addressing our nutrition (along with calming ingredients in skincare) can help soothe the skin at the root of inflammation, while rebuilding nutrient loss to recover a damaged barrier.

Everyone’s diet and habits look different, but we share commonalities when it comes to overall inflammatory and anti-inflammatory foods.

Avoid: common food sensitivities

There are common food sensitivities that are the first thing to reduce right away when you’re in a skin crisis. These include:

  • Gluten
  • Sugar
  • Dairy

These foods tend to require more work for our bodies to break down and they have potential side effects for those with inflammatory conditions, endocrine disorders and autoimmune diseases. They can be disruptive to our natural digestion process and even trick our brains into thinking we are craving these foods instead of key nutrients.

Dairy creates moist in our body, which is a good place for bacteria to grow…

These food categories are broad, so don’t be hard on yourself if you can only limit one or two at a time. this will allow you to observe and learn.

Add: a handful of organic greens to each meal

The best addition to this balanced plate is a heaping handful of greens. Try to add one to every meal as a sure-fire way to create biodiversity for healthy digestion. Often, we need leafy greens’ bitter and astringent flavors to help break out of certain food cravings such as sugars, processed carbs and dairy products. The brain starts to recognize the diversity of flavors and will start to crave more of these nutrients. This way you won’t miss the potential inflammatory foods that are keeping your skin in crisis mode after a while AND you’ll improve your digestion overall.

Avoid: overly processed foods at each meal

Processed foods tend to have little to no nutritional content, but are such a staple in our diets. And they don’t serve your skin breakouts….Reducing your daily intake of overly processed foods can help your skin from hidden inflammatory ingredients that could be a culprit in its current crisis state.

Add: essential trace minerals

Processed foods tend to add little to zero essential minerals in our diets, which is why it’s important to introduce ESSENTIAL MINERALS into our diets when supporting a skin crisis.  Trace minerals are essential to our health function, but are not naturally created in the body. This is why we need to eat mineral-rich foods in order to thrive.

Avoid: highly processed oils

Highly processed oils are high in inflammatory omegas that can impact our gut health and eventually our skin’s health. Canola oil,  soybean oil, safflower oil and corn oil are examples of inflammatory oil that can be difficult to digest for many while irritating the intestinal lining of those with a sensitive digestive tract. switch instead to olive oil or coconut oil.

Avoid: alcohol and caffeine

Alcohol and caffeine are not ideal beverage choices for when skin is in crisis mode. They can be quite dehydrating and also be disruptive to our overall immune system. If you can’t completely eliminate these, try to be mindful of the sugar content in them.

Add: hydrating foods

Hydration can help the skin feel plump, useful and more even toned. This is why maintaining hydration levels is crucial during a skin flare. (and at all times)

Examples for hydration foods: watermelons, cucumbers, celery etc.

Add: Use only natural and safe products

Natural products contain skin calming ingredients and will support your skin healing.

Products to try:

Natural Face Cleanser

Flowers Toner

Sensitive skin face cream

Acne treatment kit

 

Visit Pure Natural Salon for personal advice and a deep cleansing facial!