Healthy Diet Means Healthy Skin

As dull as it might sound, the best diet of general health is also the best one for the health of the skin. A healthy diet affects all parts of the body and slows down the aging process of all tissues including the skin. There are some aspects of diet that are more relevant for the health of your skin than others. The appropriate guidelines are listed below.

What makes a healthy diet?

We are told to eat a balanced and healthy diet on a regular basis. The question is, what does that mean in reality? Nutritionists generally define it as a diet that provides all of the necessary nutrients at a level that falls within an optimal range. The most beneficial range is that which will stop protein malnutrition and vitamin and mineral deficiencies. Basically, it means that eating a balanced diet means that you will not suffer from any nutrient deficiencies or malnutrition. For a lot of people, adopting a normal balanced diet would be a big improvement over their over consumption of fast food. In order to “fool mother nature” and gain a high level of anti aging effects you would need to eat certain nutrients at levels that are much higher than those found in a simple balanced diet.

For the majority of us, the easiest and most practical way to follow a balanced diet is to go with the recommendations that can be found in the Daily Food Guides which is published by the US Department of Agriculture. The advice for normal adults is:

• Eat enough vegetables and fruit while staying within your caloric needs. Two and a half cups of vegetables and two cups of fruit are the average recommended amounts for a 2,000 calorie per day diet, with varying amounts depending on your specific calorie consumption per day.
• Eat varying fruits and vegetables every day. Make sure that you pick from all five subgroups of vegetables (orange, dark green, legumes, starchy and other vegetables). You should eat from all of the categories over the course of the week.
• Eat a minimum of 3 ounces of products that are made with whole grains each day. The remainder of the grains that you eat should be either enriched or additional whole grain. A minimum of half your daily intake of grain should be whole grain.
• Eat or drink at least 3 cups of fat free or low fat milk products a day.
• You need to eat a wide variety of foods in order to gain all of the essential nutrients in high enough concentrations to maintain a healthy diet.

Fresh Produce – Fruit and Veg.

The old wives tale that eating lots of fresh vegetables and fruit is good for you is absolutely true. Fresh produce (vegetables and fruit) are extremely important in maintaining healthy, young looking skin. The reason for this is very simple, fruit and vegetables contain a large number of antioxidants. A lot of the pigments that give fruit and vegetables their color are strong antioxidants. These antioxidants work to guard the skin from free radical damage caused by environmental factors. To keep the antioxidant levels in fruit and vegetables at their most potent you need to make sure that they are fresh and either raw or only lightly steamed as heat can deactivate most antioxidants. It is important to note that certain vegetables and fruit are much higher in antioxidants than others.

Liquids

Skin that is contains a high level of moisture is less likely to wrinkle. Drinking lots of liquid throughout the day will make sure that your body is appropriately hydrated and will prevent dry skin. Six to eight glasses of water is the recommended amount for daily consumption. Coffee and carbonated drinks are not valid substitutes for water as caffeine is a diuretic. You should also be careful not to drink excessive amounts of liquid in the two to three hours before you go to sleep. This can cause morning puffiness and stretch the skin as a result.

Weight loss cycles

Aside from sunbathing in the noon sun, the fastest way to accrue wrinkles is to gain a lot of weight and then lose it again. Why does rapid weight gain and then loss cause wrinkling, simple, because the skin stretches with the extra poundage and then sags and crinkles with the weight loss. The degree to which the skin sags post weight loss gets more severe with age. Genetics and other factors can also play a role in how much the skin with wrinkle post weight loss. Wanting to have youthful skin should provide you with good motivation to keep an eye on how many calories you consume. Cyclical weight gain and loss can have negative effects on other parts of your body and health, not just the skin.

Food Preparation

Cooking is really all about treating foods with heat. The higher the temperature, the greater the rate of chemical reactions that is created, this goes for both chemistry and cooking. How does this relate to food? Basically, every time a food is heated or reheated, the number of chemical reactions that take place cause further breakdown of nutrients as well as greater oxidation. Put simply, cooking drains food of many of the important nutrients and antioxidants and it also can increase the amount of free radicals (oxidative by-products). We therefore, eat more age promoting free radicals and less healthy nutrients when we over cook food. There is no reason to avoid cooked food completely but it is healthier to eat food that is cooked for a shorter period of time and avoid foods that are deep fried, cooked in large amounts of oil or fat or grilled.