How Diet affects your aging skin

Hello Beautiful! As discussed last time, we are going to talk about how alcohol and diet affect your aging skin.

Alcohol

If you drink more than moderate amounts on a regular basis, the constant dilating of the facial blood vessels that alcohol induces puts a lot of pressure on the collagen and elastic of the dermis which supports the walls of those blood vessels. However, if you are young and don’t sunbathe, your dermis could probably cope for a good while but as you get older and collagen and elastic are damaged by UV exposure, they will no longer contain the walls of the blood vessels and small dilated capillaries show up on your face as thread veins. Alcohol also robs your face as of vitamins and minerals and for this reason it is often known as the antinutrient.

Diet

Your skin might be the last organ to benefit from the nutrients you ingest. It is thought that as little as 1% of vitamins and trace elements become available to it, hence the great focus on topical applications.

Below is a list of most important vitamins and minerals in the growth and maintenance of healthy skin, hair and nails. Your skin, like all the organs of your body, requires a fine balance of all the various vitamins and minerals.

Vitamin C – this is one of the most important vitamins in the manufacture of strong, healthy skin. It is used by the dermis to manufacture collagen. An extreme lack of this particular vitamin causes scurvy, the well-known disease that affected the skin and gums of ancient seafarers. But it is possible that even slightly deficient in vitamin c might compromise the production of collagen. Foods to eat with this nutrient could be oranges, grapefruit, kiwi, green peppers and broccoli.

Vitamin E - although there is no known deficiency disease associated with this vitamin, it is now being hailed as “radical protector”. Vitamin E is known to work well with more unstable C molecules, refortifying it to fight on against free radicals.

Thiamine – this is one of the B vitamins, and it is known to be important in ensuring normal cellular exchanges in skin, hair and nails.

Zinc – is essential for normal epidermal cell growth. Foods include crab, baked beans, and pumpkin seeds.

Selenium – is an essential element in the production of glutathione, our natural free-radical scavenger. Foods include Brazil nits, tuna, halibut and ham.

Calcium – is a key mineral for helping epidural cells mature. Foods to eat could be salmon, kale, yogurt and broccoli amongst many others. Stay Beautiful

~Jacqueline~