Dietitian Answers: Can sugar age your skin? ⚠️🫣

Описание: Nutrient-poor diets can lead to inflammation, breakouts, and premature skin ageing. We can turn to skincare products, but many of these can’t reach the deeper layers of the skin. So, for step 1 in our skincare regimens, we should look at what’s on our plates rather than our bathroom shelves. Nutrition and skin should not be overlooked.
This post is all about nutrition and skin.

First, there are two things I want you to know when it comes to nutrition and skin health.

Skin has a 28-day cycle. So, once you change your diet, you may not see changes overnight, but that glow might appear in about a month’s time.
Diet is only one part of the puzzle; hormones, genetics, sleep, and stress all come into play when it comes to our skin. Good or Bad skin is rarely caused by diet alone. Many people cut out entire food groups to improve their skin, but this approach can often lead to more harm than good.

What To Avoid – Nutrition and The Skin
Alcohol:
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Alcohol is pro-inflammatory and dehydrating; plus, when you drink, you tend to eat poorly and sleep poorly, which affects your skin.

A study that included more than 3,000 women found that women who drink eight or more drinks a week (the equivalent of one bottle of wine) are more likely to have fine lines on their upper faces, foreheads, and around the eyes. The study also showed midface volume loss and more visible blood vessels.

Alcohol can also flare pre-existing conditions such as eczema and rosacea.

But a big problem here is that alcohol also wreaks havoc on hormones and sleep. At night, when you sleep, you produce growth hormones; it is a time when we regenerate, and skin turnover is at its highest, renewing your cells. But drinking disrupts this process, so we need to protect our sleep.

Also, if you are sleep-deprived, your cortisol, a stress hormone, increases, and we know that stress worsens many skin conditions. It can lead to breakouts and exacerbate psoriasis.

Restrictive Diets
I would also avoid very low-calorie or restrictive diets.


In addition to this, if you remove a particular food group, your skin will suffer. The first sign of any nutrition deficiency is often seen on the skin, hair and nails. For example, B12 deficiency is common among people who may cut out dairy or follow a vegan diet. This can present as cracked edges or sores around the side of the mouth. When low-fat diets were popular, it was more widespread to see much dryer skin. On the opposite side of the scale, very high-fat Keto diets can cause a very itchy rash known as “keto rash” It’s a direct result of cutting out carbohydrates, which causes the skin to become inflamed and triggers red bumps and blotches to appear. The treatment for this is simple – you reintroduce carbohydrates!

Now let’s move on to the positive…and what we can include more of to optimize our skin!

Nutrition And Skin: The Five Principles
Principle 1: Supporting Our Skin Structure With Protein.
In particular, we want to support the collagen protein network in our skin.

Collagen is the most abundant protein in the skin. As we age, our bodies make less collagen. From the age of 20, we start to lose about 1% of the collagen in our skin per year. After menopause, falling oestrogen levels lead to a further reduction in collagen production. As these levels drop over time, our skin loses its elasticity. This results in the skin losing its bounce and becoming more susceptible to wrinkle formation.

There are two main ways we can support our skin’s collagen through food choices.

Number 1 is simply eating enough protein. This is the most important thing. Protein helps ensure that our body has enough building blocks to create collagen. Check out this article to learn more about how much protein you should eat. The good news is that our bodies can make collagen, so if we don’t eat lots of dietary collagen, our bodies can naturally produce collagen by taking amino acids from other protein-rich foods. So you can be a vegan, vegetarian, or meat eater and still be in good standing to support your collagen production by eating a wide range of foods with enough protein. If you are unsure, protein-rich foods include meat, eggs, fish, dairy, legumes, beans and nuts.
Our bodies can make collagen, but to do this, we also need Vitamin C and Vitamin E from our diet. These are critical players in stimulating collagen production. Food sources rich in Vitamin E are almonds, sunflower seeds, leafy greens, peanuts, and avocados. As for vitamin C, you can find it in citrus fruits and vegetables like bell peppers and broccoli.