Blood sugar levels have an important effect on the aging process. Glucose is not only a key fuel for cellular use but it is also a potentially damaging substance when it comes to tissues and cells.
Feeding your Skin from Inside
- The entire collection of cells in the body requires a tremendous number of nutrients and metabolites to thrive. Many of these nutrients need to be derived from food; these include minerals, vitamins, and essential amino acids. Yet other nutrients are created within a healthy and well-nourished body. Unfortunately, no skin care product can replace these processes.
- Putting on a nutrient-enriched skin cream does not guarantee that the nutrients actually penetrate the skin cells. It is entirely possible for the nutrients to just rest on the top of your skin until the next time you wash. The quantity of active ingredients that is actually absorbed into the skin cells is dependent on several factors: the condition of the skin, the number of active ingredients in the product, how the product is manufactured, and many other things. This doesn’t mean that all skin cream is of no value but should just serve as a word of warning that they can be unreliable. Nutrients that you gain through healthy eating are the most reliable as it is certain that they will get to your skin cells.
- Nutrition has an effect on the aging process as a whole. Slowing down the aging mechanism as a whole will also slow the aging process in the skin.
- Foods with high nutritional value benefit not only the skin but also the other bodily systems and general health.
Why the skin cannot only be nourished from the inside only
- The aging process for the human skin happens because of a combination of reasons: innate biological functions combined with environmental factors such as sun, wind, and pollution. Good nutrition can slow the aging process, but it doesn’t protect from environmental hazards. Proper use of sunblock, limiting exposure to the sun, and other steps discussed elsewhere in this site must also be taken.
- There is no safe way to ingest a heavily concentrated amount of active ingredients to enrich the skin cells. Topical treatments are the safest and most effective means of creating a fairly fast and effective set of results. Vitamin C is a good example of this. You can use a topical cream with a concentration of 10 percent or more safely but ingesting that much orally is very dangerous as the kidneys excrete the vitamin C, and high dosages can lead to some serious problems.
- Some effective ingredients are safe for topical use but not for taking orally.
- Other substances such as growth hormones and peptides are not easily broken down in the digestive system. Therefore, they are neutralized during their GI tract time and can only be used in topical form.
- Great care should be taken when choosing the nutrients that you plan to take orally. Some of them cannot be absorbed effectively via the GI tract. This can lead to digestive issues such as hypoacidity.
Summing Up
To keep your skin looking healthy, you need to maintain a diet that is well-balanced nutritionally. While healthy eating may not produce striking results, not eating a healthy diet will cause your skin to age much faster. A lack of nutrients like vitamin A, B-complex, and some essential fatty acids can lead to dermatitis and other skin problems. Low-level deficiencies are quite common and are often undiagnosed as they may not lead to serious issues. Still, they can certainly have a negative effect on the skin's ability to renew it or to heal quickly. Improved nutrition can often result in younger-looking skin and possibly even a partial reversal of aging. In addition, skin care products are a lot less likely to be effective if your skin lacks essential nutrients. Finally, some nutrients that, if ingested in doses that are higher than the minimal requirement (but still within a safe amount), may produce benefits to the skin that are greater than what regular basic balanced nutrition can deliver.
The good health of every organ in the body is dependent on vitamins and minerals; the skin is one of those organs. Vitamin and mineral deficiencies can be particularly harmful to the skin and can result in accelerated aging or skin disease.
Non-essential nutrients are the ones that the body can do without or else are synthesized by the body productively. Essential nutrients are the ones that body cannot make itself and cannot do without either. The third type of nutrient are the conditionally essential ones, these can be synthesized by the body if it is working at optimal efficiency.
One of the major causes of aging is free radical damage. As has been discussed earlier, free radicals are the indiscriminate and highly reactive chemicals that have the ability to damage the structure of all living cells.
One of the main fat soluble antioxidant vitamins found in the body is vitamin E. It have protective functions within the cellular membrane, the lipoproteins and other structures that are oily in nature. Skin is particularly high in unsaturated fatty acids so using vitamin E (both topically and orally) is very beneficial.
When silicone is mentioned in terms of beauty, the first thought is that most have breaks implants, most of which are done with silica gel implants. But, interestingly, that isn’t the only use for silicone in the beauty market.
The cost of a skincare treatment should not be indicative of its value for the skin. In other words, just because a remedy or supplement is expensive doesn’t mean that it is good. Cheaper remedies can be very effective. A good example of this is the fact that regular exercise, which can cost nothing or close to it, can have very positive effects on your cardiovascular system. In addition, eating fewer carbohydrates and cutting down on your caloric intake can have life-lengthening effects that are cheap and easy to achieve.