Skin Nutrition Anti-Acne Diet

Diet & Nutrition

Let’s dive into the diet-skin connection.  When we eat foods that don’t digest well, it knocks your body off balance, which can immediately result in inflammatory responses like acne, red skin and potentially rosacea if done repeatedly. When eating for your best skin possible, it’s best to stick with real, unprocessed foods. Go organic; just do it.  If you eat anything packaged, a good rule of thumb is 5 ingredients or less. If you can’t pronounce it, try to avoid it. We have a blog post regarding this for those who’d like more of an explanation.

Tips

Five tips to keep in mind when eating for healthy skin are:

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Mind your sugar intake - With eating low-glycemic foods. Veggies and meat fall into this category already!

Get enough healthy fats - Like Omega-3! Wild salmon, sardines, almonds, walnuts and other delicious fatty foods can be your friend here.

Drink a minimum of 3-4 liters of water per day - Especially if you exercise or drink coffee.

Eat your hydration - Foods like cucumber, apples, greens, berries, cantaloupe and tomatoes are all examples of hydration-packed foods that help fight dehydration throughout the day. Sweet.

Alkalize in the morning - Celery juice, wheat grass shots and powdered greens are options for achieving an alkaline body.

Triggers

These Foods Trigger Acne, Breakouts, Skin Inflammation and Aging

Dairy and Whey: Dairy products contain Insulin-Like-Growth Factors or IGFs, which stimulate more oil in the sebaceous glands and trigger more inflammation. It actually changes the composition of your oil, making it thicker, stickier and harder to sweat out. Not cool. You may notice that consuming milk starts increasing your facial oil in as soon as 2 hours. You may likely notice chin acne within 24 hours of consuming milk (or whey) – it’s that acne-causing. You may notice that once you eliminate dairy, you see a drop in visible oil within 48 hours, along with a visible reduction in active breakouts. It’s simply that powerful.

Refined Sugar: Found in most processed & convenience-packaged foods, snacks and beverages. Sugar contains no nutrients. It is quickly digested as calories and can actually pull minerals from your body during digestion. Spikes in blood sugar can result in inflammation, increased sweat and oil and a subsequent spur of bacterial growth in our pores and hair follicles – it is truly the worst of the worst for acne. Remember that alcohol is sugar, so “drink responsibly” for yourself and your skin!

Trans Fat Foods: Trans fat is usually found in processed foods ranging from fried food, chips, cookies, cake, even some packaged foods label “healthy” and also comes from vegetable oil. Trans fat also causes blockages in the tiny blood vessels in the skin, which triggers inflammation and increases acne flares.

Milk Chocolate: Contains refined sugar, dairy and usually trans fat, which are the trifecta of acne triggers.

Non-Organic Meat: Meats that are not organic can contain high levels of antibiotics and inflammatory Omega-6. Continuous exposure to antibiotics can disrupt the good bacteria in your body. This unbalance leads to increased breakouts.

Alcohol: Many cocktails are loaded with sugar, which causes inflammation and blood sugar spikes. Alcohol is also a diuretic that can dehydrate the skin, which can lead to more breakouts. We prefer agave-based tequila as it 1. does the job, and 2. is lower-glycemic due to the slower burn rate of the agave sugar. Happy Cinco de Mayo.