Researchers have found that your complexion affects how healthy, and therefore how attractive, you appear. What’s more, your diet may be crucial to achieving the most desirable complexion.
Using specialist computer software, study participants were asked to manipulate the skin color of male and female Caucasian faces to make them look as healthy as possible. They chose to increase the rosiness, yellowness and brightness of the skin.
Skin that is slightly flushed with blood and full of oxygen suggests a strong heart and lungs, supporting the study’s findings that rosier skin appeared healthy. Smokers and people with diabetes or heart disease have fewer blood vessels in their skin, and so skin would appear less rosy.
But the preference for more golden or ‘yellow-toned’ skin as healthier might be explained by the ‘carotenoid pigments’ obtained from vegetables in the diet. These plant pigments are powerful antioxidants that soak up dangerous compounds produced when your body combats disease. They are also important for your immune and reproductive systems and may help prevent cancer.
Little or nothing can beat a healthy lifestyle if you want truly gorgeous, glowing skin. Your outside can quite literally mirror your inside in that regard.
Donna Gates, author of The Body Ecology Diet is a great source of helpful advice for optimizing the look and feel of your skin from deep within. She is a walking testimony of the effectiveness of her program as most people mistake her for being twenty years younger than she is.
Truly Clean is More than Skin Deep
By making sure your blood is continuously supplying healthy nutrients to every cell in your body, you can experience radiant, blemish-free skin. This is no easy task in today’s toxic-filled world. But by cleansing these dangerous substances from your body while optimizing your nutrient intake, great skin is still an achievable goal for most.
The good news is that your body is constantly in a cleansing mode and was created with the ability to push out toxins as long as you supply it with the energy to do so.
Eating a healthy diet that is suitable for your nutritional type; focusing on whole, bioavailable organic foods, is your number one strategy for helping your body to detox naturally.
Six Organs That Clean Your Skin From Within
The six organs responsible for providing you with beautiful skin include your:
- Liver
- Kidneys
- Adrenals
- Thyroid
- Large intestines
- Small intestines
Your liver and kidneys are the two organs that filter out impurities on an ongoing basis. If your diet is less than ideal, these two organs can easily become overtaxed.
Sitting on top of your kidneys are your walnut-sized adrenals. Often called the “workhorses” of your body, they make many essential hormones including pregnenolone, DHEA, estrogen, progesterone and testosterone.
Healthy hormones are an essential ingredient when seeking energy and beautiful skin. A well-nourished, energetic thyroid also provides hormones and works closely with your adrenals to create energy.
Dry, flakey, sluggish skin is evidence of a weak thyroid.
Your liver, kidneys, adrenals and thyroid are also dependent on the condition of your small and large intestines. These two organs not only provide nutrients to other organs, but they are also responsible for the removal of waste products from your body. When waste meant for elimination remains in your intestines your skin becomes thick, oily and blemished.
Pure, flawless skin is a reflection of clean intestines.
All of the following items will have a negative effect on your inner organs, and therefore need to be avoided if you want clearer, healthier skin:
- Drugs and alcohol
- Chemicals and heavy metals
- Trans fat
- Refined, processed table salt
- Processed foods
- Pasteurized dairy products
Foods that Promote Beautiful Skin
Green foods that promote healthy liver function include chlorella and dark green leafy veggies, such as:
- Kale
- Spinach
- Dandelion greens
- Broccoli
Other foods known to contribute to healthy skin include raw and virgin fats and oils. Coconut oil is especially good for your thyroid.
You’ll also want to include plenty of mineral-rich foods (dark green leafy veggies, ocean veggies and seafood) and antioxidant-rich foods (black currants, blueberries) in your diet.
Another group of foods worth mentioning are fermented (or cultured) foods.
Fermented foods help promote the growth of friendly intestinal bacteria and aid in digestion. They also support healthy immune function, including an increase in B vitamins, omega-3, digestive enzymes, lactase and lactic acid, and other immune chemicals that fight off harmful bacteria.
By keeping your insides healthy and clean, your skin will have no choice but follow suit.
That said, I also believe that feeding your skin from the outside with only the best ingredients from nature, can help. This was a major reason for creating my own USDA Certified Organic skin care line.
Again, you’ll want to pay as much attention to the quality and purity of whatever you put on your body as you do with what you put inside it.
Prematurely Aging Skin May Be a Sign of Emotional Stress
In addition to eating a healthy diet, effectively addressing stress is another aspect of maintaining a healthy and youthful-looking face.
Previous research has found that your life experiences, or perhaps more precisely, how you deal with them, have a greater impact on your looks as you age than your genetic makeup.
For example, people who had been through the stress of a divorce looked nearly two years older than their married, single or even widowed twin. Those who used antidepressants also appeared significantly older.
This lends further credence to the emerging and incredibly interesting field of epigenetics, which centers around the notion that environmental factors such as stress and your diet are directly responsible for the expression of your genes.
And it is the expression of your genes — NOT the genes themselves — that dictates whether you will develop certain diseases, and how gracefully you may show your age.
So although you may have a genetic “predisposition” for facial wrinkles, for example, you are not necessarily doomed to develop a face full of wrinkles during middle-age.
According to groundbreaking research by the likes of Bruce Lipton, PhD., a forerunner in the field of epigenetics and The New Biology, your genetic expression is ruled by your mind and your emotions. In other words, being able to maintain a more positive outlook can influence the expression of your genes, and thus directly impact how you age.
Previous research has also determined that stress lessens your skin’s ability to function properly, and that extended exposure to psychological stress can speed up the aging process of your cells and cause them to die at a faster rate than normal.
In a nutshell, having a healthy, youthful appearance on the outside involves both a healthy diet that supports your internal cleansing mechanisms, and effectively addressing your stress levels.
And both of these factors can have a beneficial impact on the expression of your genes.
The sooner you start to make these positive changes — to your stress levels, mental outlook and your diet — the better. Whether you’re young or old, this healthy lifestyle can help maintain a beautiful complexion and keep the signs of aging at bay, or at least slow them down considerably.
