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When cold weather hits, it’s often your skin that starts to suffer first. You might find it loses its glow and becomes dull and tired looking. Or maybe you break out in blemishes or rashes more frequently than usual. Perhaps you’ve tried all the latest skincare products without success.
If this sounds like you, don’t despair. Help is at hand with some natural ways to boost your skin health this winter. Read on to learn how to naturally support glowing, resilient skin without resorting to expensive creams and treatments.
Your skin is a mirror to how healthy your body is on the inside. However, treating your skin alone will rarely yield long-lasting results. On the other hand, supporting your body’s inner health will help your skin glow on the outside.
Healthy Gut, Healthy Skin
Your skin closely reflects what’s happening in your gut. This relationship is called the gut-skin axis. Your skin and the microbes in your gut are both constantly talking to each other.
If your gut bacteria aren’t healthy, they’ll emit chemicals that can damage skin cells and increase inflammation.
A healthy gut will mean you obtain plenty of skin-nourishing nutrients from your food, too. Dietary protein is needed to make the structural scaffolding of your skin, known as collagen.
Because the vast majority of your immune system sits in your gut, if your digestive system isn’t healthy, your immune system will suffer. This often results in allergies to innocuous substances found in the environment, or to foods you eat. These frequently show up in the skin with hives, rashes or eczema. Many people find foods like soya, wheat, eggs, nuts or dairy products spark off a skin reaction. If your immune system mistakenly attacks your skin, psoriasis can be the result.
So, you can see if you apply a topical treatment like a steroid cream to calm inflamed skin you are simply suppressing the symptoms and not treating the underlying cause.
Therefore, if you want healthy skin you need to nurture your gut health. An excellent first step is to introduce more fibre into your diet – think seeds, nuts, berries, and green leafy vegetables.
Healthy Liver, Healthy Skin
Your liver’s most well-known role is as your body’s waste-control centre. If it becomes overwhelmed and can’t carry out its function efficiently, it will hand over some of its work to your skin. If too much of this detox duty falls on the skin, its health will suffer. Avoiding excess toxins from the environment and food will ease the burden on your liver.
But, one surefire way to give your liver extra work is if your gut contents travel along too slowly. This will mean toxins already been processed by your liver are reabsorbed back into your bloodstream again, needing to be dealt with once more.
Therefore, apart from looking after your gut, giving your liver some love can help improve skin health.
Shun Sugar
Eating excess sugar and refined carbohydrates can speed up the skin’s ageing process and create inflammation by the production of substances called advanced glycation end products (AGEs). These substances adversely affect skin collagen.
A sweet tooth is learned, so this also means your taste buds will adapt over time if you reduce the amount of added sugar in your diet.
Protect Your Skin’s Microbiome
Your skin has a community of bacteria all of its own. These help protect it from the environment, as well as regulating the immune cells residing in your skin. So you don’t want to wipe out your skin’s microbiome by over-using antibacterial soaps or gels.
Stress and Skin Health
Stress has many indirect negative effects on your skin. Many people find periods of stress lead to skin flare-ups. The hormone that’s released to help you deal with stress is called cortisol. This boosts inflammation and can break down the skin’s collagen.
Furthermore, stress messes up immune system functioning and impairs digestion, as well as impacting hormone balance. All of these can affect skin health.
You can’t control when and where stress comes into your life, but you can regulate your reaction to stress. Try meditation, breathwork, mindfulness or Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.
Nourish Your Skin
Your skin cells turn over rapidly, so they’re constantly hungry for good nutrition.
Important nutrients include zinc, vitamin E, vitamin C, beta carotene and vitamin D.
Omega 3 fats help skin stay soft and supple, and they manage inflammation, too. They’re found in oily fish, pumpkin seeds, walnuts, eggs, flax seeds and chia seeds.
Hydration, hydration, hydration!
Sufficient hydration is crucial to maintain skin elasticity. This means consuming plenty of water and foods with a high water content while limiting caffeinated beverages. Herbal infusions count towards fluid intake, however. Green tea is packed with skin-supporting antioxidants.
Go Natural
Use skin moisturisers and cleansers containing natural products rather than harsh chemicals which dry out and irritate your skin. The same goes for sun protection products.
Sleep on It
If you aren’t sleeping, it will show in your skin. During sleep, your skin repairs itself. Achieve more restful sleep by establishing a sleep routine, in other words, going to bed and getting up at a similar time each day. Avoid screens and caffeine in the evening. Alcohol may help you drop off, but you’ll have poorer quality sleep during the night.
Natural Support for Glowing Skin
If your skin is grumbling, it’s time to pay attention. But if you’re at a loss as to how best to support your skin health, our practitioners can help. We offer an integrated approach, which means your journey will be bespoke to your circumstances and needs. Our strength is we have a range of therapists we can recommend for your personal situation.
Your integrated health assessment will evaluate how your diet and lifestyle may be impacting your health, while a baseline blood test will reveal whether you are low in any essential nutrients.
Start your journey to better skin health today.
