Poor health usually shows up first on the skin. It’s true. The skin, our largest organ in the human body — or actually on the human body, wears stress, depression and illness like a bad suit, hanging off of us, off-color, and for everyone to see.
If you’ve ever noticed, people will ask “how are you feeling?” well before you begin to show symptoms of any illness? That’s simply due to our skin mirroring what’s going on inside the body. Have a fever? You probably have a rash. Suffering a common cold? Your face might look blotchy. Exhausted? Beware of cold sores. Every illness your immune system fights, can have varying affects on our skin.
More chronic conditions are often identified by skin abnormalities and doctors use these to identify a deeper condition. For instance, itchy, dry skin, especially on the lower legs, can be the first indication of diabetes. Fungal infection such as athlete’s foot can be a warning sign of a fungal infection, as with cold skin in the extremities, or white patches of skin (vitiligo), and poor wound healing. Good or bad, our skin is the tattle-tale for what lurks beneath.
Minus chronic illness, improving the brightness and wellness of our skin is often much easier than we think. A few tweaks to our diet and lifestyle, and voila it may be only days to healthier looking skin. What are they? Here are the top 5 modifications you can make today to improve the look and feel of your complexion tomorrow.
Drink water. A hydrated body fuels your body just like food does, and keeps everything running properly — digestion, mental agility, energy, but it’s also critical for healthy skin.
Our skin alone is made up of 64 percent water, and if we even go a few hours without drinking it, it’s going to show: It’ll be dry, tight, flaky, and more prone to wrinkling.
Stick to a minimum of 8 glasses a day and it won’t take long before you’re glowing.
Sleep. Getting six to eight hours of sleep per night helps the body avoid the “inflammatory bomb” caused by excess insulin, that wreaks havoc on your body and your skin during your waking hours.
Keeping a regular schedule — waking up early every day and going to bed at the same time every night helps avoid inflammation and allows the body to do the vital work of repair sleep allows it to do.
Eat well. Removing toxins like food additives, alcohol and caffeine from your diet makes a huge difference to your skin’s appearance.
The skin is an organ of the body that aids in the elimination of disease-causing poisons that take the form of free-radicals which are often the result of a poor diet. Your kidneys, liver and skin all play a critical role in cleansing the body of these contaminants.
Eating a whole foods, plant-based, lean protein, Mediterranean-style diet goes a long way to a cleaner, clearer complexion.
Eliminate stress, or at the very least learn how better to cope with it. Stress is a killer, not to put too fine a point on it, but stress that goes unchecked is the seed of disease.
Study after study links stress to a myriad of health problems and worsen the ones we already have. Diseases like obesity, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, depression, gastrointestinal problems, and asthma all are made worse with unchecked stress levels.
Stressful situations are also immediately visible on the skin and are evidenced by a sudden reddening, spotting, paling and rashes, so learning coping skills to curtail stress and not let it fester in the body is an essential skill we can all use to remove the disastrous affects of stress — on the inside and outside of our bodies.
Exercise. There is no better way to give your skin, and your body for that matter an instant boost of healthy hormones than with exercise. Regular movement of any kind benefits all the systems of the body, including the skin.
Regular exercise releases “happy hormones” like dopamine and endorphins, which directly react to stress effectively, nullifying its negative effects on the body. Endorphins are polypeptides made by the pituitary gland and central nervous system and endorphins primarily help us deal with stress and reduce feelings of pain. The pleasure effect associated with endorphins is in part related to the increased dopamine production that occurs due to activity.
Employ these simple changes and they quickly become routine, reducing toxins and the inflammation that goes with them, and in just a few short weeks you’ll never need another facial again!
Lynda Young is a health and science writer and blogger.
