Essential Foods for Younger Glowing Skin and Face

Ever wondered how your diet can turn back the clock on your skin? Can the foods you eat really make you look more youthful? 
 
In this enlightening episode of me&my health up, host Anthony Hartcher, a clinical nutritionist and lifestyle medicine specialist, unveils the secrets to achieving younger-looking skin from the inside out. Discover how the right foods can not only nourish your body but also transform your skin, giving it a vibrant, youthful glow. 

Anthony delves deep into the science of skin health, explaining the vital role of proteins like collagen, keratin, and elastin in maintaining skin's elasticity and firmness. He shares invaluable insights into how your daily diet can influence the production and quality of these essential proteins. From the power of protein-rich foods like nuts, seeds, legumes, and fish, to the hidden treasures in fruits and vegetables, this episode is packed with practical advice for anyone looking to enhance their skin's natural beauty. 

But it's not just about what you eat. Anthony also explores the impact of lifestyle factors such as stress management, hydration, and sleep on skin health. Learn about the foes of youthful skin, like sugar and unhealthy fats, and how to avoid them. Plus, discover the holistic approach to skin care that goes beyond the plate, including tips on gentle skin cleansing, moisturisingmoisturizing, and exfoliation. 

Tune in to this episode of me&my health up for a journey into the world of skin health and nutrition. It's time to empower yourself with the knowledge to make your skin reflect your inner health and vitality. Listen now and take the first step towards a radiant, younger-looking complexion. 

About me&my health up & Anthony Hartcher 

me&my health up seeks to enhance and enlighten the well-being of others. Host Anthony Hartcher is the CEO of me&my wellness, which provides holistic health solutions using food as medicine and a holistic, balanced, lifestyle approach. Anthony holds three bachelor's degrees in Complementary Medicine; Nutrition and Dietetic Medicine; and Chemical Engineering. 

Podcast Disclaimer
Any information, advice, opinions or statements within it do not constitute medical, health care or other professional advice, and are provided for general information purposes only. All care is taken in the preparation of the information in this Podcast. [Connected Wellness Pty Ltd] operating under the brand of “me&my health up”..click here for more

Transcript

Anthony Hartcher: 0:08

Welcome back to another insightful and exciting episode of me&my health up. I'm your host, Anthony Hartcher. I'm a clinical nutritionist and lifestyle medicine specialist. And today, I'll be sharing with you some insight in terms of essential foods for a younger, healthy looking skin and face. Yes, so we're going to help or I'm going to help you look vibrant in your skin and make you feel wonderful and youthful in that process. So let's get under way with today's episode. And I'd like to share it from a holistic perspective because yes, there are foods but if we get stuck on the foods, we miss the bigger picture, there is a much bigger picture to younger, healthy looking skin. And for less wrinkles, and for the anti aging, look and feel good about yourself. So where do we start, we start with the skin outer layer of protection is there to protect us it's protect us from the outside world to stop things from the outside world that are not meant to be inside our body from coming in. So yes, there's a layer of protection there. It is made up of proteins. And with those proteins, there's a number of cofactors that are important to making those proteins within our skin. And obviously we need to have our genes expressing themselves in the right way in order to make the right amino acids. So if our gene expression isn't how it should be, then yes, we won't be having the right expression of genes for a healthy younger looking skin, we'll get that aging looking skin. So where do I start with this? Let's start with the nutrition that's good in terms of what you need to be eating on a regular basis to produce that younger healthy looking skin. It starts with collagen. It starts with keratin, it starts with elastin, which are all proteins, they're all proteins that we need within our body to make our skin essentially. And so these proteins will come from protein rich food, and where best to get that from a source of protein rich foods such as nuts, seeds, legumes, there's the meat, there's the fishes if you don't include them as meats ahead. And so there's a number of sources. There's also protein within grains. So grains, certainly whole grains contain elements of protein. They're not just all carbohydrates, which they're demonized as they do contain some protein. And yes, fruits and vegetables also contain protein, but a lot less than the meats, nuts, seeds. So and there's tofu, there's all the beans and legumes. And so we need them on a regular basis. We want to be consuming protein on a regular basis throughout the day, because it's the building block of life. And yes, we need it to make our skin the cofactors that go with it. Zinc thinks an important cofactor. So zinc will be generally contained within a lot of these protein containing foods. See nature just has it so right. And it's particularly the cysteine amino acid that's manufactured that is really, really important for skin production. It has salt fires, sulfur bounded to it. And so we certainly want to be eating a wide variety source of proteins to get cysteine, which is the sulfur now which has sulfur bounded to it. And there's obviously vegetables that contain sulfur, and there's other foods such as eggs, so eggs is a great source of protein. It also has sulfur within it, it's also got biotin so brightens really important to encourage the carotene production, which is part of our skins the carotene sites within our skin makes is made up of keratin. So all it makes keratin. So yeah, so that that's really important is to have the biotin which is within eggs. It's it's known as Vitamin B6, sorry, Vitamin B7. So vitamin B7 or Vitamin H is biotin. And it'll It is generally found in a wide variety of foods such as grains, so yes, whole grains. So we don't want to demonize the grains is just carbohydrates. They also contain B Vitamins, if you're eating the whole grains, it's also within eggs. It's also we find B vitamins in meat, how there's also B vitamins in nuts and seeds. So, again, it all gets back to really eating a whole diet. It's not excluding food groups is going to be key here to make sure you get that keratin, the biotin, the sulfur containing amino acids cysteine. And I mentioned zinc, which is a really important cofactor in the production. So, yes, we need these elements, we also need beta carotene, which is the precursor to vitamin A. So that's really important for skin protection. And yeah to also look after the skin, it's a powerful antioxidant as well. So and we also need vitamin E. So Vitamin E is also helps us with protection from ultra violet radiation from the sun so that UV light, vitamin E provides some protection from that. So we want to have vitamin E, vitamin E is contained within almonds. And there's other foods containing Vitamin E as well. So if we eat a real whole wide variety diet, we get exposed to all these cofactors. And we don't need to just focus on particular foods and just eat those foods. It's better to eat a whole variety diet, that way you're getting all the essentials that are required. So I mentioned zinc biotin. These are really important vitamin A, which we get from beta carotene which is in pumpkin, which is in squash which is in sweet potatoes. So any foods that look yellow orange contain beta carotene, which is a precursor to vitamin A. So that's really helpful in terms of protecting our skin. So we want to have vitamin A containing foods we want to have the B vitamins and in particular biotin. I mentioned the B vitamins contained within meat they contain within fruits, seeds, even legumes contain B vitamins, so eating the whole grains, it's in the outer outer of the grain, so it's in the skin. So we certainly want to be eating the outside or the the like the brown rice for example, not just eating the endoderm we want to eat the exotherm which is outside the outer protective layer because that contains the vitamins. So when we strip off the outer protective layer and just have white rice, we also stripping away the vitamins. So really important to eat whole whole grains. And we also want to eat those sulfur containing compounds within foods because that's really important in terms of the makeup of skin and making it function well. So those sulfur containing foods are the eggs your fish, so the fish are also good for polyunsaturated fats which are essential for moisturizing the skin are keeping its its tone and function keeping it supple. So we certainly want to have those good fats, which is the polyunsaturated fats, which you'll find in fish, the mono ancestral fat rated fats, which you'll find in olive oil, you'll find it in avocado is the other one that's high minus unsaturated fats, so the mono unsaturated fats olive oil, avocado oil or avocado. And then you have the polyunsaturated fats, which is what is found in oily fishes such as salmon, herrings. sardines, mackerel is another one, anchovies is another one. So all the oily fishes contain those high amounts of omega threes, which is really important, Omega six is also important. So omega three and Omega six are essential to the body, the body cannot make either of omega six Omega three, so they're essential that we bring them into our body. And we get lots of omega sixes through our eating our meats. So meats contain Omega sixes. So again, wide variety in our whole grain is really important in terms of diet, but it's also the foods that you don't want to be eating excessive amounts of too, such as sugar, so sugars, terrible in terms of downregulating or causing issues with collagen, so it will react with collagen. excessive sugar will react with collagen and elastin, which is another protein that's produced by the body. And it cross links the two and causes what we call glycation of the two. So we've got the glucose and the protein binding together. And this is where we get these ages from, which is the advanced glycation end products. And this is not good for our skin, it causes it to age and it, it denatured the collagen, and so the collagen doesn't perform as or function as it should or as we want it to. So it also is the function of collagen. So these are the advanced glycation end products, which we want to avoid happening and we avoid that through reducing excessive sugar consumption. We do it through reducing foods cooked at high temp pitcher. So baking, roasting, grilling, frying, boiling, all these things that really high temperature cooking at high temperature will produce the denatured lipids and denatured proteins, which end up with advanced glycation end products, which is what is going to age ages faster, essentially. So lots of free radicals, we don't want that it's going to accelerate oxidation in the body and accelerate our de kaap decomposition or the degeneration essentially of ourselves. So it accelerates aging, in essence. So what we want to do is minimize fry foods minimize grilling, so excessive barbecuing at high temperatures, excessive frying. So all that fried stuff, I just mentioned that I mentioned it again, it's really important. Keep away from the fast foods, which are really fried foods. Yes, they taste great, but terrible for your skin. And it's very pro inflammatory. So pro inflammatory is going to initiate a cortisol response. So we don't want excessive cortisol because that also down regulates collagen production and collagen is essential for good healthy skin, it is a protein that is very abundant in our body. And we want to make sure it works well in order to keep us younger looking if collagen is downregulated, through excessive sugar production in terms of its denatured, or its downregulated because of excessive cortisol production, pro inflammatory response, so So anything that stresses us, so stress is really important to younger, healthy looking skin. So what stress does is it elevates cortisol is a stress hormone, and that affects collagen and its function, how active it is, or how inactive it is. So stress, we want to manage that really important, it also causes vasoconstriction, which affects the supply to the skin. And so with that vasoconstriction, but less nutrients, less products get into the skin, because what we want is the blood essentially helping us to get away from the animal. So it's it's very much in a fight flight or freeze mode, in order to keep us alive to keep us in survival mode. And vasoconstriction is part of that process. So that affects our skin. And we affect the supply to our skin. And skin turnover is also affected through stress through cortisol. So when we're stressed, we do less maintenance on our body. So the body is more about keeping you alive. And and free. Keeping you know, keeping you alive is number one, of course, because if you're not alive, it doesn't matter if you've got younger, healthy looking skin, you did right so so it prioritizes survival ahead of maintenance. And so the maintenance of your skin, the skin turnover is not happening as quickly. And so yes, you have older looking skin. And it's probably you know, it's part of the reason why we encourage that exfoliation. So the roughing up of the skin or this the skin the dry brushing so that dry brushing gets off the dead skin and encourages the skin turnover. So it encourages skin turnover. And again, we don't want to do that excessively. Because we'll have ultra sensitive skin if we constantly taking off that outer layer. But again, you know, doing it as part of your routine, not excessively but part of your skin routine is helpful. And again, not overdoing it. Not really scrubbing yourself so hard that you haven't got any protection, and you're ultra sensitive to everything. So just just be I guess, do this imbalance do dry skin brushing and balance to the exfoliation imbalance have a part of your regular routine. But I wouldn't go overboard and thinking that it needs to be done. So regolith ultimately, you're going to let foreign bodies that shouldn't be inside your body inside your body because you haven't got a good protective layer of skin. It's really important that we also manage what we don't do as well as what we do. And so the other things that we don't want to do is we don't want to excessive exposure to UV and what I'm saying is excessive skin, skin exposure to the sun but it's not saying get no skin exposure to the sun. We actually need skin exposure to the sun to make create vitamin D, which is really important for our health and well being vitamin D is essential and it's made synthesized in the scanner through exposure to UVB light and UV light is the light between 30% of the horizon or walk from the horizon to the other end of 30%. So it's really that sort of 10am to sort of 2pm sort of time period is where UVB is most active. Now the way we give ourselves protection from getting too exposed to UV is the infrared in the morning. So, we do need exposure to sunlight throughout the day in order to stay healthy to keep the body in the circadian rhythm. And the reason why I bring up the circadian rhythm is the circadian rhythm is going to be really important for a good night's sleep, which is where we enable the repair and rejuvenation to the skin. Okay, so regular exposure to the sun throughout the day is important but not excessive amounts. So five minutes every hour, but it doesn't mean spend hours in the sun that's excessive. So the other one is getting a good night's sleep is really important for the skin turnover rejuvenation and repair. Hydration is essential. So making sure you're hydrating and foods that you want to consume on a you know on a sort of consistent basis is foods that are really high in collagen also high in Pyro lauric, or lauric acid which is really important for maintaining skin moisture. And both of those as well as biotin are found in bone broth. So having a regular bone broth is really helpful for the skin because it contains a lot of nourishment for the skin. So just wanted to share that food, the hydration, the repair rejuvenation of the skin the things to avoid and have less exposure to manage your stress is really important in order to keep a holistic younger looking skin. So that's really it for today. If you've liked the episode, please share it with anyone else that might be looking to keep their skin younger and feeling great and vibrant. Please share it with them. I'm all about enhancing and enlightening the well being of others and thanks for listening.

Podcast Disclaimer: 17:12

This podcast and any information advice opinions or statements within it do not constitute medical healthcare or professional advice and are provided for general information purposes only. All care is taken in the preparation of the information in this podcast, connected wellness Proprietary Limited operating under the brand is me&my health up does not make any representations or give any warranties about his accuracy, reliability, completeness or suitability for any particular purpose. This podcast and any information, advice or opinions or statements within it are not to be used as a substitute for professional medical, psychological psychiatry or any other mental health care or health care in general. me&my health up recommends you seek the advice of a doctor or qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Inform your doctor of any changes that you make to your lifestyle and discuss these with your doctor. Do not disregard medical advice or delay visiting a medical professional because of something you hear in this podcast. This podcast has been carefully prepared on the basis of current information. changes in circumstances after publication may affect the accuracy of this information to the maximum extent permitted by the law, me&my health up disclaims any such representations or warranties to the completeness, accuracy merchantability or fitness for purpose of this podcast and will not be liable for any expenses losses damages incurred indirect or consequential damages or costs that may be incurred as a result of the information being inaccurate or incomplete in any way. And for any reason. No part of these podcasts can be reproduced or redistributed, published, copied or duplicated in a form without prior permission of me&my health up.