Hey guys!
This is Heather from HealthyEatingStartsHere.com.
Today I wanted to talk to you a little bit about acne diet tips which might seem a little
odd with all the ads about acne, it usually gets focus on the dirt and oil build up and
then selling you soaps, cleansers, medications but there’s actually a huge link between
what you eat and what shows up on your skin.
Phil had, always had acne when he was growing up.
He was on some pretty strong medication from his doctor both creams and pills and it never
got any better until a few years ago when we start cleaning up our diet when we shifted
to vegetarian and then vegan diet.
And his skin cleared up which was pretty miraculous but now he wishes that he could go back to
his teenage self and let him know what his learn since then and so I thought I would
share some of these tips with you guys because they can really make a huge difference.
Skin reactions in general are often a reaction to something in your body and that could be
an allergy, it could be a toxin, most likely it’s just some specific trigger that causes
a reaction for you.
Some of the common are sugar, fatty foods and caffeine.
Now it could be a bigger underlying cause so something like a gland imbalance, a digestive
problem, a lymph blockage, something like that.
Those are the type of things that are a little bit harder to figure out and it was the reason
why I set up my Health KickStart program which you can check out if you like but I have some
general tips for you for acne and first one would be to do a cleanse.
A three day detox can make a really big difference and then after that you can add foods back
in and see if you get any kind of reaction.
Three days might not be long enough to clear those toxins out of your system but it’s
at least long enough for you to kick a certain craving or addiction that maybe you have.
Three days can often show you that yeah you can survive without it.
While you’re doing a detox, you definitely want to make sure that you have enough water
and enough fiber to push those toxins out of your system.
So that’s one reason why I usually recommend doing a green smoothie cleanse as suppose
to a juice fast or even a water fast.
Those you need to have supervision and make sure that you do it properly.
Acne reactions are usually associated with toxins that are building up in your liver
so cleansing out your liver is a really good idea and there are some certain foods that
you can eat that will help your liver purge those toxins and basically its bitter foods.
They don’t taste so nice but bitter foods are the ones that are going to help your liver
release stuff.
So beets are little bit bitter but not so bad and there’s things like celery is quite
bitter.
Cruciferous vegetables that’s broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, any of the bitter
greens, mustard greens, dandelion greens, stuff like that are gonna be really really
helpful and you don’t have to eat entirely bitter vegetables but getting more of them
into your diet while your sorting this out can really be helpful.
Then there are those foods that are really nourishing to your skin so it could be that
your just missing a certain nutrient and two of the most common are beta carotene which
you can find in the yellow, orange type vegetables as well as the green vegetables which ties
comes in nicely with the bitter.
So you’re looking at carrots, winter squash, sweet potatoes, red peppers, yellow peppers,
things like that are gonna be really high in beta carotene as well as again the green
leafy so kale, spinach, chard, all of those things.
Another really common nutrient for skin health is essential fatty acids and I talk a little
bit about those a little while ago on the blog but again the richest source of omega
3 fatty acid which can really be important for skin are ground flax seeds or chia seeds
and then nuts and seeds in general, avocados, those kinds of things are gonna be really
important for you to get the healthy fats that your skin needs to be healthy.
So those are all good foods to add to help purge toxins and get you healthy but there
are also some foods that you want to be careful to avoid and those would be some of the triggers
that I mentioned earlier so sugar is a big one and I’m talking about white sugar and
even the unrefined sugars can be trigger so try to stay clear of anything that’s really
concentrated in the sugars.
And then caffeine is another big trigger, alcohol, spicy foods is a huge one so try
to avoid anything that’s too too spicy and bad fats so those would be refined oils, things
like canola oils, sunflower oil and even olive oil if it’s refined can be a trigger.
Those fats have toxins in them that can trigger reactions in your skin so try to stay clear
of those, trans fat, again huge trigger and just unhealthy in general so stay clear of
those all of the time.
But yeah so that can be another trigger and then if you’re deficient in certain nutrients,
I mentioned some foods that you can eat to boost those nutrients but you can also look
into supplements in the forms of pills.
And those can really be really really helpful, there’s one product that I like that’s
called Daily Protector and the nutrients specifically that you want to look for are the antioxidants
vitamins so Vitamin A, C, E and the antioxidant minerals, zinc and selenium.
So I’ll post a link to that supplement that I like, it has all five of those plus some
herbs and some other antioxidant nutrients that can be really really helpful and essential
fatty acids supplements might be helpful as well.
I was mentioning that in terms of getting your skin healthy so that can be useful as
a supplement as well.
So those are my general tips for acne diet changes that you can make that will help clear
up your skin.
I would love to hear from you guys as to your stories on issues that you have with acne
and what work for you and what hasn’t.
I mentioned common triggers but it might be different for you so if you have found something
that when you cut it out you’ve notice a drastic decrease in acne.
I’m sure others would love to hear about that so leave a comment and let everybody
know.
And you can always find more info about healthy eating and nutrition in general over at my
website which is HealthyEatingStartsHere.com.
So I will see you guys next time.