Regular trips to the dermatologist help your skin stay healthy and cancer-free. But what can you do between dermatology appointments to keep your skin strong and youthful? Do the same things you do to keep your other organs healthy, including eating well, exercising, and providing your cells with the building blocks they need to rebuild themselves and create energy.
The expert dermatologists at Specialists in Dermatology want your skin to be healthy and vibrant, so it can resist the stresses of aging, the blight of acne, and the hazard of skin cancer. Between visits to their Houston, Texas, and Woodlands, Texas offices, they recommend that you “feed your skin” with nutrient-rich foods and supplements.
Even though your skin needs all of the same nutrients your body requires, you can give your skin an extra boost by making sure you get a few key vitamins and minerals. Here our experts provide a few essentials for skincare from the inside out.
You may already know how important collagen is for maintaining your skin’s structure and integrity. Every rejuvenating technique out there — from lasers to microneedling — has the goal of stimulating collagen production to reshape aging or damaged skin.
Vitamin C also stimulates collagen production. In fact, if you have trouble remembering what vitamins are best for skin health, just think of vitamin C as vitamin C-ollagen.
This potent vitamin is an antioxidant and may also reduce your risk for skin cancer. You can get vitamin C from citrus fruits and certain vegetables, including broccoli and green peppers. Piling on veggies is a good way to improve your health overall, but you may also take a vitamin C supplement.
Remember Retin-A? The reason that product became such a popular wrinkle treatment is because it’s a derivative of Vitamin A. Vitamin A helps your skin rebuild itself. It also appears to protect against sun damage by minimizing sunburn.
If you use topical Vitamin A or Retin-A, though, be sure to avoid the sun. Though taking Vitamin A orally may give you some added protection against sun damage (you still need sunscreen!), topical Vitamin A increases your skin’s sensitivity to light.
You can find Vitamin A in foods such as carrots, liver, and mangoes. Although Vitamin A deficiency in the United States is rare, you can talk to your primary care physician to find out if you need to supplement.
This fat-soluble vitamin works with Vitamin C to strengthen the walls of your cells. It’s also a powerful antioxidant that absorbs energy from the sun’s damaging UVB rays. You can get vitamin E from eating nuts and green vegetables. You may also benefit from a supplement.
Minerals are just as important to skin health as vitamins are. Most Americans are deficient in magnesium, selenium, and calcium. You can increase these minerals in your diet by eating fatty fish, eggs, nuts, and dark leafy green vegetables.
Though vitamins and minerals are important, your skin also needs macronutrients to thrive. High-quality protein — such as that found in grass-fed and pastured meats, poultry, and eggs — is essential to creating the collagen matrix that keeps skin thick, strong, and elastic.
Good fats — such as those in wild-caught oily fish, nuts, avocados, and grass-fed butter — moisturize your skin and help keep it pliable. These types of fats are also better for your heart.
Of course, to be sure your skin stays healthy, don’t neglect your annual skincare screening. Contact Specialists in Dermatology in Houston, Texas, or The Woodlands, Texas, today.
*If you wonder what organ could possibly be larger than your approximately 20 feet and 22 pounds of skin, it’s the recently identified interstitium, a meshwork of connective tissues that wrap around your organs and runs underneath your skin.
