"I am the Allower of my own Wellbeing"

A natural health newsletter written by Sherry Dell, PhD, CN

Volume 3, Issue 5
June, 2010

Home-made Skin Treatments

For acne, try these handy tips.

For wrinkles and aging skin, try these handy tips.  Much more economical than a trip to the spa but the same ingredients they use.

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We seldom think of it, except perhaps for vanity's sake, but our skin is the body's largest organ of both nourishment and elimination.  This makes your skin one of your most critical components of health.

It is also essentially one of your earliest warning signs of nutritional imbalances, stresses, or other biochemical problems.  You already know this.  One night of poor sleep or a bit too much hedonistic overindulgence, and voila!  What do you see in the mirror?  Dark circles under the eyes, a sallowness in your overall color, maybe some skin outbreaks or eruptions.

If we think about our skin at all, we generally think about what we can do topically on the outside to make it look better.  I want to suggest that the best way to make your skin look better happens from what you put on the inside.  And more importantly,  what you put on the inside will determine how well your skin can participate in keeping you healthy.

There are of course many, many kinds of skin conditions and each will communicate its own unique messages of imbalance to those who know how to listen.  Your job is to find a practitioner who can help you translate those messages.  Here are a couple examples of the kinds of messages you might be receiving.

At age 12, 13, 14 or so, acne is likely to be your primary skin symptom. As the hormones of adolescence begin to kick in, it's easy for imbalances to occur.  If you happen to be eating a high-carbohydrate diet these hormone imbalances are likely to be more pronounced. Too much sugary carbohydrate raises your insulin levels which in turn creates a whole cascade of biochemical changes in your body moving you away from health.  Acne is one of them.

If you're still having acne at 20, 30, 40, or 50, don't feel bad.  The standard American diet has managed to keep our hormones imbalanced throughout our lives.  Begin with your diet to correct these problems.

What does a high carbohydrate diet look like?  Besides the obvious sugary foods like sodas, candies, cookies, cakes or other treats, it also includes processed flour-based foods such as cereals, breads, pastas, crackers, pretzels, etc.  For example, pancakes or cereal for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch and pasta for supper along with a soda or two and a few treats throughout the day is a very high-carbohydrate diet.

So the first best thing to do for adolescent acne is to reduce simple carbohydrates in your diet.  Ensure you eat protein at every meal, preferably chicken, fish, turkey or vegetarian proteins; limit the red meats like beef and pork.  Increase high fiber foods like vegetables, fruit, and whole grains (not processed into flours) such as brown rice, quinoa, buckwheat, etc.  Eliminate sodas and juices and other sweet drinks and replace them with pure spring water.  These changes alone may be enough to re-balance hormones and eliminate acne.

Sometimes you will need to add supplements to your diet to regain full balance.  Two that I have found most helpful for acne are zinc and essential fatty acids.  Ask your natural health practitioner for recommendations on doses and specific products.

At age 40, 50, 60 and beyond, wrinkles, sagging, and discoloration are likely to be your primary skin symptoms.  We associate these symptoms with aging.  But this begs the question, what is aging?

Theories abound, but in general, most researchers agree that oxidation caused by toxins and its production of free radicals are highly linked to the symptoms of aging.  In the skin, cells overloaded with toxins (everything from smog and exogenous hormones from animals raised with high levels of antibiotics and hormones to fried foods, caffeine, and alcohol), and suffering from poor circulation caused by high fat, low antioxidant diets, dehydration (too many diuretics such as caffeine and alcohol), low essential fatty acids, and stress result in age spots, wrinkles and dry skin, and poor muscle tone.

Just as we learned in the discussion of acne, your diet is your most powerful choice to reduce the skin symptoms of aging.  Avoid high carbohydrate diets at all costs.  In addition, to reduce wrinkles and to avoid drying out your skin in general avoid all diuretics; replace coffee, caffeinated sodas and alcohol with at least 8 glasses of water/day.  Emphasize fish in your diet to increase the food sources of essential fatty acids in your diet.  Avoid the red meats and other high fat foods to increase circulation.  And of course, daily exercise is also critically important to improve circulation.

Age spots and sallow, yellow skin are indications of a struggling liver.  In the standard, American lifestyle, the liver has a Sisyphean task to accomplish every day (Remember Sisyphus?  He was the king punished by the Gods who had to roll a huge boulder up a mountainside every day only to watch it roll back down again at the end of the day, for eternity; eek!). The liver has to detoxify all the toxins we ingest via eating, drinking, breathing, or assimilating them through our skin.

The good news is there are many things we can do to help our livers with its many jobs.  Cleaning up your diet of course is probably the most important.  Adequate water and optimal biochemical hydration is also a wonderful support to your liver.  Additionally, with the help of a natural health practitioner, you may be able to go on a liver cleansing program for a few days or weeks each year.  You may also be able to make use of liver cleansing and supporting herbs such as milk thistle, turmeric, yellow dock or burdock.  

To me, even more motivating than the vanities of acne-free, wrinkle-free skin, is the fact that these skin health strategies will go a long way toward improving any other health symptoms you might have.  No kidding.  Improve your skin, improve your health.