The plant-based diet’s effect on skin health
Adopting a plant-based diet is very beneficial for your body. It improves your overall wellness, but something that sometimes get unnoticed is its effect on the skin. Remember what you put into your body impacts what your skin will look like. Eating this way increases blood flow. The increased blood flow supplies your skin with more key nutrients, keeping it healthy and rejuvenated.
Those who don’t include fruits and vegetables are more likely to make poor dietary choices, such as snacking more frequently. In order to make your skin look healthy you must eat fruits and vegetables. They provide the body with micro-nutrients. Micro-nutrients are vitamins and minerals that help regulate the body processes and help improve overall health. Different minerals/vitamins benefit the skin in a different way, here are some benefits:
Vitamin A:
- reduce wrinkles
- protects your skin from the sun and heals wounds.
- Some foods that are found with vitamin A are cantaloupe, mango, carrots, spinach, sweet potatoes, and canned pumpkin.
Vitamin C:
- tightens and rejuvenates skin
- improves bone, muscle and ligament health
- helps fight infections
- combats dull and tired looking skin
- Some foods that are found with vitamin C are oranges, tomatoes, red peppers, grapefruits, strawberries, broccoli, and potatoes.
Vitamin E:
- prevents the skin from getting damaged
- some food that provide vitamin E are tomatoes, turnips, spinach, mangoes, avocados, apples, sweet potatoes, and asparagus.
Zinc:
- prevents acne
- a great antioxidant
- strength skin tissues and is anti-inflammatory
- some foods that have zinc are including pumpkin seeds, kidney beans and spinach.
Eating foods that are considered “Healthy fats” such as avocado, nuts and seeds help keep your skin hydrated. They fight formation of acne and inflammation.
Noninflammatory
Also having a plant-based diet can also be considered an anti-inflammatory diet. The diet helps your skin combat chronic skin inflammatory conditions like eczema, and psoriasis, it’s able to do this because it gets rid of the foods that aren’t good for you that make your skin inflamed. For instance, you shouldn’t eat commercially produced meat, refined carbs/grains, processed foods and polyunsaturated vegetable oils in this diet.
Helps get rid of Acne
Having a plant-based diet also makes you get rid of dairy. It is known dairy products contains both micro nutrients and macro nutrients that are very important. But dairy products can worsen acne. Dairy is full of hormones and antibiotics that are super harmful to your skin and clog your pores. Once you follow this diet it’s guaranteed you will see a disappearance in acne. You can easily get the micro nutrients and macro nutrients by almond milk, oat milk, cashew milk, or coconut milk.
But with anything there can be negative effects, so here are some precautions:
Having a routine diet can negatively impact your skin, you may not get the key nutrients. This can cause- Brittle hair and nails or a darkening of skin if you are deficient of vitamins. If you are deficient in minerals you may experience paleness, dark circle under your eyes and hair loss.
- make sure you know how to make a variety of plant-based meals and you may have to take nutrient supplements to combat that, especially for B12 and vitamin D, levels of those two micro nutrients deplete immensely after going vegan.
- If you aren’t ready to follow a diet, without meat or dairy products, it can affect your skin negatively.
- If you aren’t ready to fully commit to a full plant-based diet, then avoid process dairy and meat products and shoot for organic ethically raised cattle, they’re hormone free and will not cause acne and inflammation of the skin.
Conclusion
There are tons of benefits to trying a diet that focuses on just fruits and vegetables. All the vitamins you could gain from different plant-based foods. There are plenty of other great diets that could help you lose weight. But a plant based one could be the one for you. Especially if you could use a boost in your skin health.