What Your Dermatologist Didn't Tell You...
"It feeds your skin cells, it feeds your brain, it feeds your gut, it feeds your bacteria... we're not really taught this..."
When you find out that your nutrition is the number one contributor to the health of your skin...
In high school, I suffered from horrible acne. And not just on my face, but my shoulder, back and chest -- which made locker room changes and sports practices not just embarrassing, but even painful at times.
I tried everything. And I mean everything. Proactiv, steroids, birth control, even Accutane, was a desperate grasp for any kind of relief. Unfortunately even after completion of Accutane, when my acne all came back, my dermatologist only consoled me with, "well it looks like your hormones are just out of whack and your body produces too much testosterone, so we've done all we can do." Completely discouraged, it was several years of personal research, trial and error and a going through pregnancy and postpartum hormone changes that I learned about what it truly takes to heal my skin.
"Your nutrition is everything."
In all these dermatologist visits, we never talked about lifestyle. She never asked what my stress levels were, what my sleep routine looked like or what my daily nutrition looked like. If she had, she would have found out that I was not only a wreck from the synthetic hormones I was on through birth control, but I believed the lie that "low calorie" meant healthy, so I was full of frankenfoods.
It wasn't until I did research on my own about the role that my nutrition truly plays, I started to heal and didn't have to depend on expensive products or procedures.
Sweet friend of mine and esthetician, Rachel Draper, shares all things skin health on her episode on the If Only I Were Wiser Podcast.
Here are Rachel's top tips to start tackling your skin health head on, and healing your skin from within!
1. A whole food focus! -- Eating whole, nutrient dense foods are a great foundation for providing your skin with the nutrients that it needs to heal + glow.
2. Prioritizing Gut Health -- Are you aware of how certain foods affect your body, and how you feel? There may be underlying gut inflammation conditions going on that need to be addressed before anything topical.
3. Vitamins & Minerals -- Your skin thrives off of healthy levels of these micronutrients. They are the foundation to all of the other systems in your metabolism to make your body run optimally. Vitamins like A, E, and Omegas 3 + 6 are super important for the glow you're looking for.
4. Beauty Sleep -- Sleep to heal is real! Your body needs rest in order to recover from injury, build muscles, heal from inflammation and learning and memory. Optimal levels of sleep make a huge difference in the brightness and vitality of your skin.
5. Use skin care that actually CARES -- Rachel shares about the difference between products that just rest topically on your skin, and products that actually work beneath the surface. She explains that your skin is its own ecosystem and some of the best products to use may not be your influencer's top Target picks.
If you want to learn the truth about your drug store Vitamin C serum, how to start healing your acne and inflammation for good, and what it means to glow from the inside out --
