The state of your body on the inside has a direct effect on the appearance and texture of your skin. Certain nutrients, foods, and herbs are important for healthy skin. Stephanie Tourles, a certified herbalist, aromatherapist, and reflexologist, and the author of Naturally Healthy Skin, tells us more:
“Nutrition is very important for skin care. I don’t care what you put on the skin topically, if you are feeding yourself garbage, your skin is going to reflect that. What you eat is reflected on your face and body. In my daily quest for natural beauty, health, and vitality, I am in awe of what Mother Nature has to offer us. She provides everything you need to encourage and support the healthy functioning of your skin, but it is up to you to partake of these offerings.
“My personal recommendation is that you try to eat a very balanced diet, preferably vegetarian with minimally processed whole foods in their natural state. Include approximately 40 to 60 percent complex carbohydrates, 20 to 30 percent lean proteins, and 10 to 20 percent fat. This all depends on your activity level and your state of wellness.”
Tourles also recommends a number of vitamins, minerals, and fats.
Five essential vitamins provide antioxidant benefits and healing agents that enhance your skin: A, B complex, C, D, and E. “Vitamin A is essential for growth and maintenance of epithelial tissue, which is your skin tissue, and for the proper functioning of the mucous membranes,” Tourles says. “This vitamin helps prevent dry, rough skin, and premature aging. It speeds healing, especially of acne and impetigo, which is caused by staph or strep infection that results in pustules around the nose and mouth. Vitamin A also boosts your general immunity. Deficiency symptoms of this vitamin include premature wrinkles; acne; pimples; blackheads; cirrhosis; and dry, rough, itchy, scaly, or cracked skin, especially on the feet and the hands. An early symptom of deficiency is what I call chicken skin: small raised bumps on the back of the neck, upper arms, back, and shoulder.”
The B complex vitamins can be obtained from brewer’s yeast, whole grains, alfalfa, almonds, sunflower seeds, all the soy products, green leafy vegetables, blue-green algae, fresh wheat germ, molasses, peas, and beans. “This is your antistress vitamin,” Tourles explains. “It helps prevent premature aging and acne, and promotes healthy circulation and metabolism. It is very essential to wound healing such as sunburn, bruises, and infection. It aids in new cell growth and increases your vitality. Deficiency symptoms of this vitamin include a sore mouth and lips. Where your top and lower lip meet will get cracks and become red and very sore. Other deficiency symptoms are eczema, skin lesions, dandruff, a pale complexion, pigmentation problems, and premature wrinkling.”
Vitamin C sources include rose hips, citrus fruits, tomatoes, berries, pineapples, apples and persimmons, bell and hot peppers, and papayas. Tourles says, “Vitamin C helps to produce collagen in your connective tissue. Collagen is what keeps your skin plump and firm, and keeps you from getting wrinkles. Vitamin C also strengthens the capillary walls, speeds healing, and helps battle environmental stress and toxins. If you have a deficiency in vitamin C, you will probably bruise more easily, your gums can become spongy, wrinkles form more quickly, you will notice sagging skin, premature aging, pyorrhea (which is a gum disease), and slowed healing.”
Vitamin D can come from milk or fish liver oils, as well as fortified soy milk, alfalfa, watercress, and sunshine. In combination with vitamin A, vitamin D helps to treat acne. “It also treats herpes simplex, the little sores that show up around and just inside your lips,” Tourles says. “It helps slow premature aging and enhances bone mineralization and calcium absorption. This is great for your fingernails. Deficiency symptoms of vitamin D are a lack of vitality, very slow growth, and bone problems.”
Vitamin E is the last essential vitamin that benefits the skin. According to Tourles, “Outstanding sources are the cold-pressed vegetable oils, not the vegetable oils you normally find in your grocery store. Those have been heated too high and heavily processed, so you need to get the cold-pressed oils. Whole grains, alfalfa, parsley, sprouted seeds, nuts, fresh wheat germ, and green leafy veg-etables are good vegetarian sources. Skin care benefits for vitamin E are that it oxygenates the tissues and increases body stores of vitamin A, slows premature aging, helps to block the formation of tumors, and speeds healing of severe burns and chronic skin lesions. It may also decrease scarring.”
Vitamin E also enhances red blood cell formation. “If you are deficient in vitamin E, there will be a degeneration of epithelial cells, which are your skin cells in the organs, and skin germinating cells,” says Tourles. “This results in tissuemembrane instability and collagen shrinkage, which leads to premature aging and the sagging of your skin. Your skin can look very lackluster. You can be very tired because you are not getting oxygen in your body. Remember I said vitamin E helps to oxygenate the tissues. You will also have an increased tendency to bruise as a result of the fragility of the red blood cells.”
Tourles also recommends four minerals for healthy skin. “The first one is iodine,” she says. “Outstanding vegetarian sources for iodine are blue-green algae, sunflower seeds, kelp, iodized salt, and sea salt. If I use salt at all, it is sea salt. Fish and shellfish are also great sources. Skin care benefits of iodine are that it aids in healing skin infections, increases oxygen consumption and the metabolic rate in the skin, and helps prevent roughness and premature wrinkling. Deficiency symptoms of iodine include slow growth and healing, slow metabolism, very poor skin tone, and dry skin. There is a contraindication for iodine: It may aggravate acne. If you have acne you may want to drastically decrease fish, cut down on your blue-green algae, and maybe switch over to barley grass instead. You may see good results by doing that.
“The next mineral is silicon. A good source for that is horsetail herb, which is very good to combine with nettle and blue-green algae in capsule form. Echinacea root is very good; dandelion root, alfalfa, kelp, flax seed, barley grass, wheat grass, all varieties of apples and berries, onions, almonds, sunflower seeds, and grapes are all good sources. Silicon aids in collagen formation, helping to keep the skin taut, tight, and uplifted. It helps to strengthen your bone and skin tissues and aids in wrinkle prevention. Deficiency symptoms include premature wrinkling, lack of skin tone, and sagging skin.”
The third mineral is sulfur. “Sulfur can be found in turnip greens, dandelion greens, radishes, horseradish, string beans, onions, and garlic,” Tourles says. “All of these foods have a strong flavor. Cabbage, celery, kale, soybeans, and asparagus are milder. Asparagus is particularly high in sulfur. Sometimes sulfur is called the beauty mineral. It really helps to keep the skin clear and smooth. Deficiency symptoms of sulfur include dry scalp, rashes, eczema, and acne.”
The last mineral is zinc. Tourles says, “Good sources are blue-green algae and barley grass, alfalfa, yellow dock root, echinacea root, any of the seaweeds such as kelp, fresh wheat germ, all variety of seeds, brewer’s yeast, and all kinds of nuts and green leafy vegetables. Zinc aids in wound healing, promotes cell growth, and boosts immunity. It helps treat acne when combined with vitamin A and B. Deficiency of zinc includes slow healing, dandruff, and lowered resistance to infections.”
The essential fats and fatty acids are important for healthy skin. “Fat in the diet is very vital to your skin’s health and beauty,” Tourles says. “Without fat your skin has no contour, no roundness. It cannot be beautiful without at least a thin layer of padding to support it and give it shape. Fat is a necessary requirement if you desire radiant and moisturized skin.”
Omega-3 and omega-6 are essential fatty acids that have many benefits for the skin. Coldwater fish such as bluefish, salmon, mackerel, or tuna are good sources of omega-3. “If you want a vegetarian source,” Tourles says, “use ground flax seeds or flaxseed oil. Flaxseed oil is sometimes called the vegetable alternative to fish oil. Walnuts and walnut oil and Brazil nuts are other sources. Omega-3 helps with proper wound healing, is reported to relieve arthritis symptoms, aids in healing eczema and cirrhosis, and helps to balance the sebum or the oil production in the skin. A deficiency symptom of omega-3 is dry, scaly skin, eczema, inflammatory skin conditions, and slow healing.”
Omega-6 can be obtained from evening primrose oil, borage oil, black currant seed oil, and blue-green algae. “Skin care benefits are smooth, healthy, moisturized skin and proper joint function and flexibility,” Tourles says. “Deficiency symptoms include dry, flaky skin; eczema; and painful stiff joints.”
Stephanie Tourles has formulated an herbal tea that is “a delicious way to boost your energy levels as well as your natural immunity.” This tea contains 2 tablespoons lemon balm, 1 tablespoon lavender flowers, 1 tablespoon peppermint leaves, 1 tablespoon chamomile flowers, 1 tablespoon rose petals, 1 tablespoon nettle, 1 tablespoon alfalfa, 1 tablespoon rose hips, 2 teaspoons dandelion leaves, 2 teaspoons raspberry leaves, 1/2 teaspoon gingerroot (or you can substitute cinnamon bark).
“Combine all of these herbs in a medium-size bowl,” Tourles says. “Blend the ingredients and store this mixture in a tightly sealed tin, jar, or plastic tub and store it away from light in a very cool, dry location. It is best if used within six months.
“For each cup of tea you need 1 teaspoon of the dried herb. Bring a cup of water to a boil in a small saucepan. Remove this from the heat and add 1 teaspoon herbs. Cover this and allow it to steam for ten or fifteen minutes and strain before you drink it. You can add honey, lemon, cream, or maple syrup to enhance the flavor. This recipe yields approximately 30 cups of tea if you use 1 teaspoon of formula per cup.”
Tourles also describes an herbal ointment you can make yourself for soothing skin irritations, cuts and abrasions, and even diaper rash. It has four simple ingredients: 1/2 cup vegetable shortening, preferably 100 percent hydrogenated soybean oil; 10 drops calendula essential oil; 10 drops everlasting or spike lavender essential oil; and 5 drops orange or lemon essential oil.
“Start with the vegetable oil at room temperature and add all the essential oils at once,” Tourles says. “Whip all the ingredients together until thoroughly combined. It can be stored in a glass or plastic container with a tight lid and will keep, if refrigerated, for up to one year. To use, clean the infected area and apply the ointment; use as necessary to help heal and prevent infections. It is great for a nightly treatment for dry hands and feet and also as a cuticle treatment. It will have a beautiful orange color and it smells really nice, too.”
Regular use of sunscreen is the most effective way of protecting your skin from sunburn, aging effects, wrinkles, and cancer. Start with a sunscreen with an SPF of 15 or higher. SPF stands for sun protection factor. It means that you can stay out in the sun fifteen times longer before burning than you would be able to without sunscreen. Put it on your face and hands after you wash your hands. If you are older and beginning to see age spots, use an even higher SPF. Use it every day all year round.
Psoralens are chemicals found in certain foods that make your skin more sensitive to the sun so that it burns more easily. Psoralens are found in foods such as parsley, limes, and parsnips. Be sure to use a sunscreen with a high SPF if your diet includes a lot of psoralens.
Some perfumes cause age spots, especially those with musk or bergamot oil. Small age spots can be bleached away with hydrogen peroxide. With a cotton swab use 30 percent hydrogen peroxide daily for several weeks. Another choice is hydroquinone, which interferes with your skin’s production of melanin. It works very slowly but can fade age spots.
Tourles has another herbal formula for cleansing the skin. “I call it my Pure Cream Cleanser,” she says. “This is great for all skin types except oily. It is a wonderful emollient, leaving skin soft and hydrated, and removes eye and lip makeup if you happen to wear those. It has only two ingredients: 1 tablespoon heavy cream and 1 drop carrot seed essential oil or rose essential oil. Rose oil can be very expensive. Mix the ingredients in a tiny bowl and apply the cream with a flannel cloth or a very soft washcloth in gentle circular motions over the entire face, neck, and chest. Rinse well, pat dry, and follow with your favorite herbal toner and moisturizer if you desire. There is so much fat in heavy cream that frequently you won’t need an additional moisturizer unless it is the dead of winter and the air is very dry. This amount yields one or two treatments.”
Cosmetic surgery continues to increase in popularity, for women as well as for men. What are the pros and cons of the various procedures? Dr. Debra Sarnoff, a graduate of Cornell University and George Washington University’s School of Medicine, is one of the premier laser surgery experts in North America, specializing in cosmetic dermatology and dermatological surgery. She sees lasers as a great tool. “New methods and uses for laser surgery are emerging almost every month. Lasers can’t do everything, but they have truly made a difference in cosmetic surgery, particularly in relation to what may seem minor problems, such as broken blood vessels on the face and around the nose, brown spots, age spots, liver spots, whatever you’d like to call them, on the tops of the hands or in the chest area.” Lasers have proven helpful with problems such as removing tattoos. They are also useful for spider veins on the leg, acne scars, and wrinkles.
Lasers are essentially beams of light applied to the skin. Unlike a scalpel, which actually cuts the skin and causes some bleeding, a laser beam will pass through the skin without causing any bleeding. It has a particular target that it is trying to eradicate. There are certain problems that only lasers are capable of solving, just as there are certain problems only scalpel surgery can solve. For example, Dr. Sarnoff says, “There’s no way that pulling and stretching and tightening the skin, through surgery, can change the quality of the skin. If your problem is that something is wrong with the quality of the skin, very often a laser can help that.”
One cosmetic surgery procedure that can be done well with lasers is skin resurfacing. We all develop wrinkles as we get older. After smiling, laughing, and expressing ourselves with our faces for all these years, most of us develop lines around the eyes—crow’s feet—as well as lines on the upper lip.
Dr. Sarnoff says that even the best face-lift in the world will not eradicate those lines. Something has to be done to resurface the skin. “In the old days, we used a machine called a dermabrader, which was like a little sanding machine that people used to try to peel off the top layers of the skin. In other cases, doctors used acid as a chemical peel. The theory was that when the skin healed, it would be much smoother and the wrinkles would not be as apparent.”
Then, says Dr. Sarnoff, “Along came this generation of lasers. The laser can be used to peel off the top layers of skin as opposed to using a chemical or a dermabrading machine.”
This procedure involves going to a reputable physician, preferably a dermatologist or plastic surgeon who is experienced in this technique, and having the top layers of skin removed in a controlled way with a laser. Healing will take at least ten days, during which the recovering patient has to lie low. She will look like she’s had the worst sunburn ever. The skin will be red, moist, and chapped. She won’t be able to put on makeup for at least ten days.
Many people have sun spots or age spots, also known as photodamage, from all those years of baking in the sun before we knew that ultraviolet rays were potentially harmful. Dr. Sarnoff explains: “A lot of that sun damage will be entirely reversible if the beam of light can be used to strip off those top layers of skin. That type of laser resurfacing is a fairly involved procedure that really takes a commitment and a healing time. It’s not the kind of thing you just pop in to have done as if you were going to the deli and do a little laser over your lunch break. That laser resurfacing is a bigger deal.”
There are many other uses for lasers in skin care, including lightening stretch marks, removing birthmarks, and removing tattoos. “For something like a tattoo,” she says, “usually several visits are needed. They would be spaced about six to eight weeks apart, and it would not be unusual to need up to eight treatments to clear a tattoo completely.”
Procedures such as zapping broken blood vessels and removing little brown spots are simpler; the side effects are usually no more than a little bruising, crusting, or scabbing, something you might want to wear a small bandage over or apply a little antibiotic ointment to, but nothing that would keep you out of work or prevent you from functioning. Many times people have these procedures and go right back to work.
Lasers can also be an alternative to electrolysis for hair removal. The procedure can be done very rapidly, and the patient can immediately return to her activities.
Dr. Sarnoff insists that a savvy consumer must ask the right questions. You must learn whether a procedure is a one-shot deal or will have to be repeated. And you should ask how long the improvement will last. Certainly you want something that is going to be cost-effective. Some laser treatments are really long-lasting. With hair removal, by contrast, very often the hair will grow back in a few months. Dr. Sarnoff stresses that you have to know that before you commit. “I think it is very important to ascertain ahead of time approximately how many treatments are needed and what you should expect.”
There are risks, Dr. Sarnoff cautions. One is that you may pay good money and be disappointed because your underlying problem will still be there. “Something else that consumers have to be aware of is scarring. It’s usually not the case that scars occur, and with a doctor who is well trained and experienced, I think the technique is very safe. Nonetheless, it is a topic that definitely needs to be addressed before the procedure is done.”
Sometimes there are some temporary changes in pigment. As the skin is healing, it can become a little darker or lighter than the surrounding skin. You must be aware how often this happens and know whether it is in fact only temporary or could be permanent.
There are very different types of lasers. Each beam of light accomplishes a different purpose, and the potential hazard from each is different. Still, there are some universal precautions that all competent laser providers follow. You need the correct eyewear, for example. Each laser is set at a very specific wavelength, and the protective eyewear needs to be specific to that wavelength.
Postoperative instructions make a difference, too. If you’re removing tattoos or broken blood vessels, there is usually nothing else to do. However, with skin resurfacing, Dr. Sarnoff cautions that it is extremely important that patients follow the protocol afterward so that they heal properly and do not get any kind of infection.
The number-one fear people have about lasers is that they involve harmful radiation. But, as Dr. Sarnoff explains, the word radiation in the spelled-out version of laser actually refers to the verb radiate, meaning “to give off light.” Most of the beams of light used in lasers are in the visible light range. That is, they are part of normal light. The only unique thing about lasers is that they are monochromatic. You might have a red beam or a yellow or green one, as opposed to natural light, which is a blend of all the colors of the rainbow. Laser light is nonionizing; it’s basically safe, as opposed to X-rays or ultraviolet light from the sun, which are ionizing. Ionizing radiation may change our cells and damage our chromosomes. We can get in real trouble with that type of radiation, but most lasers are not in that part of the electromagnetic spectrum.
An increasing body of evidence is showing the benefits of natural modalities to overall health and well-being. Following is a sample of recent peer-reviewed scientific studies in the area of skin care.
In 2012, the Institute for Natural Healing cited findings that aloe vera reduces the signs of aging: a report in Annals of Dermatology found improvement in both facial elasticity and collagen production in all thirty women who were given supplements of either 1,200 mg or 3,600 mg per day for ninety days; and in the Indian Journal of Dermatology, researchers found that amino acids in aloe vera hardened skin cells, and zinc from the plant had astringentlike properties that tightened pores. A 2011 article in Life Extension Magazine stated that resveratrol, an antimicrobial substance produced by plants in response to stress, infection, or strong ultraviolet radiation, has been found in many studies to reduce inflammation and oxidative stress associated with skin aging. Research has also shown that polyphenols in green, white, and black tea, and the herb Aspalathus linearis, have similar antioxidant and anti-aging properties. Reports in Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology (2011) and PLoS One (2010) described the actions of other plant polyphenols in combating free radical damage that undermines the health of the skin.