The Best Skin Advice for Dry Skin – It’s NOT what you think!
Traditionally, the best skincare advice for dry skin revolves around making changes to the products you apply to your skin just like this article; Top 10 Creams they all claim to cancel out all of the symptoms of dry, dehydrated skin such as dullness, fine lines and wrinkles.
My approach is different, I want you to consider your nutrition and metabolic health instead!
The normal way of thinking sustains the skincare and beauty industries, with unhappy people more than willing to do what it takes for a return to a hydrated, glowing complexion and more youthful-looking skin.
As a skin health expert and nutritional therapist with ten years of clinical practice, I know that the key to managing dry skin is about so much more than hyaluronic acid serums and a regular skincare routine.
Whilst these things can be helpful, and I do recommend them, they form part of a much larger puzzle to combat dry skin and can only be truly effective when they are considered alongside your nutrition too.
Nutrition Advice for Dry Skin
Your skin is influenced by three essential metabolic pathways:
- blood sugar levels
- liver function
- gut microbiome
And these form your metabolic health.
To learn more about metabolic health click here
Understanding the function and role these three pathways play in the quality and condition of your skin cells will allow you to see dry skin as a result of the dietary and lifestyle choices that you make, not your skin type.
By taking steps to tackle the root cause of your dry, dehydrated skin – the foods and drinks that you consume along with your eating behaviours – you will be able to relieve dry skin and achieve naturally hydrated skin, that is plump and youthful-looking.
There are many ways to naturally hydrate your skin and these things can be used in partnership with my 3-step method skincare routine to create an appearance that looks healthier and younger.
In this article, I want to explain in simple terms what you can do to manage dry skin and achieve the hydrated youthful skin you desire as well as applying fancy face creams.
You will learn very useful advice to help improve your skin health and learn about the metabolic pathways that are causing your dry skin.
Best Skincare Products For Dry Skin?
Dry skin, which can be made worse by the conditions in which we live, is a tremendous indicator of what’s going on inside our bodies.
Interestingly, despite what skincare brands would have you believe, investing your money in active ingredients and ‘revolutionary’ pro-ageing products can only enhance what you already have, they can not change what you never had.
In fact, some of these products are not recognised by your skin cells and therefore can be a huge waste of time, energy and money, particularly as they can lead to itchy skin and exacerbate dry skin.
Watch the video about why you should NOT use foaming face wash – Click HERE
I also find it interesting that some of the best skincare advice for dry skin encourages people to purchase products that have been specifically designed for their so-called ‘skin type’.
This can only be counter-productive, especially as our skin cells change every day depending on our current skin and metabolic health.
In some instances, the recommended products can even trigger skin conditions that can alter our skin’s microbiome and result in dry skin.
Best Advice For Dry Skin
When you have dry skin, this can usually be due to an imbalance in the pH of your stomach acid.
Fix that and you will notice the quality of your skin health improve – within days!
The acidic level of pH in your stomach leads to dry, dehydrated skin, which creates dullness, fine lines and wrinkles.
Your stomach acid’s role is to break down foods via enzymes, a process that is needed to deliver key nutrients to the blood and create your skin cell membrane.
If your stomach acid’s pH levels are too acidic or too alkaline, the absorption of nutrients from the food you eat, which includes fats, proteins, vitamins and minerals, becomes increasingly difficult.
As a result, regardless of the amount of water you drink, your skin cell membranes will begin to fail in their ability to retain hydrating substances, such as water, hyaluronic acid and the nutrients needed to provide essential immunity communication due to the lack of lipoproteins created.
The essential lipoproteins that provide strength and immunity in the skin will either delay the natural exfoliation of the skin’s surface layer – causing dull, thick, wrinkled skin – or accelerate skin cell turnover and set the stage for the development of long-term inflammatory conditions such as eczema and psoriasis.
The main learning points to why you have dry skin are:
1. pH imbalance in your stomach acid
2. An inability to absorb essential nutrients
3. A lack of nutrients to create skin cell membrane strength
As a consequence, you will experience the following symptoms:
- Dry, dehydrated skin, which causes fine lines and wrinkles
- Slow skin cell turnover, leading to dull, thick skin
- Inflammation that will trigger long-term skin conditions such as psoriasis and eczema
What Is The Best Nutrition Advice For Dry Skin?
In order to improve dry skin, we need to make sure that we’re doing what we can to raise our stomach acid pH levels to be between 2-4 when eating food.
This helps our body to absorb essential nutrients for the benefit of our skin cell membranes.
The three most effective ways to improve the pH balance in your stomach acid are:
- Take apple cider vinegar every day before meals
- Chew food thoroughly and slow down when eating
- Enjoy water away from meals as it dilutes digestive enzymes
The best way to enjoy your apple cider vinegar is by adding one tablespoon of it to 250ml of water and drinking this before your breakfast.
Any will do – but my favourite is Braggs
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Start Your Journey Towards Better Skin Health
Step 1– Start by taking diluted apple cider vinegar first thing in the morning and once you have got used to that you can increase to having it before every meal. Especially if you suffer from acid reflux.
The consumption of this mixture 30 minutes before eating will be a tremendous help.
Step 2 – Further actions to take include chewing your food thoroughly and concentrating when eating.
By slowing down during meal times and focusing on what you are eating rather than the TV or your laptop, you will give your stomach acid time to react to the food that is coming and create the digestive enzymes required for that meal.
Step 3 – Finally, you should also take care to avoid drinking lots of water at mealtimes with your meals as this can dilute your essential digestive enzymes.
In summary, the strength of your skin cell membranes is the key to addressing dry, dull, dehydrated and ageing skin.
The best advice to improve dry skin is to create strong skin cells that can retain moisture and communicate effectively through their life cycle.
You should also focus on how your metabolic health pathways influence the quality of your skin health.
If you are looking to hydrate your dry skin to reduce fine lines and wrinkles, you should look to balance the pH in your stomach to ensure the absorption of the essential nutrients.
These nutrients provide protection and pro-inflammatory support in conjunction with your skincare routine.
In conclusion
When looking for your next solution to dry skin, take a moment to think about what is causing your skin to be dry.
- Why does your dehydrated skin have so many fine lines and wrinkles?
- What is causing your eczema to flare up?
The pH level in your stomach acid can be improved by consuming apple cider vinegar before each meal, and chewing and focusing on your food whilst not washing it all down with water, which will increase the acidic levels in your stomach.
These steps support the production of the digestive enzymes that absorb the nutrients from the food you eat.
This improves your skin health and therefore the production of strong skin cell membranes that hold in the moisture!
Dry skin is just one example of how our skin can make us aware of the effects of food and how it influences our skin health.
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