Poor diet is one of the main causes of bad skin. Spots, acne, rashes, blackheads, blemishes... all are linked to diet in some way.
People are willing to spend hundreds of pounds on the latest creams and skincare gels, not knowing that they could better results by simply making a few changes to their diet.
In this article we explore three foods that are bad for your skin, and alternatives to those three foods.
What Is The Link Between Diet And Skin?
The skin is the body's largest organ. It is often a direct reflection of the health of your liver and digestive system.
All food that enters the digestive system first goes to the liver for processing. The liver is like passport control at a border. It determines what should enter and what should leave your body.
A healthy liver is crucial to healthy skin. The liver eliminates toxins from your body that are absorbed through food and drink. Toxins are substances that are "toxic" or harmful to your body. They are not supposed to be in your body.
When there are too many toxins in your diet, the liver becomes overloaded and is unable to eliminate all the toxins.
When the liver is overloaded, then the body expels these toxins through other means such as the skin, bad breath or gas.
There are many foods that improve your skin and many foods that damage your skin. By making small changes to your diet you can improve your skin within at little as one month. What's more is that changes to your diet are far cheaper than buying expensive skincare creams and toiletries.
Here are three foods that can make or break your skin:
1. Water
The single biggest improvement anyone can make to their skin (and health in general) is simply to drink more water.
Drink at least 3 litres of fresh water a day (12 glasses) for inactive adult men, and 2.4 litres (9 glasses) for inactive adult women. Active adults should drink more, especially in hot weather.
The body is 70% water. Water has the same effect in cleansing the inside of the body as it does in cleansing the outside of the body.
Just like water washes away dirt and impurities on the skin, it helps the body to eliminate toxins.
When you don't drink enough water, your skin becomes inflamed, dry, flaky and itchy.
Drinking more water has the following benefits to your skin, among others:
Less wrinkles - water makes the skin more moist and elastic, the more elastic the skin the less wrinkles form on it, the less it sags and ages and the tighter it appears.
Less acne - drinking more water shrinks your pores and helps the skin eliminate toxins faster. Adult acne is a common condition which can be helped simply by drinking more water.
Less puffy skin - when the body is dehydrated it tries to retain water in the skin. This leads the skin to swell and appear puffy. Drinking more water reduces puffiness in the skin.
Shrinks pores - drinking more water shrinks the skin pores so they are less likely to become clogged with oil and dirt, causing spots.
Remember that just like too little water is harmful to the body, too much water is also harmful to the body.
2. Refined Sugar And Refined Carbohydrates
Processed (white) sugar and refined carbohydrates in the diet is like poison to the body. Many health conditions are caused by a high sugar diet.
Refined carbohydrates are all the "white" stuff. White sugar, white rice, white bread, white pasta... carbohydrates from which all the nutritious and fibrous brown bits have been stripped, leaving only the sugary or starchy bits.
Refined carbohydrates can be reduced in the diet by cutting out all the white carbohydrates and switching to their wholemeal or brown versions.
Cutting out white sugar from the diet and replacing it with raw cane sugar or honey can show an improvement in the skin in as little as one month.
Commercially processed supermarket "honey" is essentially sugar syrup which is toxic to your body. Raw, certified organic honey is the purest and most natural form of honey.
Raw cane sugar is one of the best sweeteners to add to your tea or hot drinks. It is cheaper than raw honey and it doesn't contain living nutrients that might be killed at high temperatures.
3. Non-Organic Dairy, Especially Milk
Recent years have seen an increase in the amount of dairy-free products. Almond milk, soya milk, dairy-free this, dairy-free that.
Dairy has become the enemy today but have you considered this? People have been eating dairy products for centuries so why is it only recently that it has become a problem and damaging to the body?
It's not dairy that is the problem, it's non-organic dairy.
Conventional dairy products such as milk, yoghurt, cheese and cream come from cows that are given antibiotics and hormones. What effect do you think hormones meant for cows will have on your body?
Cow's milk, for example, is an amazing natural and nutritious drink. It is full of nutrients, vitamins and minerals. There is no man-made alternative to animal milk.
Adding 1% of processed soya beans or crushed almonds to 99% water and calling it milk does not turn it into milk.
People today blame acne, eczema, gas, bloating and other health problems on dairy when it's not dairy that is the problem. It's non-organic dairy.
People who thought they were lactose intolerant seem to be perfectly fine when switching to organic dairy products. When they do that, their skin remarkably clears up too.
If you can get it, raw organic cow's milk is the purest and most natural form of milk. After that, organic pasteurised cow's milk is the next best alternative.
Nowadays, organic pasteurised milk sold in supermarkets is not that more expensive than non-organic pasteurised milk.
What To Do If You Have A Toxic Liver
Years of poor diet leads to an unhealthy toxic liver. It can also lead to a serious disease known as fatty liver disease.
Making the above three changes to your diet can help heal your liver naturally. But there is one food that can supercharge this process: raw organic honey.
Taking a teaspoon of raw organic honey in a glass of cold or warm (max 37C) water once every morning 30 minutes before breakfast can help eliminate more toxins from your body in one day than other foods can over many weeks.
Raw organic honey is a living nectar full of living nutrients, enzymes and prebiotics which multiply in your digestive system and help your body eliminate toxins from your body faster.
Water releases or activates the goodness of raw organic honey so having it neat from a teaspoon does not have the same effect inside the body as mixing it in cold or warm water.
All of our honeys are suitable to be taken as a superfood supplement when taken once a day mixed in water.
Our 20+ Active Raw Organic Coffee Bean Honey is our most powerful honey that can help detox your body. A teaspoon a day in water will last you a month and help detox your body for less than £1 a day.
After a month of 20+ Coffee Bean Honey, you can switch to Rainforest Honey or Golden Pilosa Honey in order to keep your liver and digestive system healthy.
