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Skin Food: Diet and your Skin

If you want a healthy skin, it is important for you to take a healthy food diet which contains adequate amounts of vitamins, minerals and proteins. Balance is the
keyword. No single diet is responsible for building up or maintaining the skin - so fad
diets, which over emphasize one food in preference to others can actually deprive you of essential nutrients and so may even harm your body and skin.

Moreover, there are a lot of misconceptions about the effect of certain foods on your skin. It is not true, for instance, that eating chocolates, sweets or rich cakes will give you spots. Neither is it true that eating greasy, fried foods will give you a oily skin or make your hair oily. Nor can it be guaranteed, that if you fill yourself up with cucumbers, grapes, carrot juice or leafy vegetables you will acquire a beautiful,
flawless complexion. Some people have even come out with extraordinary claims, suggesting, for example, that salads will dramatically change your appearance and to develop a perfect skin you must take vitamin and mineal supplements. Although there is no harm in denying the fact that you must take a varied and a balanced diet, but it is equally important to remember, that the single most important factor in determining the beauty of your complexion is heredity and your eating habits play only a very small part in it.

However, if your diet is rudely deficient in certain main elements, then the skin can develop problems. In people taking normal balanced diets this does not happen. But after severe illness, surgery and in people who are on crash diets, problems might occur.

With complete nutritional deficiehcies, as occurs in severe illness of any type, the skin becomes dry and dark. The lips become sore, the hair falls, and the nails develop ridges and may even get discoloured. The feet become edematous.

Vitamins and Minerals

Vitamin A is very important for the health of your skin and eyes. The richest sources of this vitamin are cod liver oil, carrots, spinach, milk, and egg-yolk. If the diet is lacking in this vitamin, the skin becomes excessively dry and develops pimples. Vision at night becomes defective. But remember, you should also not overdose yourself with Vitamin A, because this also can cause dryness and roughness of the skin, falling of the hair and soreness of lips.

Cracking and soreness of lips also develop in vitamin B deficiencies. Meat, milk, green vegetables, pulses and cereals are rich sources of vitamin B.

Vitamin C is found in all citrus fruits. It is a very important constituent for the health of your skin.

Apart from vitamins, your diet should also include minerals. Iron makes the blood healthy - consequently it imparts a healthy pink glow to your skin. Iron is found in several green vegetables, in fruits and in meats. Zinc is also very important for the health of your skin

Beverages for beautiful skin

Many beverages can actually harm the skin. Alcohol and coffee cause the small blood vessels, under the skin surface to widen. This results in the familiar flushed look. Though, the effects of both alcohol and coffree are initially only temporary, excessive driking will cause permanent widening of blood vessels making them apparent as thread veins. There are also several other causes of thread veins: heredity, effects of the sun, a highly spiced diet and extremes of temperature. You can't help inheriting your genes, but you can certainly avoid the other factors to retard the appearence of thread veins.

Food allergies and skin problems

Foods often play an important role in causing, at least, two types of skin problems- hives and eczemas. Although, there are several types of eczemas which are not caused due to food allergies, 'atopic exzema' is frequently its resultant. Certain food suffs, such as milk, eggs and preserved foods are most likely to cause allergies. A person may also be allergic to more than one food stuff. Often a number of hours elapse before the reaction occurs; so it is quite a problem to identify the culprit. Luckily, most people outgrow their food allergies and it is really not always necessary to look very carefully for the causitive agent.