April 22, 2023 • 28 mins
From Leanne and Susie on The Nutrition Couch this episode:
- We review the latest research about what macronutrients and vitamins help keep your skin glowing, and the factors that can prematurely age your skin;
- We reveal the superfoods that can supercharge your skin and the foods and drinks you should avoid;
- Our client case study is about whether diet (including, for example dairy) affects acne.
So sit back, relax and enjoy this week’s episode!
Tune in on Wednesday for your mid-week motivation.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
We have a very special episode for you today, and
it's a topic that we know you will be very
interested in your skin and nutrition, or more specifically, what
you can eat the beautiful glowing skin. There are so
many areas of nutrition that impact our skin health. So
on today's episode, you're going to hear everything that you
need to eat a great glowing skin. Like I'm Leanne
(00:22):
Wald and I'm Size Burrow, and every week we bring
you The Nutrition Couch, the bi weekly podcast that keeps
you up to date on everything that you need to
know in the world of nutrition. So we thought we
would do a special skin focused episode today, Susie, because honestly,
there's so much we can talk about, and there's so
many questions that we get, but particularly with our own clients, like, yes,
they have the goals of hormone stabilization, they want to
(00:44):
drop some body, fact, they want to improve their digestion.
But often when I pry a little bit deeper, I say,
is there anything else? Often you and I both have
clients that are actually interested in skin health. And I
myself still get pimples yet well into my thirties, and
I know a lot of clients were still suffering from
even adult type act well into their thirties and forties
as well, so it's not something that just goes away
(01:04):
after you finish your teenage year, as a lot of
adults really do still struggle with skin. And you and
I are having a quick discussion off air saying that
we have had clients in the past. We've seen people
in the past that are big twinkers, and you can tell
from a skin perspective, and you can also tell when
people are big tanners that impact that the sun actually
has on their skin as well. So there's a lot
that goes into improving our skin health. But of course
(01:27):
we want to predominantly focus on nutrition today and it's
linked to skin. House We've got a great little article
to go through in terms of some of the key
nutrients and vitamins and what they actually do from a
skin perspective. But skin is correct me if I'm wrong.
I think it's the largest organ in the body, isn't.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
It It is?
Speaker 3 (01:43):
And I think that I was laughing because I am
a bit givelt to a bigger tanner. So I'll just
put that out there. Less of a drinker, more of
a tanner. What I wanted to say when you were
leading in with that, Liane is. First of all, I
think it's a great topic because I don't think we've
actually covered it in much detail before. And look at
how much information there is there on expensive skin creams, treatments,
(02:03):
beauty podcasts. It's massive. And let's be honest, the way
your skin looks comes from what you eat. It's nutrition,
because that's your internal regulator of cell generation. And what
I notice with clients so quickly when they eat well,
within a day or two, they feel better and within
a week or two their skin is looking much better.
You really respond very very quickly visually in terms of
(02:26):
your skin. And that's got to do with elasticity. So
for example, if you're dehydrated, you're going to look drier,
more brinkly for one.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Of a better word.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Absolutely, people who drink a lot of alcohol do tend
to have a look around them in their skin. It
doesn't age well, probably a mixture of both the pro
inflammatory response of alcohol and the hydration. So there are
so many intricacies with your diet and lifestyle patterns that
I think you'll really learned today that will go a
long way in preventing aging. Which let's be honesty and
we all want to do that. No one wants to
(02:53):
be old before their time and how our faces and
comes down to that baseline diet, which is what we're
really going to hone.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
In on absolutely. So the skin is such a big
ortigan that it does. It does so many things, So yes,
it's important from it like a confident perspective, like we
all want to, you know, look and feel good in
our bodies, so to have that nice, glowing skin makes
us feel better overall. But it's also really important as
a barrier function. There's you know, some immune functions, there's
some endocrine functions. Skin helps with thermoregulation and it also
(03:22):
helps with vitamin D synthesis as well. We know that
darker skin people don't tend to absorb as much vitamin
D is what fair or lighter skin people do. So
there's a lot of functions I guess that our skin
has as well. But really today what we're going to
be focusing on is a link between our food and
our environment. So it's probably not really our place as
much to say things like you know, pollution has an impact,
(03:44):
smoking has an impact, Even low level stress consistently has
an impact on the quality of your skin as well,
So just keep those things in mind. If you're spending
thousands of dollars on skincare, you're trying to eat well,
but you're smoking, you're drinking, and you're super stressed, or
you're living in a place that's quite highly polluted, there's
not too much real improvement you're going to get from
a skin perspective, so you have to kind of think
(04:05):
about it in a holistic way where you have to
think about our col and caffeine, you have to think
about nutrition, you have to think about stress, you have
to think about sleep, you have to think about pollution
and smoking as well. So you're going to spend thousands
on skincare get your diet right, but you're still smoking
and love your love you couple of drinks every Friday
and Saturday night. There's not too much improvements you're going
to see, so you have to look at it holistically,
(04:26):
but from a nutrition perspective. We've got a great little
article to share today which is called Diet and Skin
Aging from the Perspective of Food and Nutrition. So it
was published in the Journal of Nutrients in twenty twenties,
so it's quite a recent article. When you think about,
you know, researcher overall, it takes many, many years for
research to actually come to the forefront, so twenty twenty
(04:48):
is quite recent. And there's a great little table in here,
Susie that really talks about a summary of the key
effects of nutrients and our diet on aging. So it
goes through particular types of nutrients or diet indicat and
what their relationship is with the skin. So the first
one is water, and as you mentioned, if you're dehydrated,
the first sort of way you're going to see that
is due to you know, like the turgo of the skin,
(05:10):
and that's a lot of times doctors and nurses, if
you're in hospital, they can tell if you're dehydrated without
even have to rubbed blood tests because when you pinch
the skin, it just doesn't have that same sort of
like turgo or elasticity. So the relationship with your skin
in terms of water is maintaining that internal balance and
that tissue function. So hydration and water actually has an
effect from an aging and an inflammation perspective as well.
(05:31):
So if you're overdoing the caffeine and you're overdoing the alcohol,
and you're not having enough water, you're not getting enough
pure hydration in it's going to have an impact on
your skin. The next one is protein. Now, we know
we get a lot of questions around collagen, and collagen
has been shown to be helpful in the research from
a skin elasticity perspective and a hydration perspective, not so
much from like a wrinkle based perspective. So collagen is important,
(05:55):
but all proteins are important as well. So if you're
not eating enough protein overall, get a new essential amino acids,
you're not going to get in enough collagen, which is
going to make a negative impact on your relationship with
your skin. So protein overall really helps to repair skin
in terms off it's involved in protein synthesis, is involved
in metabolism, and it helps to regulate some of the
supply of energy as well, and it sort of mediates
(06:17):
some of those skin functions as well. So protein noble
all is incredibly important for skin, just as important as
water is. Now when we look at some of our
trace elements, we've got four big ones. Susi copper is
really important. It's involved in extra slar matrices, synthesis and
stabilization of skin. Proteins. Zinc is really important from like
a healing perspective, and it also participates in the proliferation
(06:40):
and differientation of epidermal correct no sites. You should definitely
be don inter section. So copper and zinc are very important.
We know zinc is important from a wound healing perspective
as well, but zinc overall can be important from a
skin perspective. But I will say that it is very
easy to overdo zinc, so don't supplement with high strength
(07:01):
zinc without actually talking to a health practitioner first because
it could actually be more harmful to some people if
you're taking really high mauts of that. Now, iron is
important and a lot of females that we work as
SUSI have low iron or a borderline low. So just
getting that in through diet or supplements if you need to,
is really important because it's closely linked to the activity
of the antioxidant enzymes in your skin cells. And the
(07:23):
last one of selenium, which hands down two brazilm's a day,
will give you basically most of your selenium requirements with
a good quality diet, and that's really related to the
skin antioxidan and enzyme activity. So our four big trace
elements we want to focus on for skin health a copper, zinc, iron,
and selenium. Now the big vitamins. Vitamin A is commonly
used as an anti aging ingredient and provides antiaging effects
(07:47):
by regulating the expression of our genes. Vitamin B. We
know a lot of sort of clients will take vitamin
B supplements due to active skin conditions. It has been
associated with skin inflammation and pigmentation as well. Vitamin C
is involved in skin collagen synthesis and reactive oxygen profiles
as well. Vitamin D helps reduce skin DNA damage, reduces inflammation,
(08:11):
and vitamin E prevents skin aging by inhibiting lipid peroxidization,
so important vitamins as well. And then from a diet perspective,
fats have been shown to be negative or positive, so
a high fat dietine saturated and trans fats is associated
with skin inflammation, whereas an lower, lower fat diet or
(08:32):
the right types of fat can actually help. From an
anti inflammatory perspective, Tobacco smoking we know accelerate skin pigmentation
and skin necrosis. Alcohol promotes the proliferation of this word
against zuzz chretnocytes, changes in the skin permeability, and it
destroys the barrier function of this skin. So alcohol is
not great. And also the finer ones zuzi, which we
(08:55):
do know as well, is sugar and baked goods, or
specifically in the research, it's been shown that a high
GI diet, which a lot of sugar and baked goods are,
is associated with increasing skin thickness, decreasing autophagi, and inflammation
as well. So they're probably the big things we want
to think about from a nutrition and a diet perspective,
but really what it comes down to is a good
(09:16):
quality diet overall, doesn't it, Susan. We talked about it
in the last episode. A lot of us are now
focusing on eating more vegetables, getting more healthy vats in,
but there's still too much, for lack of a better word,
crap going into our diets.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Overall.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Yes, we're focusing on eating a little bit better, but
there's too much ultra processed foods. There's too much snacking,
there's too much you know, chocolate going in every night,
there's too much our coal creeping, and on the weekend
there's too many meals eaten outside of the home that
do have some of these more anient inflammatory type ingredients
into them. So I think we need to focus on
adding more good stuff in, but reducing a lot of
(09:51):
the other things we know aren't going to be too helpful.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
Well, I think it goes back to what you were
saying in the beginning. You know, so much of our
overall health and well being how we turn up and
how our skin looks to do with factors like our
overall stress and our over our lifestyle balance. And the issue,
of course is that when we are busy and stressed,
diet nutrition is one of the first things that goes
out the window because all of a sudden, we don't
have time to get to the supermarket, so we pick
(10:13):
up an uber eat or we're grabbing lunch on the
goal and it is, you know, fried food or heavily
sourced products, and all of a sudden you're getting all
of those bad fats and.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Not the key nutrients.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
So I think a really nice shift for people is
to remind ourselves that when life is really tough, one
of the best ways you can get through it is
to make sure you nutrition is on track and make
a concerted effort to focus on that, So keep healthy
frozen foods in the freezer when you have got some
time prep in advance, so you can actually take some
homemade soup or a veggie rich meal out and have it.
(10:46):
So even when things are really challenging, you know what
your quick and easy grab nutrient which foods are, so
you don't go to those options that are heavily processed,
refined oil, pro inflammatory foods. And the other thing is
that a lot and we work with women, so this
will resonate because life for so many women is hard.
And I was actually a personal insight. I had a
(11:09):
psychologist session with a very experienced psychologist I see every
so often, and she was, you know, sharing her life
experience with me to say, you know, women have always
in life carried a big load.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
You know, this isn't a new thing.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
You know, you're running the house, you're running the career,
you're running the children. Biologically we are designed to do
that and so this isn't new or normal. We do
have to reach level of acceptance with it. But part
of that is that we also tend to want to
reward ourselves all the time. And I know, lean my
busy stress women they get home after a terrible day,
and all they're thinking about is when they can get
(11:43):
the kids to bed and they can have the glass
of wine and have the chocolate. Now, there's nothing wrong
with self suiting to a certain amount, but if you
think about it, we have these goals of feeling better,
looking better, eating well, and then just to get through
we do the exact opposite of what we need to
get through. So I think if you can also learn
and practice rewarding yourself with nutritious options at that end
(12:04):
of the day which aren't actually going to undo the
larger goals you have for yourself. So for example, rather
than sitting down with a cup of tea and chocolate,
maybe you sit down with a cup of tea and
you have some whole grain granola with some good quality
yogurt and some berries. So it's not the pure chocolate.
You're still having a treat, but you're not compromising your
(12:25):
nutrition because you see what's going on there. We've got
all these goals of eating well, being ourself, looking great,
working out, and we get to the end of the
day and we undo all our hard work by sabotaging
with processed food. Because we see that as a reward,
So there's a little bit of a mindset shift around
how can we have something yummy and delicious but not
undo those dietary goals. So I think it's looking at
what are some more natural treats that we can add
(12:47):
in or soul foods that are not going to be
adding to the inflammation in our body, and key things
like alcohol, lollies, chocolate snacks are not really helping us
when it comes to our skin health.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Absolutely, And I think it's really about that balance. Like
I have so many people that say I want to
have chocolate every day, and I don't have a problem
with that as a dietishie. But where it becomes a
problem is if you're having sugar in your coffee every day,
then you're having a croissant in the morning tea, or
you're enjoying the work morning teas a couple of times
a week, where you're buying your lump out, or you're
having a glass of wine a couple of times a
week with your dinner. Then if you're doing chocolate on
(13:20):
top of that every day, you're doing too much. But
if the bulk of your dant is like ninety percent
quality whole foods, and you want to have some chocolate
every night, and that's really the only sort of treat
that you're having day in and day out, week to week.
There's absolutely not a problem with that. But I think
for a lot of us, we're just we're kidding ourselves
and we're treating ourselves at a little bit too much, right.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
I think we have to get on us, you know,
and they do slip in, you know, A nice often
am giving that feedback to clients that there's a lot
of extra slipping in and if we can clean it up.
That one keeps our nutrition and ultimately our skin health
on trap. But also yeah, keeps a eye on some
of those extra fats and sugars slipping in some one
hundred percent. So I think that lends itself really nicely
leanne to a discussion about what are the keys of
(14:00):
foods that we need and most importantly, what has an
evidence base because you know, we see their headline all
the time superfoods, but really there's actually only a handful
of nutrients and foods that do have that evidence space
behind them to say, yes, these are the foods you
should be adding in to really support skin health. So
the first group is it is vitamins. You know, we
(14:20):
hear a lot about vitamin C and antioxidants, and you're
not going to get the same from a green powder.
You've really got to get that load of fresh food
where you've got the phyto nutrients and the antioxidants in
the fresh food working together. So the key nutrients we're
talking about are the vitamin C and D in particular,
if we're talking about nutrients, they're coming from the leafy greens.
So my take home message for anyone interested in optimizing
(14:42):
health in general and inflammation but skin health, you've got
to have at least a couple of serves of leafy
greens per daily. And so I'm talking spinach, I'm talking kale,
I'm talking broccoli, I'm talking rocket. You know, I would
be wanting to see my clients have that at least
twice a day. Now, if you're one of the many
clients who struggle with cooked I have a lot of
clients who only prefer salad, I would strongly encourage you
(15:03):
to add some veggie juice into your day because what
happens is when you eat salad, the nutrients aund as
well absorbed because a lot of it remains undigested, whereas
when you cook a vegetable, it makes the cell wall
more malleable and your nutrient absorption is improved. So if
you're someone who doesn't really love cooked veggies, I'd be
juicing them because at least the juicing process will release some.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
More of those nutrients.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
The other key thing to remember is a lot of
those key nutrients will be absorbed with the presence of fat,
So the other issue with salad is that often there's
not a lot of fat. So you do want to
enjoy either your cooked veggies or salad with some extra
Version olive oil. You will absorb the antioxidants and a
number of those vitins and minerals crucive for skin health
a lot better if you're consuming them with a serve
of extra Version olive oil. So you know, enjoy that
(15:46):
with little bit of salt on any kind of leafy
green salad, and absolutely twice the day leafy greens one
serve will just not be enough. The other brightly colored
superfoods in that space are your beetroot I love that,
tomatoes very very rich envitamin C key we fruit berries.
These are foods you'd literally be wanting to consume on
a daily basis. The next is beta carotene. Now, beta
(16:07):
carotene is found in any of our orange, yellowy veggies,
so our carrots are sweet potato, red capsicum. Now, there's
actually evidence lean to show that significantly increasing your intake
of beta carotene gives you a healthy glow within days.
Now for anyone who's overdone the carrots, you'll know that
your skin can turn a light shade of orange. Now,
we're certainly not encouraging that. We don't want all nutrition
(16:28):
couch listeners to be walking around with yellow palms. That's
not our intention. But what I am saying is at
least a servi or to a day of those rich
foods in beta carotene is a great way to give
your skin a natural, healthy glow. I am a fan
of a red capsicum a day now. That was always
much better when food wasn't so expensive, when the red
capsicum's clocking in at three plus bucks per one. But
(16:49):
a carrot a day is a really good starting point.
Much on it added two snacks in the afternoon. Again,
common feedback I'm giving to my clients on a daily
basis is where are your veggies in the afternoon. So
that's a perfect time to add a carrot, add a
red capsicum, a yellow capsicum if it's in the budget,
given they're so expensive. Tomato is another good sauce. What
am I missing lyand sweet potato? What are some other
beta caroteens is.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
Such just ones as well, lemons, limes, oranges, mandarins, tomatoes.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
Yeah, so you want at least one, if not two,
serves a day. Now, that's not easy to get lead.
You know, you've got to really be focused to get
that each day, and that's where that planning really comes
into it. Or using smart foods like juices and soups
to get more of those nutrients in a quick hit.
Amiga threes Now, amiga threes in our oily fish, ur sadines,
our salmon, a little bit in tuna, in our plant sauces.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
You get it in your walnuts.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Now, if there's one food above fruit and vegetables that's
going to make your skin look feel better and reduce inflammation,
it's a Mega three fat. Very few Australians get anywhere
near the recommended and take a fish twice a week
if you're serious about skin health, I'd be including oily
fish literally on a daily basis if you can afford it.
It's one of the most powerful things we can do
to reduce inflammation, promote health and make our skin look
(17:59):
feel softer, look better now. Fish oil capsules I always
as a dietitian likelyand prefer food. If you are not
a fish eater, fish oil capsules won't hurt you. There
is some evidence around reducing inflammation. It's an option, but
you will always be better to get it from the food.
So if you love sardines, if you're having salmon, make
sure you eat the skin. A significant component of the
(18:20):
Amiga threes is in the skin itself, So to do light,
lean and sissal lit up with some extra vision olive oil,
go health for leather.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
And enjoy it.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
It's great for your skin. But yeah, people who have
great skin are often eating a lot of fish. Look
at our friends in Japan known for their very high
seafood intaken and very young looking skin, so definitely focus
on that if you're not a fish eater. The best
plant based sources of a Mega three your tofu your soybeans,
the munch pumpkin seeds, snacks. Lann and I love papedas
(18:48):
soil and seed bread are some other good plant based
sources of a mega three fat. And then probably the
other important one is zinc. Nellian has mentioned zinc. It
is quite low in the diets of Australians. We get
it from lean red meat, but also shellfish. If you're
a meat eater, including a serve of lean red meat
three times a week will go a long way in
enhancing your intake. Nuts and seeds as well, but shellfish,
(19:09):
lean prawns, oysters, muscles, tin varieties extremely rich and very
cost effective sources, so that benefits your overall diet in general.
By keeping red meat intake a little bit lower, you'll
get a bit of a Mega three and certainly it's
very closely linked to immune function, which is also relevant
coming into winter.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
So they're the four key ones.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
You want the leafy greens, you want the orange and reds,
you want the amiga threes from ideally from fish oily fish,
and you want some decent serves of zinc on a
day to day basis, and that.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Requires a little bit of planning to get those foods in.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
You can see that it's very easy to go several
days without getting anywhere near those recommended amounts. But I
guarantee you if you simply add a veggie juice in
or a big salad of leafy greens and veggies, eat
more fish, you'll notice a changing your skin in a
few days.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
It's that powerful the effect.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
And legumes, nuts and seeds are big ones that a
lot of people I don't know if they fig at
or a lot of people you know not sort of.
Legumes aren't that delicious, I must admit, but trying to
find a way to add them in as part of
a diet regularly is really important. And nuts and seeds
as well. I think a lot of people shy away
from them due to the high calorie load. But nuts
and seeds regularly have been shown to in line where
(20:15):
a healthy diet have actually been shown to help promote
weight loss or definitely help with weight maintenance anyway, So
you don't need to be afraid of them, or we
don't want to be munching on a handful after handful
of handful of you know, honey roasted cashews. We definitely
want to stick to, you know, plain nuts, or maybe
a little bit of salt if you need it, but
generally not the ones that are coated in chocolate or
coated in honey as well. So a good serve of nuts,
(20:37):
seeds and legumes every day, if not every other day,
with your fruits and veggies and mega trees like Susie's
talked about, is really the optimum way to eat for
inflammation and to eat for skin heals. And then our
final question, Susie is always around a listener question, and
this is something we have had. I can't even count
how many times we've been asked if dairy makes my
(20:58):
skin worse. We've been asked it so many times we
thought we'd include it within our skin section. Because the
funny thing is, even as a dietician, we don't have
a conclusive air. So the research is really it's kind
of sitting on the fence. Some studies say yes, other
studies say no. So what I've done today is I've
found two big reviews of the literature. So we simply
can't look at one study or one article and get
(21:20):
a conclusive outcome and say that everybody yes, it does,
no it doesn't. That's not the way evidence or research works.
If you're following anyone on social media and they post
a single article and they say don't eat dairy, it's
inflammatory for skin, or it promotes acne. It's simply not
enough to just look at one research article these days,
because there's so many out there. We need to be
looking at a review of all of the evidence, or
(21:42):
what we call a systematic review, which is very high
quality research. We're looking at a lot of research papers together.
So first one we pulled up today Susie, is from PubMed,
which is a very reputable journal, and we're looking at
diet and acne. So this is a review of the
evidence from two thousand and nine all the way up
to twenty twenty. So it's all of the reason search
papers that have looked at diet and acne. So overall
(22:03):
what met their criteria. Where fifty three articles that met
the criteria for what they were looking at, so eleven
were interventional clinical studies and forty two or more observational
type studies. Now I must say this is looking at
diet and acne. This isn't a couple of pimples here
and there. This is diagnosed acne.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Put it that way.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
So basically, what the conclusions were from all of this
was that diet does play a role in acne. But
the dairy component is still a little bit kind of
on the fence. So what this review show that overall
acne promoting factors or foods included high GI and GL foods,
so foods with a high glycemic index. So if you're
(22:44):
not sure what that is, a quick little google saying
foods that a high GI will sort of show you.
And a lot of them are our overly process or
our ultraprocessed foods, our biscuits, our sweets, our cakes, things
that we're indulging in a little bit too much, you know, juice,
is smoothies, that sort of thing. Now, products were shown
to promote acne, but there's a little there's a couple
(23:05):
of caveats around that. So what a lot of the
study showed was that full fat and whole fat quality
dairy really didn't do too much. It was really the
low fat or the skim dairy that seemed to do worse,
and the way protein that seemed to do worse as
well for some people of some backgrounds. And the next
study that I'm going to go through will say that
(23:25):
a little bit more so it's the high GIGL loads
of foods. Dairy is kind of hit and miss but
was more shown to be acne promoting in some studies
high fat foods chocolate they've singled out chocolate by itself
has been shown to be acne promoting. Now, the acne
protective factors included our good fats like Susie mentioned our salmon's,
(23:45):
our avocado extraversion, olive, wilter, nuts, and seeds, and then
increasing fruit and vegetable intake as well was shown to
be acne promoting. So it's interesting with the dairy, things
like milk, cream, ice cream and some types of cheeses
were more acne promoting. Was the better types of dairy,
the good quality Greek yogurts, the kafir, that sort of thing.
The fermented types of dairy when really shown to be
(24:07):
more neutral or even more positive. So the second review
I wanted to go through Susie was in the American
Academy of Dermatology in that journal, so it's quite a
big journal as well. It was called Diet and Acne,
a systematic review from twenty twenty two, so this is
very recent. This one went through a literature search of
four hundred and ten articles, where thirty four of those
(24:29):
articles met the inclusion criteria for what this study was
really looking at, and I was really looking at the
effects of diet on acne. So what the conclusion from
this very large systematic review was was again that foods
with a high glycemic index or an increased glycemic load
and a large carbohydrate load had a modest yet significant
(24:52):
pro acnegenic effect on adults. Now, increased dairy consumption may
have a pro acinogenic effect in selected populations, such as
those with a Western style diet. So if you've got
a poor quality diet and a large dairy intake, it
has been shown to be more acne promoting. Put it
(25:13):
that way, if you've got a great quality diet, your
dairy consumption is normally you're not having four cups of
milk a day, and it's the right type of dairy.
You're not having ice cream every single night, you're not
having cream with your pancakes every single morning. If it's
good quality yoga and its fermented types of dairy, that
has actually been shown to be completely fine. So the
impact of your diet was very dependent on sex and
(25:34):
ethnicity as well. And then the final conclusion of this
research paper was that further randomized control trials were completely
necessary to fully kind of characterize and pull out the
potential associations between diet and exercise. So unfortunately I can't
give a yes or no answer in terms of does
dairy make my skin worse? But it does seem to
(25:55):
be that dairy in combination where the Western style diet
did have more an effect on acne. And again, this
isn't just a couple of pimples every now and then.
This is acne, so a specific medical skin condition. And
it really does come back to the quality of your diet.
If you've got a whole food diet, if you eat
really well, you know you're regulating those other environmental factors
(26:17):
that we talked about, the sun exposure, the smoking, the alcohol.
I really don't think that dairy does too much, but
I think if for most people, what I would try
to do is go from skim or low fat dairy
to full fat and see if that makes a difference.
Take out any way protein power to see if that
makes a difference before you're cutting out dairy completely overall.
Because it's a really important source of calcium for most
(26:37):
of us in our diet. It's a great source of
protein as well, and so it doesn't have to be
taken out, but it also doesn't have to be included
if you choose not to if you find that it
really does make an effect in terms of, you know,
making your acne worse basically. So it's not a yes
or no answer, but it really does come down to
the quality of your diet overall and the quality of
the dairy products that you're eating overall as well.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
Yeah, but it comes up all the time.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
I agree, and when we were discussing it before we recorded,
I had to be honest, it's just really not my
area because people who choose not to have dairy really
feel strongly about it. So that was a really good
summary of the research. And it's like all these areas again.
You know, in the past five years, we've learned so
much about digestive health, and I think we will continue
to learn about the direct relation in this area of
(27:24):
dairy to skin. But it was a really good summary,
so I'm very helpful.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
Oh Anie, Well, that brings us to the end of
our very special skin episode today, and if you haven't
done so already, we would love if you subscribe to
our podcast and also head to our website, which is
the nutritioncouch dot com. On there you will find our
brand new takeaway Guide. Also, our product Guard as well
is still available on the website, and of course our
recordings from our live events last year. We talked about
sustainable fat loss, gut health and hormones, still very very
(27:50):
very relevant information. It was really well received. We had
hundreds of people at our events and the recording is
available for you to watch anywhere in the world from
the comfort of your own home. It's still available on
the tritioncouch dot com and we will catch everybody in
next week's episode.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
Have a great week.
We have a very special episode for you today, and
it's a topic that we know you will be very
interested in your skin and nutrition, or more specifically, what
you can eat the beautiful glowing skin. There are so
many areas of nutrition that impact our skin health. So
on today's episode, you're going to hear everything that you
need to eat a great glowing skin. Like I'm Leanne
(00:22):
Wald and I'm Size Burrow, and every week we bring
you The Nutrition Couch, the bi weekly podcast that keeps
you up to date on everything that you need to
know in the world of nutrition. So we thought we
would do a special skin focused episode today, Susie, because honestly,
there's so much we can talk about, and there's so
many questions that we get, but particularly with our own clients, like, yes,
they have the goals of hormone stabilization, they want to
(00:44):
drop some body, fact, they want to improve their digestion.
But often when I pry a little bit deeper, I say,
is there anything else? Often you and I both have
clients that are actually interested in skin health. And I
myself still get pimples yet well into my thirties, and
I know a lot of clients were still suffering from
even adult type act well into their thirties and forties
as well, so it's not something that just goes away
(01:04):
after you finish your teenage year, as a lot of
adults really do still struggle with skin. And you and
I are having a quick discussion off air saying that
we have had clients in the past. We've seen people
in the past that are big twinkers, and you can tell
from a skin perspective, and you can also tell when
people are big tanners that impact that the sun actually
has on their skin as well. So there's a lot
that goes into improving our skin health. But of course
(01:27):
we want to predominantly focus on nutrition today and it's
linked to skin. House We've got a great little article
to go through in terms of some of the key
nutrients and vitamins and what they actually do from a
skin perspective. But skin is correct me if I'm wrong.
I think it's the largest organ in the body, isn't.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
It It is?
Speaker 3 (01:43):
And I think that I was laughing because I am
a bit givelt to a bigger tanner. So I'll just
put that out there. Less of a drinker, more of
a tanner. What I wanted to say when you were
leading in with that, Liane is. First of all, I
think it's a great topic because I don't think we've
actually covered it in much detail before. And look at
how much information there is there on expensive skin creams, treatments,
(02:03):
beauty podcasts. It's massive. And let's be honest, the way
your skin looks comes from what you eat. It's nutrition,
because that's your internal regulator of cell generation. And what
I notice with clients so quickly when they eat well,
within a day or two, they feel better and within
a week or two their skin is looking much better.
You really respond very very quickly visually in terms of
(02:26):
your skin. And that's got to do with elasticity. So
for example, if you're dehydrated, you're going to look drier,
more brinkly for one.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Of a better word.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Absolutely, people who drink a lot of alcohol do tend
to have a look around them in their skin. It
doesn't age well, probably a mixture of both the pro
inflammatory response of alcohol and the hydration. So there are
so many intricacies with your diet and lifestyle patterns that
I think you'll really learned today that will go a
long way in preventing aging. Which let's be honesty and
we all want to do that. No one wants to
(02:53):
be old before their time and how our faces and
comes down to that baseline diet, which is what we're
really going to hone.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
In on absolutely. So the skin is such a big
ortigan that it does. It does so many things, So yes,
it's important from it like a confident perspective, like we
all want to, you know, look and feel good in
our bodies, so to have that nice, glowing skin makes
us feel better overall. But it's also really important as
a barrier function. There's you know, some immune functions, there's
some endocrine functions. Skin helps with thermoregulation and it also
(03:22):
helps with vitamin D synthesis as well. We know that
darker skin people don't tend to absorb as much vitamin
D is what fair or lighter skin people do. So
there's a lot of functions I guess that our skin
has as well. But really today what we're going to
be focusing on is a link between our food and
our environment. So it's probably not really our place as
much to say things like you know, pollution has an impact,
(03:44):
smoking has an impact, Even low level stress consistently has
an impact on the quality of your skin as well,
So just keep those things in mind. If you're spending
thousands of dollars on skincare, you're trying to eat well,
but you're smoking, you're drinking, and you're super stressed, or
you're living in a place that's quite highly polluted, there's
not too much real improvement you're going to get from
a skin perspective, so you have to kind of think
(04:05):
about it in a holistic way where you have to
think about our col and caffeine, you have to think
about nutrition, you have to think about stress, you have
to think about sleep, you have to think about pollution
and smoking as well. So you're going to spend thousands
on skincare get your diet right, but you're still smoking
and love your love you couple of drinks every Friday
and Saturday night. There's not too much improvements you're going
to see, so you have to look at it holistically,
(04:26):
but from a nutrition perspective. We've got a great little
article to share today which is called Diet and Skin
Aging from the Perspective of Food and Nutrition. So it
was published in the Journal of Nutrients in twenty twenties,
so it's quite a recent article. When you think about,
you know, researcher overall, it takes many, many years for
research to actually come to the forefront, so twenty twenty
(04:48):
is quite recent. And there's a great little table in here,
Susie that really talks about a summary of the key
effects of nutrients and our diet on aging. So it
goes through particular types of nutrients or diet indicat and
what their relationship is with the skin. So the first
one is water, and as you mentioned, if you're dehydrated,
the first sort of way you're going to see that
is due to you know, like the turgo of the skin,
(05:10):
and that's a lot of times doctors and nurses, if
you're in hospital, they can tell if you're dehydrated without
even have to rubbed blood tests because when you pinch
the skin, it just doesn't have that same sort of
like turgo or elasticity. So the relationship with your skin
in terms of water is maintaining that internal balance and
that tissue function. So hydration and water actually has an
effect from an aging and an inflammation perspective as well.
(05:31):
So if you're overdoing the caffeine and you're overdoing the alcohol,
and you're not having enough water, you're not getting enough
pure hydration in it's going to have an impact on
your skin. The next one is protein. Now, we know
we get a lot of questions around collagen, and collagen
has been shown to be helpful in the research from
a skin elasticity perspective and a hydration perspective, not so
much from like a wrinkle based perspective. So collagen is important,
(05:55):
but all proteins are important as well. So if you're
not eating enough protein overall, get a new essential amino acids,
you're not going to get in enough collagen, which is
going to make a negative impact on your relationship with
your skin. So protein overall really helps to repair skin
in terms off it's involved in protein synthesis, is involved
in metabolism, and it helps to regulate some of the
supply of energy as well, and it sort of mediates
(06:17):
some of those skin functions as well. So protein noble
all is incredibly important for skin, just as important as
water is. Now when we look at some of our
trace elements, we've got four big ones. Susi copper is
really important. It's involved in extra slar matrices, synthesis and
stabilization of skin. Proteins. Zinc is really important from like
a healing perspective, and it also participates in the proliferation
(06:40):
and differientation of epidermal correct no sites. You should definitely
be don inter section. So copper and zinc are very important.
We know zinc is important from a wound healing perspective
as well, but zinc overall can be important from a
skin perspective. But I will say that it is very
easy to overdo zinc, so don't supplement with high strength
(07:01):
zinc without actually talking to a health practitioner first because
it could actually be more harmful to some people if
you're taking really high mauts of that. Now, iron is
important and a lot of females that we work as
SUSI have low iron or a borderline low. So just
getting that in through diet or supplements if you need to,
is really important because it's closely linked to the activity
of the antioxidant enzymes in your skin cells. And the
(07:23):
last one of selenium, which hands down two brazilm's a day,
will give you basically most of your selenium requirements with
a good quality diet, and that's really related to the
skin antioxidan and enzyme activity. So our four big trace
elements we want to focus on for skin health a copper, zinc, iron,
and selenium. Now the big vitamins. Vitamin A is commonly
used as an anti aging ingredient and provides antiaging effects
(07:47):
by regulating the expression of our genes. Vitamin B. We
know a lot of sort of clients will take vitamin
B supplements due to active skin conditions. It has been
associated with skin inflammation and pigmentation as well. Vitamin C
is involved in skin collagen synthesis and reactive oxygen profiles
as well. Vitamin D helps reduce skin DNA damage, reduces inflammation,
(08:11):
and vitamin E prevents skin aging by inhibiting lipid peroxidization,
so important vitamins as well. And then from a diet perspective,
fats have been shown to be negative or positive, so
a high fat dietine saturated and trans fats is associated
with skin inflammation, whereas an lower, lower fat diet or
(08:32):
the right types of fat can actually help. From an
anti inflammatory perspective, Tobacco smoking we know accelerate skin pigmentation
and skin necrosis. Alcohol promotes the proliferation of this word
against zuzz chretnocytes, changes in the skin permeability, and it
destroys the barrier function of this skin. So alcohol is
not great. And also the finer ones zuzi, which we
(08:55):
do know as well, is sugar and baked goods, or
specifically in the research, it's been shown that a high
GI diet, which a lot of sugar and baked goods are,
is associated with increasing skin thickness, decreasing autophagi, and inflammation
as well. So they're probably the big things we want
to think about from a nutrition and a diet perspective,
but really what it comes down to is a good
(09:16):
quality diet overall, doesn't it, Susan. We talked about it
in the last episode. A lot of us are now
focusing on eating more vegetables, getting more healthy vats in,
but there's still too much, for lack of a better word,
crap going into our diets.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Overall.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Yes, we're focusing on eating a little bit better, but
there's too much ultra processed foods. There's too much snacking,
there's too much you know, chocolate going in every night,
there's too much our coal creeping, and on the weekend
there's too many meals eaten outside of the home that
do have some of these more anient inflammatory type ingredients
into them. So I think we need to focus on
adding more good stuff in, but reducing a lot of
(09:51):
the other things we know aren't going to be too helpful.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
Well, I think it goes back to what you were
saying in the beginning. You know, so much of our
overall health and well being how we turn up and
how our skin looks to do with factors like our
overall stress and our over our lifestyle balance. And the issue,
of course is that when we are busy and stressed,
diet nutrition is one of the first things that goes
out the window because all of a sudden, we don't
have time to get to the supermarket, so we pick
(10:13):
up an uber eat or we're grabbing lunch on the
goal and it is, you know, fried food or heavily
sourced products, and all of a sudden you're getting all
of those bad fats and.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Not the key nutrients.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
So I think a really nice shift for people is
to remind ourselves that when life is really tough, one
of the best ways you can get through it is
to make sure you nutrition is on track and make
a concerted effort to focus on that, So keep healthy
frozen foods in the freezer when you have got some
time prep in advance, so you can actually take some
homemade soup or a veggie rich meal out and have it.
(10:46):
So even when things are really challenging, you know what
your quick and easy grab nutrient which foods are, so
you don't go to those options that are heavily processed,
refined oil, pro inflammatory foods. And the other thing is
that a lot and we work with women, so this
will resonate because life for so many women is hard.
And I was actually a personal insight. I had a
(11:09):
psychologist session with a very experienced psychologist I see every
so often, and she was, you know, sharing her life
experience with me to say, you know, women have always
in life carried a big load.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
You know, this isn't a new thing.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
You know, you're running the house, you're running the career,
you're running the children. Biologically we are designed to do
that and so this isn't new or normal. We do
have to reach level of acceptance with it. But part
of that is that we also tend to want to
reward ourselves all the time. And I know, lean my
busy stress women they get home after a terrible day,
and all they're thinking about is when they can get
(11:43):
the kids to bed and they can have the glass
of wine and have the chocolate. Now, there's nothing wrong
with self suiting to a certain amount, but if you
think about it, we have these goals of feeling better,
looking better, eating well, and then just to get through
we do the exact opposite of what we need to
get through. So I think if you can also learn
and practice rewarding yourself with nutritious options at that end
(12:04):
of the day which aren't actually going to undo the
larger goals you have for yourself. So for example, rather
than sitting down with a cup of tea and chocolate,
maybe you sit down with a cup of tea and
you have some whole grain granola with some good quality
yogurt and some berries. So it's not the pure chocolate.
You're still having a treat, but you're not compromising your
(12:25):
nutrition because you see what's going on there. We've got
all these goals of eating well, being ourself, looking great,
working out, and we get to the end of the
day and we undo all our hard work by sabotaging
with processed food. Because we see that as a reward,
So there's a little bit of a mindset shift around
how can we have something yummy and delicious but not
undo those dietary goals. So I think it's looking at
what are some more natural treats that we can add
(12:47):
in or soul foods that are not going to be
adding to the inflammation in our body, and key things
like alcohol, lollies, chocolate snacks are not really helping us
when it comes to our skin health.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Absolutely, And I think it's really about that balance. Like
I have so many people that say I want to
have chocolate every day, and I don't have a problem
with that as a dietishie. But where it becomes a
problem is if you're having sugar in your coffee every day,
then you're having a croissant in the morning tea, or
you're enjoying the work morning teas a couple of times
a week, where you're buying your lump out, or you're
having a glass of wine a couple of times a
week with your dinner. Then if you're doing chocolate on
(13:20):
top of that every day, you're doing too much. But
if the bulk of your dant is like ninety percent
quality whole foods, and you want to have some chocolate
every night, and that's really the only sort of treat
that you're having day in and day out, week to week.
There's absolutely not a problem with that. But I think
for a lot of us, we're just we're kidding ourselves
and we're treating ourselves at a little bit too much, right.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
I think we have to get on us, you know,
and they do slip in, you know, A nice often
am giving that feedback to clients that there's a lot
of extra slipping in and if we can clean it up.
That one keeps our nutrition and ultimately our skin health
on trap. But also yeah, keeps a eye on some
of those extra fats and sugars slipping in some one
hundred percent. So I think that lends itself really nicely
leanne to a discussion about what are the keys of
(14:00):
foods that we need and most importantly, what has an
evidence base because you know, we see their headline all
the time superfoods, but really there's actually only a handful
of nutrients and foods that do have that evidence space
behind them to say, yes, these are the foods you
should be adding in to really support skin health. So
the first group is it is vitamins. You know, we
(14:20):
hear a lot about vitamin C and antioxidants, and you're
not going to get the same from a green powder.
You've really got to get that load of fresh food
where you've got the phyto nutrients and the antioxidants in
the fresh food working together. So the key nutrients we're
talking about are the vitamin C and D in particular,
if we're talking about nutrients, they're coming from the leafy greens.
So my take home message for anyone interested in optimizing
(14:42):
health in general and inflammation but skin health, you've got
to have at least a couple of serves of leafy
greens per daily. And so I'm talking spinach, I'm talking kale,
I'm talking broccoli, I'm talking rocket. You know, I would
be wanting to see my clients have that at least
twice a day. Now, if you're one of the many
clients who struggle with cooked I have a lot of
clients who only prefer salad, I would strongly encourage you
(15:03):
to add some veggie juice into your day because what
happens is when you eat salad, the nutrients aund as
well absorbed because a lot of it remains undigested, whereas
when you cook a vegetable, it makes the cell wall
more malleable and your nutrient absorption is improved. So if
you're someone who doesn't really love cooked veggies, I'd be
juicing them because at least the juicing process will release some.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
More of those nutrients.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
The other key thing to remember is a lot of
those key nutrients will be absorbed with the presence of fat,
So the other issue with salad is that often there's
not a lot of fat. So you do want to
enjoy either your cooked veggies or salad with some extra
Version olive oil. You will absorb the antioxidants and a
number of those vitins and minerals crucive for skin health
a lot better if you're consuming them with a serve
of extra Version olive oil. So you know, enjoy that
(15:46):
with little bit of salt on any kind of leafy
green salad, and absolutely twice the day leafy greens one
serve will just not be enough. The other brightly colored
superfoods in that space are your beetroot I love that,
tomatoes very very rich envitamin C key we fruit berries.
These are foods you'd literally be wanting to consume on
a daily basis. The next is beta carotene. Now, beta
(16:07):
carotene is found in any of our orange, yellowy veggies,
so our carrots are sweet potato, red capsicum. Now, there's
actually evidence lean to show that significantly increasing your intake
of beta carotene gives you a healthy glow within days.
Now for anyone who's overdone the carrots, you'll know that
your skin can turn a light shade of orange. Now,
we're certainly not encouraging that. We don't want all nutrition
(16:28):
couch listeners to be walking around with yellow palms. That's
not our intention. But what I am saying is at
least a servi or to a day of those rich
foods in beta carotene is a great way to give
your skin a natural, healthy glow. I am a fan
of a red capsicum a day now. That was always
much better when food wasn't so expensive, when the red
capsicum's clocking in at three plus bucks per one. But
(16:49):
a carrot a day is a really good starting point.
Much on it added two snacks in the afternoon. Again,
common feedback I'm giving to my clients on a daily
basis is where are your veggies in the afternoon. So
that's a perfect time to add a carrot, add a
red capsicum, a yellow capsicum if it's in the budget,
given they're so expensive. Tomato is another good sauce. What
am I missing lyand sweet potato? What are some other
beta caroteens is.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
Such just ones as well, lemons, limes, oranges, mandarins, tomatoes.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
Yeah, so you want at least one, if not two,
serves a day. Now, that's not easy to get lead.
You know, you've got to really be focused to get
that each day, and that's where that planning really comes
into it. Or using smart foods like juices and soups
to get more of those nutrients in a quick hit.
Amiga threes Now, amiga threes in our oily fish, ur sadines,
our salmon, a little bit in tuna, in our plant sauces.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
You get it in your walnuts.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Now, if there's one food above fruit and vegetables that's
going to make your skin look feel better and reduce inflammation,
it's a Mega three fat. Very few Australians get anywhere
near the recommended and take a fish twice a week
if you're serious about skin health, I'd be including oily
fish literally on a daily basis if you can afford it.
It's one of the most powerful things we can do
to reduce inflammation, promote health and make our skin look
(17:59):
feel softer, look better now. Fish oil capsules I always
as a dietitian likelyand prefer food. If you are not
a fish eater, fish oil capsules won't hurt you. There
is some evidence around reducing inflammation. It's an option, but
you will always be better to get it from the food.
So if you love sardines, if you're having salmon, make
sure you eat the skin. A significant component of the
(18:20):
Amiga threes is in the skin itself, So to do light,
lean and sissal lit up with some extra vision olive oil,
go health for leather.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
And enjoy it.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
It's great for your skin. But yeah, people who have
great skin are often eating a lot of fish. Look
at our friends in Japan known for their very high
seafood intaken and very young looking skin, so definitely focus
on that if you're not a fish eater. The best
plant based sources of a Mega three your tofu your soybeans,
the munch pumpkin seeds, snacks. Lann and I love papedas
(18:48):
soil and seed bread are some other good plant based
sources of a mega three fat. And then probably the
other important one is zinc. Nellian has mentioned zinc. It
is quite low in the diets of Australians. We get
it from lean red meat, but also shellfish. If you're
a meat eater, including a serve of lean red meat
three times a week will go a long way in
enhancing your intake. Nuts and seeds as well, but shellfish,
(19:09):
lean prawns, oysters, muscles, tin varieties extremely rich and very
cost effective sources, so that benefits your overall diet in general.
By keeping red meat intake a little bit lower, you'll
get a bit of a Mega three and certainly it's
very closely linked to immune function, which is also relevant
coming into winter.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
So they're the four key ones.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
You want the leafy greens, you want the orange and reds,
you want the amiga threes from ideally from fish oily fish,
and you want some decent serves of zinc on a
day to day basis, and that.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Requires a little bit of planning to get those foods in.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
You can see that it's very easy to go several
days without getting anywhere near those recommended amounts. But I
guarantee you if you simply add a veggie juice in
or a big salad of leafy greens and veggies, eat
more fish, you'll notice a changing your skin in a
few days.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
It's that powerful the effect.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
And legumes, nuts and seeds are big ones that a
lot of people I don't know if they fig at
or a lot of people you know not sort of.
Legumes aren't that delicious, I must admit, but trying to
find a way to add them in as part of
a diet regularly is really important. And nuts and seeds
as well. I think a lot of people shy away
from them due to the high calorie load. But nuts
and seeds regularly have been shown to in line where
(20:15):
a healthy diet have actually been shown to help promote
weight loss or definitely help with weight maintenance anyway, So
you don't need to be afraid of them, or we
don't want to be munching on a handful after handful
of handful of you know, honey roasted cashews. We definitely
want to stick to, you know, plain nuts, or maybe
a little bit of salt if you need it, but
generally not the ones that are coated in chocolate or
coated in honey as well. So a good serve of nuts,
(20:37):
seeds and legumes every day, if not every other day,
with your fruits and veggies and mega trees like Susie's
talked about, is really the optimum way to eat for
inflammation and to eat for skin heals. And then our
final question, Susie is always around a listener question, and
this is something we have had. I can't even count
how many times we've been asked if dairy makes my
(20:58):
skin worse. We've been asked it so many times we
thought we'd include it within our skin section. Because the
funny thing is, even as a dietician, we don't have
a conclusive air. So the research is really it's kind
of sitting on the fence. Some studies say yes, other
studies say no. So what I've done today is I've
found two big reviews of the literature. So we simply
can't look at one study or one article and get
(21:20):
a conclusive outcome and say that everybody yes, it does,
no it doesn't. That's not the way evidence or research works.
If you're following anyone on social media and they post
a single article and they say don't eat dairy, it's
inflammatory for skin, or it promotes acne. It's simply not
enough to just look at one research article these days,
because there's so many out there. We need to be
looking at a review of all of the evidence, or
(21:42):
what we call a systematic review, which is very high
quality research. We're looking at a lot of research papers together.
So first one we pulled up today Susie, is from PubMed,
which is a very reputable journal, and we're looking at
diet and acne. So this is a review of the
evidence from two thousand and nine all the way up
to twenty twenty. So it's all of the reason search
papers that have looked at diet and acne. So overall
(22:03):
what met their criteria. Where fifty three articles that met
the criteria for what they were looking at, so eleven
were interventional clinical studies and forty two or more observational
type studies. Now I must say this is looking at
diet and acne. This isn't a couple of pimples here
and there. This is diagnosed acne.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Put it that way.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
So basically, what the conclusions were from all of this
was that diet does play a role in acne. But
the dairy component is still a little bit kind of
on the fence. So what this review show that overall
acne promoting factors or foods included high GI and GL foods,
so foods with a high glycemic index. So if you're
(22:44):
not sure what that is, a quick little google saying
foods that a high GI will sort of show you.
And a lot of them are our overly process or
our ultraprocessed foods, our biscuits, our sweets, our cakes, things
that we're indulging in a little bit too much, you know, juice,
is smoothies, that sort of thing. Now, products were shown
to promote acne, but there's a little there's a couple
(23:05):
of caveats around that. So what a lot of the
study showed was that full fat and whole fat quality
dairy really didn't do too much. It was really the
low fat or the skim dairy that seemed to do worse,
and the way protein that seemed to do worse as
well for some people of some backgrounds. And the next
study that I'm going to go through will say that
(23:25):
a little bit more so it's the high GIGL loads
of foods. Dairy is kind of hit and miss but
was more shown to be acne promoting in some studies
high fat foods chocolate they've singled out chocolate by itself
has been shown to be acne promoting. Now, the acne
protective factors included our good fats like Susie mentioned our salmon's,
(23:45):
our avocado extraversion, olive, wilter, nuts, and seeds, and then
increasing fruit and vegetable intake as well was shown to
be acne promoting. So it's interesting with the dairy, things
like milk, cream, ice cream and some types of cheeses
were more acne promoting. Was the better types of dairy,
the good quality Greek yogurts, the kafir, that sort of thing.
The fermented types of dairy when really shown to be
(24:07):
more neutral or even more positive. So the second review
I wanted to go through Susie was in the American
Academy of Dermatology in that journal, so it's quite a
big journal as well. It was called Diet and Acne,
a systematic review from twenty twenty two, so this is
very recent. This one went through a literature search of
four hundred and ten articles, where thirty four of those
(24:29):
articles met the inclusion criteria for what this study was
really looking at, and I was really looking at the
effects of diet on acne. So what the conclusion from
this very large systematic review was was again that foods
with a high glycemic index or an increased glycemic load
and a large carbohydrate load had a modest yet significant
(24:52):
pro acnegenic effect on adults. Now, increased dairy consumption may
have a pro acinogenic effect in selected populations, such as
those with a Western style diet. So if you've got
a poor quality diet and a large dairy intake, it
has been shown to be more acne promoting. Put it
(25:13):
that way, if you've got a great quality diet, your
dairy consumption is normally you're not having four cups of
milk a day, and it's the right type of dairy.
You're not having ice cream every single night, you're not
having cream with your pancakes every single morning. If it's
good quality yoga and its fermented types of dairy, that
has actually been shown to be completely fine. So the
impact of your diet was very dependent on sex and
(25:34):
ethnicity as well. And then the final conclusion of this
research paper was that further randomized control trials were completely
necessary to fully kind of characterize and pull out the
potential associations between diet and exercise. So unfortunately I can't
give a yes or no answer in terms of does
dairy make my skin worse? But it does seem to
(25:55):
be that dairy in combination where the Western style diet
did have more an effect on acne. And again, this
isn't just a couple of pimples every now and then.
This is acne, so a specific medical skin condition. And
it really does come back to the quality of your diet.
If you've got a whole food diet, if you eat
really well, you know you're regulating those other environmental factors
(26:17):
that we talked about, the sun exposure, the smoking, the alcohol.
I really don't think that dairy does too much, but
I think if for most people, what I would try
to do is go from skim or low fat dairy
to full fat and see if that makes a difference.
Take out any way protein power to see if that
makes a difference before you're cutting out dairy completely overall.
Because it's a really important source of calcium for most
(26:37):
of us in our diet. It's a great source of
protein as well, and so it doesn't have to be
taken out, but it also doesn't have to be included
if you choose not to if you find that it
really does make an effect in terms of, you know,
making your acne worse basically. So it's not a yes
or no answer, but it really does come down to
the quality of your diet overall and the quality of
the dairy products that you're eating overall as well.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
Yeah, but it comes up all the time.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
I agree, and when we were discussing it before we recorded,
I had to be honest, it's just really not my
area because people who choose not to have dairy really
feel strongly about it. So that was a really good
summary of the research. And it's like all these areas again.
You know, in the past five years, we've learned so
much about digestive health, and I think we will continue
to learn about the direct relation in this area of
(27:24):
dairy to skin. But it was a really good summary,
so I'm very helpful.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
Oh Anie, Well, that brings us to the end of
our very special skin episode today, and if you haven't
done so already, we would love if you subscribe to
our podcast and also head to our website, which is
the nutritioncouch dot com. On there you will find our
brand new takeaway Guide. Also, our product Guard as well
is still available on the website, and of course our
recordings from our live events last year. We talked about
sustainable fat loss, gut health and hormones, still very very
(27:50):
very relevant information. It was really well received. We had
hundreds of people at our events and the recording is
available for you to watch anywhere in the world from
the comfort of your own home. It's still available on
the tritioncouch dot com and we will catch everybody in
next week's episode.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
Have a great week.
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