You are what you eat.
I’ve said this before and this is so especially true for your skin.
Vitamins and minerals are so crucial for skin that this is one of the first place nutritional deficiencies will show up.
In fact, the skin is like a map we can read for pinpointing our vitamin and nutrient deficiencies. Much like a plant’s leaves and skin reflect what they’re not getting enough of, such as light, water, or nutrients from the soil, our skin shows us what we’re not getting through drying or skin problems like acne or psoriasis.
Many individuals often discover the power of eating more nutrient dense in an effort to cure a skin problem. In fact, witnessing the power of nutrition to transform the appearance of skin has also transformed many well studied personal trainers into skin care gurus.
Today, I’m going to tell you about some nutrients that are absolutely essential for beautiful skin and something you might not have heard about yet – embryonic foods—and the power they hold to help you preserve and manufacture collagen!
(To understand how important collagen and elastin are for youthful skin, just look at those plump little cheeks on babies. They have more collagen and elastin than we’ll ever have again) so preserving and promoting collagen and elastin are essential.
Through nutrition, we can stay as youthful looking as long as possible.
Neat Trick: Look at What the Best Skin Creams Contain from Good Companies
One trick to understanding what vitamins nourish skin from within, is to look at the ones contained in the best skin creams. Better skin creams often contain four specific vitamins: A, C, E, and B3 and that’s because besides being powerful antioxidants, they also aid in skin repair and healing, which means they spur on collagen and elastin synthesis.
Vitamin A is absolutely crucial for the skin—more than about any other vitamin. In fact, just think to yourself vitamin A = crucial for all health above the neck, period, because it’s essential for eye and skin health. Very crucial.
Vitamin A deficiency is so dangerous to the body that signs we are not getting enough vitamin A will surface early on. It’s like the body taking care of itself through a warning system. If you start experiencing dryness of the skin, dryness of the eye, and another common condition called follicular hyperkeratosis, for example, these are signs to talk to a doctor quickly about your vitamin A deficiency problem. You might be amazed to learn that people suffering severe vitamin A deficiency go blind quite quickly and die within one year of blindness.
Vitamin A is a moisturizing and protective nutrient for the membranes in our body—the mucous membranes of the eye, the tissues of the eye like the cornea and the retina, from damage. It also protects us from sun damage. It’s absolutely crucial just FYI.
Vitamin A helps to fight off free radical damage, which is the enemy of collagen, and it also is important for cell production and growth and stimulates fibroblasts, those cells responsible for developing new tissue growth that keep our skin taut, springy, and youthful.
But what many people don’t understand is that its really hard to absorb vitamin A –even when we eat it in carrots, kale, and other vitamin A rich foods UNLESS WE CONSUME IT WITH Fat.
I want to stress this today, because they’re no sense in going and downing all your AREDS 2 vitamin supplements and eating lots of carrots, unless you’re eating them with fat. Who are the people in the most danger of becoming vitamin A deficient? DIETERS who eat low fat!
See, the beta carotene in foods like carrots actually is precursor for vitamin A. It has to be converted into vitamin A in the body and it needs fat to do so because A is a fat soluble vitamin!
So eat carrots, sure, but pair them with fatty fish, add a little olive oil, or Kerrygold butter. Same goes for other vitamin A-rich veggies like KALE.
Dosage: Women should aim for 700 mcg of vitamin A daily, while men should get 900 mcg. Eggs and dairy products are excellent sources of vitamin A, as are dark, green leafy veggies, carrots, yams, sweet potatoes, and spinach.
B3: A Wonder Vitamin for Redness and Rosacea
Our skin’s protective barrier is formed of ceramides and fatty acids – and B3 encourages the health and healthy turnover of both of these things. By strengthening the outer barrier of the skin, B3 can help us to keep bacteria and irritants out and keep moisture in the skin, where it belongs. We need about 16 to 18 mgs of B3 a day, and it’s crucial for healthy skin and clearing up mild to moderate rosacea and acne.
Here are some B3 rich foods:
Turkey. 1 breast: 101 mg (over 100% DV)
Chicken breast. 3 oz: 8.9 mg (44% DV)
Peanuts. 1 cup: 21.9 mg (over 100% DV)
Mushrooms. 1 cup: 7.6 mg (34% DV)
Liver. 1 slice: 11.9 mg (60% DV)
Tuna. 3 oz: 11.3 mg (56% DV)
Green peas. 1 cup: 3 mg (15% DV
Vitamin E
Vitamin E is crucial for helping us eliminate dryness in the skin and for helping protect us against the damaging effects of UV rays. It also helps the skin to retain its natural moisturizers by encouraging the production of NMF (natural moisturizing factor) in the skin. Vitamin E is so good at protecting skin cells, and all the cells, from free radical damage that researchers and scientists call it the great “protector.”
Vitamin C
Vitamin C is very important for its role in helping form the structure of our collagen stores, which is necessary for taut, youthful, plump skin. We need vitamin C or the skin suffers quickly, in fact. If you are noticing your skin is looking a little sallow, saggy, and just older some days, it could be you need more vitamin C rich foods in the diet. Vitamin C is also crucial for wound healing, which tells you its importance for anti-aging. Any nutrient that speeds wound healing speeds collagen synthesis and thus, keeps you more youthful.
While true deficiency in the United States is uncommon, it is possible to be deficient in C, especially if you smoke, which depletes vitamin C in the body, or if you don’t eat enough fruits and vegetables. The highest sources of vitamin C include bell peppers, dark leafy greens, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, kiwi, and strawberries.
My favorite way to get more C in the diet is buying those sacks of mini-peppers in red, orange, and yellow and just clipping those all over salads, scrambled eggs, sautés, everything—just three of those mini peppers has over 100% of your requirement for vitamin C.
Embryonic Foods: The Key to Collagen
Embryonic foods? What do you mean, eating an egg with the chicken still in it, like they do in some countries? No guys. The term “embryonic foods” refers to foods like eggs, beans, and seeds—foods that contain an embryo in a shell. So any foods like those little nesting dolls that have a surprise tucked inside that it also edible.
Beans, such as fava, kidney, and lima beans are also embryonic foods. They came in pods. But these pods are discarded, because most individuals like eating the meatier bean within the pod of these legumes.
Here’s what we’re learning about embryonic foods like these: they are wonders for skin health—especially wondrous for promoting very youthful skin!
These foods within foods contain a vital nutrient-dense blend of nutrients, amino acids, vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients which are amazing for skin health and which spur on new collagen growth and collagen turnover as well.
Think about seeds. See, everything that plant needs to grow and thrive is packed inside these protective membranes.
That’s why seeds such as flax seeds and sunflower seeds are such nutrient-dense powerhouses in themselves, packing not just a good dose of protein but also vitamins, antioxidants, and Omega 3 fatty acids as well! Think about it from a holistic perspective for a minute—to ensure the survival of plants – actually—a seed can be eaten by an animal, pass through their digestive tract, be excreted on the ground, and grow into a whole new plant again.
Thus, assuring that all the roving animals of the world don’t completely wipe out plant life. Amazing.
In order to assure this perpetuity of life, all those compounds are packed within that protective seed – both the seed and the embryo within, we’re learning, are great for the skin.
What the Research Says: And is Going to Be Saying a Lot More of Very Soon
As skin specialist Dr. Murad notes, to keep skin looking youthful, plump, and baby-plump, “eat foods that are rich in collagen-boosting ingredients, such as embryonic foods that contain amino acids (eggs, beans, and seeds), antioxidants, which inhibit damage to collagen (pomegranates and goji berries are great) and good fats (like walnuts and avocado) to replenish collagen stores and slow the aging process as much as we can!”
What’s amazing about these embryonic foods is that they contain all the fats, fatty acids, vitamins, mineral, and collagen synthesis stimulating compounds we need to keep our skin as full of collagen as we can.
Beans, for example, are packed with sulfur, which is crucial for collagen production. Eggs, perhaps the most important food to eat for collagen production, are packed with amino acids, as well as two of the chief amino acids we need for collagen production itself, lysine and proline. In fact, the chief food sources of lysine and proline are all embryonic foods – eggs, beans, nuts, seeds, and legumes.
In fact, egg membranes actually contain collagen — a type of collagen called collagen types one and four, which are biologically identical to the collagen found in human skin! In one study, in fact, scientists have actually found that that collagen in egg membranes is a powerful wrinkle reverser and can actually suppress aging.
Before I move on, I wanted to reassert the importance of reaching for Omega 3-rich eggs for beautiful skin. These pasture raised chickens are actually fed flaxseed—another wonder embryonic food for stimulating collagen production—so these eggs are doubly rich in youth promoting compounds for collagen synthesis!
Beans and Legumes: Also Youth Promoting
Embryonic beans and legumes have special compounds which also keep skin youthful. First, they’re rich in something crucial to skin called hyaluronic acid (HA). This is a crucial compound for dewy, moisturized, youthful looking skin.
What hyaluronic acid does Is to help our skin hold onto moisture in our skin’s moisturizing layer – which is important because one of the chief side effects of aging, and chief causes of aging, is the drying of the skin cells which occurs with every year older that we get. The beans which are especially rich in hyaluronic acid are kidney and butter beans.
The other magic ingredient for skin in beans is called GEINSTEIN. Have you heard of this? I hadn’t – until a conversation with a dermatologist got me going on this embryonic foods—fountain of youth thing that is absolutely my number one obsession right now.
Geinstein is crucial for both collagen synthesis and production. In studies, it has proven to reverse and prevent further age related changes to skin associated with menopause!
Geinstein is an isoflavone that is very hard to get enough of in the diet unless you like some really strange foods – like eating Kudzu grass—which strangely enough is packed with the stuff – or if you’ve gotten soy out of the diet because soybeans are rich in geinstein as well. So get some FAVA beans into your diet. They’re actually delicious, as Hannibal Lecter will tell you, and furthermore, the geinstein in them not only prevents the enzymatic damage to collagen that results in aging, it also promotes new collagen promotion—meaning we’ll manufacture new collagen, even though we’re older!
Fava beans! My new fountain of youth!
More later and be well and eat embryonic foods for dewy youthful skin!
Jackson