Glowing soft skin and a clear blemish-free complexion is something most of us relate with youth – but there are certain foods that can help us maintain and preserve the beauty of our skin even as we get older. While ageing and wrinkles are a natural process, the right kind of food can keep your skin glowing and radiant irrespective of your age.
First, let us understand how an anti-ageing diet helps your skin:
1. It helps you maintain a well-functioning digestive system, which is crucial to the anti-ageing process. A sluggish gut cannot absorb nutrients effectively, resulting in undernourished muscles and bones, and pre-mature ageing of the skin.
2. It fights inflammation – which is our body’s natural response to fight free radicals in our body that causes allergies, skin infection and other infections.
3. Helps the body to fight oxidative stress – an imbalance between the production of free radicals and the ability of the body to counteract or detoxify their harmful effects through neutralization by antioxidants, harmful toxins and hormonal imbalance, which leads to weight gain, irregular sleep and stress causing the skin to wrinkle and look older.
4. The diet helps to balance out the alkaline levels in our bodies. A lot of food we eat is acidic in nature, and need to be balanced with an alkaline diet.
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If you want good, flawless skin naturally, these are the foods you need to immediately add to your diet.
1. Water: While this is not exactly a food, this is the magic potion on your journey towards good skin. Water is essential to maintain skin moisture and is the vehicle for delivering essential nutrients to the skin cells. Ekta Varmani Tandon, nutrition head at Fitness First, recommends drinking enough water hydrate your skin and flush out the toxins that make it look dull and wrinkly.
2. Oily Fish: Fish like sardines, tuna, mackerel and salmon are rich in skin-loving anti-oxidants. They clean up the free radicals that cause wrinkles and prematurely age skin. The high-protein content of the oily fish also helps keep the skin firm, with the added bonus of keeping you slim.
3. Fruits: If you want younger-looking skin, get your daily dose of fruits, including:
4. Carbohydrates: If you want great skin you need to eat good carbs. Oats contain high levels of salicylic acid that plump up the cells in your skin giving it a youthful bounce. It also slows down the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles besides keeping you energized for the day.
5. Multi-grain bread: Loaded with seeds, multi-grain bread is full of selenium which fights the ageing process and preserves the elasticity of your skin.
6. Nuts: Nuts like almonds are packed with omega-3 fats, proteins and Vitamin E that help the skin repair itself and keep the wrinkles away.
7. Vegetables: Vegetables like Spinach, Broccoli, Kale, Tomatoes, Onions and Garlic are full of nutrients and anti-oxidants that help you ward off skin damage both externally and internally.
8. Tomatoes: Foods high in lycopene, like tomatoes, not just keeps the skin looking younger but also protects the skin against sun damage, reducing the risk of certain types of cancer.