Peels

Some animals increase their sexual attractiveness with their diet. The great tit, with its distinctive black-and-yellow plumage, likes to eat caterpillars rich in carotenoids because that makes its yellow breast feathers shine more beautifully and appear attractive to potential mates. Is there something similar in humans?

Vegetable tanning bed

In one study, researchers showed participants digital photos of women and men of different ethnicities and asked them to digitally alter these people’s skin color until, in their opinion, they looked the healthiest. Both female and male participants preferred the warm yellowish shimmer that can be achieved through “deposition of dietary carotenoids in the skin.” As I explain in see.nf/glow, the healthier you eat, the healthier you look, but you have to maintain the diet long-term, because the added attractiveness that comes from eating lots of fruits and vegetables can decline within weeks if you stop.

An entire industry is based on the assumption that, in White people, darker skin looks healthier and is more attractive; however, studies suggest that what looks tan and therefore beautiful is more likely due to increased yellowing of the skin. When you separate hue and intensity, study participants actually prefer lighter—but more yellowish—skin. When models who ate a lot of vegetables were compared with heavily tanned models, the golden glow of carotenoids came out ahead. Well then—off to the fruits-and-vegetables tanning bed!

Saving your own skin

I’m not too proud to appeal to people’s vanity, especially among younger people, who according to surveys are more likely to shape their diets around looking better than around being healthier. That’s why I’m always pleased when I read headlines like “Greens to be gorgeous” (“Gorgeous looks through vegetables”). But fruits and vegetables don’t just change complexion. As I note in see.nf/internalsunscreen, skin biopsies of women who were randomly assigned a daily spinach salad showed a significant increase in collagen production, increased skin elasticity, and a reduction in facial fine lines. That may be partly due to a sun-protective effect “from within,” because after the same UV exposure, fewer DNA damages were found. Kale, apples, and a combination of rosemary and grapefruit extracts had similar effects. If you reach for foods rich in antioxidants, such as tomato paste, ten weeks before bikini season, it can reduce skin redness from sunburn by 40 percent. Four weeks, however, is not enough.

External sun protection and photoprotection from foods like green leafy vegetables and sweet potatoes complement each other naturally and protect the skin. Sunscreens have the advantage that they work almost immediately and provide much stronger protection, whereas the sun protection from vegetables builds slowly over weeks and reaches only a sun protection factor (SPF) of 4, compared with SPF 10 to 40 or more with regular sunscreens. On the other hand, external sun protection has to be applied separately, in sufficient amounts and over the entire area—including the hard-to-reach spots—and can still be rubbed off, washed off, or sweated off, whereas the built-in protection from plants is always there.

The effect of antioxidants

The antioxidant content of the skin is constantly changing, from hour to hour. Remember the argon laser study? Using a similar technique, a close association was shown between low antioxidant content in the skin and wrinkles of greater or lesser depth. That matches the data according to which the skin of people who eat lots of antioxidants ages significantly less over 15 years than the skin of people who consume few antioxidants. This constantly fluctuating balance between antioxidants from food that deposit in the skin and the daily onslaught of oxidative stress that depletes these reserves provides insights into other behaviors that can influence skin health.

For example, there’s beauty sleep. Participants who were kept awake for 31 hours straight and then allowed to sleep for only five hours had redder and puffier eyes, darker under-eye circles, drooping eyelids, paler skin, more fine lines, wrinkles, and more downturned corners of the mouth than participants in another group who were allowed to sleep for eight hours. Those who don’t get enough sleep are also perceived as more tired (no kidding!), less healthy, and less attractive than someone who is well rested. Over time, the oxidative stress associated with sleep deprivation could show up in measures of skin aging.

Psychological stress also affects skin aging. There appears to be an association between elevated levels of stress hormones and estimated age. Just think of how US presidents look before and after one or two terms in office. In an aging study out of Boston, hundreds of participants were photographed over ten years. Even after adjusting the results for income (and health and attractiveness), those with financial stress looked significantly older at the end than at the beginning and had aged significantly worse.

The tug-of-war involving antioxidants could also explain why alcohol consumption is linked not only to malignant tumors of the digestive tract, but also to skin cancer. In see.nf/sunalcohol I explain how, after about three vodka shots, the carotenoid in the skin drops drastically within eight minutes, making you more susceptible to sunburn—which, in turn, could be counteracted with orange juice. Berries are even better, so a strawberry daiquiri could reduce sunburn risk even more than a vodka-O.

Alcohol consumption, however, does not appear to have any influence on skin aging. One study found a significant association between wrinkles and alcohol consumption, but ten others did not. What about other beverages?

Drinking for the skin

It will surprise no one that dehydration of the whole body and dry eyes occur together, and disproportionately often in older people. But is there also a connection between hydration and dry skin? A systematic review summarized study results according to which drinking an extra one or two liters of water daily for four to seven weeks improves skin hydration and soothes dry, rough skin.

And tea or coffee? Skin biopsies before and after drinking tea showed that components of green tea deposit in the skin, but what do they do? Drinking coffee or tea and coffee was associated with a lower tendency toward spots on the faces of Japanese women, but intervention studies either do not exist at all (for coffee), or they had disappointing results (for tea).