How To Achieve Beautiful Skin From The Inside Out

It can get tiring covering up skin imperfections with makeup every day, and while skincare products can help to minimise the appearance of flaws, treating your skin from the inside out may help to give you the beautifully flawless complexion you crave.

One of the most effective ways to feed your skin goodness is through your diet. Healthy food choices will provide your skin with essential nutrients that enable bodily processes to work properly, and since your skin is an organ just like your heart and lungs, your diet should be taken seriously if you’re to embrace healthy looking skin.

How Does Diet Affect Skin?

The food you consume is doing far more than satisfying your taste buds and providing you with much needed energy; it can also lead to you flaunting a glowing complexion. Dermatologist Dr Jessica Wu says, “Foods get digested and broken down into vitamins, minerals and amino acids that your body can use to build healthy skin. If you crash diet or eat highly processed foods, your skin won’t be as strong and supple as it could be. For example, if you don’t eat enough protein, you are depriving your skin of the amino acids that go into making collagen (which makes your skin strong) and elastic tissue (which makes it supple).”

Collagen and elastin are two essential proteins that are naturally found in skin but as you age these diminish and become less effective – this can lead to fine lines and wrinkles. However, if you eat a varied diet that’s rich in vitamin C, you may help your natural collagen production since vitamin C contributes to normal collagen formation for the normal function of skin.

Eating a diet that’s rich in antioxidants may also lead to healthy-looking skin by helping to slow the signs of ageing. Antioxidant vitamins, including copper, B2, vitamin C and zinc, work by protecting cells from oxidative stress. Environmental factors like pollution can cause oxidative stress by introducing irritants to your body. These irritants can damage proteins, including the proteins that help to keep skin smooth and firm. Fruits, vegetables and whole grains are all favourable sources of antioxidant nutrients.

Ageing is not the only skin concern you can tackle with diet. If you suffer from an uneven skin tone, you may find that increasing your intake of foods containing copper helps to even your complexion. Copper contributes to normal skin pigmentation and can be found naturally in meats, vegetables and grains. The average healthy person will have 110mg of copper in their body, 15% of which should be found in their skin.

There are also several nutrients that have been proven to contribute to the maintenance of normal skin. ‘Normal skin’, in this case, is skin that can be described as having small pores, even tone and having the right moisture balance so it’s not too oily or too dry. Vitamin A, zinc, iodine and various B vitamins have all been identified to support skin in this way and if you eat a varied, balanced diet that doesn’t restrict any food groups, you are likely to consume all these skin-loving nutrients.

Supplement Your Skincare Routine

If you’re concerned your diet isn’t varied enough, you may wish to add supplements containing the nutrients needed for healthy skin to your daily routine. Simply choosing multivitamins that are high in the skin-loving nutrients mentioned may be sufficient in improving your skin’s health, but you may also wish to try a specially engineered beauty supplement that has been designed to target specific skincare needs.

Beauty supplements are increasing in popularity thanks to their ability to aid collagen production and target ageing. According to a report by market research firm Goldstein Research, global beauty supplement sales are set to reach $6.8 billion by the end of 2024 (nearly double what they were in 2016). People are becoming more aware of the importance of wellness, the days of hiding vitamins at the back of the medicine cupboard are behind us, and millennials proudly display pill pots on desks in the office. Supplement choices define who a person wants to become and at a time when convenient living puts us at risk of mineral deficiencies, this upward trend can only be positive.

If you’re concerned that your fast-paced lifestyle is stealing nutrients from your skin and causing premature ageing amongst other skin complaints, you may want to try a high-quality beauty supplement. Forever Living’s Firming Complex cleverly combines vitamin C and biotin – one of the essential B vitamins for skin health – with marine collagen. Together these ingredients work to fight the appearance of ageing by protecting cells from oxidative stress, assisting with collagen formation and helping to maintain normal skin. Firming Complex should be taken each morning alongside topical products as part of an everyday skincare routine.

Aloe is another ingredient that your skin will love and if you drink it, you’ll benefit from its nutritious power from the inside out. Aloe’s relationship with healthy skin is not a new concept – most people know that the ancient Egyptians often bathed in aloe gel in the hope it would keep them looking youthful – but more recent research supports the idea that aloe can complement your skincare regime.

When choosing aloe vera products, you do need to look carefully at ingredients as sometimes the percentage of aloe is a lot lower than you think. Dr Jennifer Gordon, a board-certified dermatologist from Austin, Texas, cautions consumers, stating, “If the percentage of aloe vera is low, that means it contains many other additives, such as thickeners, preservatives, colours, and fragrance.” This could impact the role of the aloe and your complexion may not end up as glowing as you initially hoped. One aloe vera product you can trust is Forever Aloe Vera Gel. This drinking gel contains 99.7% pure aloe vera gel, it’s sugar free and it’s free from additives and preservatives. So, if healthy skin is what you’re after, the cleansing formula contained within Forever Aloe Vera Gel’s bright yellow bottle will make the perfect companion to your skincare routine.

The Outside Matters Too

Once you’ve addressed your diet and you’re consciously adding all the goodness into your skin from the inside, you want to ensure you do what you can on the outside to prevent undoing all your good work.

It’s therefore important to choose topical products with ingredients that will protect your skin from moisture loss as well as preventing harmful pollutants from penetrating the skin’s surface. This is another area where aloe vera comes up trumps. Dermatologist and cosmetic surgeon Dr Joel Schlessinger says that, when applied topically, aloe works as a glue, causing the top layer of skin cells to stick together so that moisture is locked into skin.

All of Forever’s skincare products contain a healthy dose of aloe; in fact, this is the foundation ingredient. Other botanicals, essential oils, fruit extracts and proteins are then added to the aloe to create impressive formulas that have been scientifically developed for healthy skin. If you’re not sure which skincare products to use, our recent article should help you to identify the right skincare for your age.

If ageing is your primary concern, Infinite by Forever skincare introduces essential ingredients that protect your skin from the outside in. The cleanser assists your skin’s barrier function to fight against tightness and dryness, and linoleic acid and vitamin E support lipids to help break down dirt and debris. A powerful serum boosts the power of aloe with a clinically tested ingredient, trifluoracetyl tripepetide-2; in clinical tests, this single ingredient significantly improved skin elasticity and is known to combat progerin, a harmful protein that increases as you age and wreaks havoc on your skin. By mimicking natural skin processes, this three-amino acid peptide increases the appearance of firmness and reduces the look of fine lines and wrinkles. To finish off, a restoring cream with a formula that boasts an innovative sugar structure, improves skin’s water barrier and moisture retention. These three products, when taken alongside Forever’s beauty supplement, properly equip skin with what it needs to fight the signs of ageing. Read our blog for more tips on how to stop skin from ageing.

If you’re more concerned with achieving a healthy, glowing complexion, Forever’s Sonya Daily Skincare range may be up your street. This range focuses on balancing your skin’s natural pH with a cleanser that cleans without stripping the skin of moisture, an illuminating gel to brighten skin and reduce the appearance of pores, an overnight mask that nourishes as you sleep and a moisturiser that melts into skin, leaving behind a dewy complexion.

Have you tried any of these solutions for glowing skin? Let us know in the comments.