Eating one’s way to a fresh complexion
How about berries instead of Botox, tomatoes instead of day cream, carrots instead of make-up? Many foods are beauty aids that make expensive creams and treatments unnecessary.
Their effects are not immediate, though.
“Foods aren’t medications that work overnight,” noted Hans Lauber, a nutrition expert and author from Munich. Rather than a short-term impact, many foods have a preventative and, above all, lasting effect, he said.
“This means it’s never too late to start holding back the skin’s ageing a bit and ensuring a glowing complexion,” remarked Michaela Axt-Gadermann, a dermatologist and professor of health promotion at Germany’s Coburg University of Applied Sciences and Arts. Skin ageing has a lot to do with subdermal inflammation and can be resisted with the right natural products, she said.
“Meat, sausage or other animal foods are wrinkle accelerators because they contain arachidonic acid, which is also formed in our body when we eat foods containing omega-6 fatty acids, such as margarine and sunflower oil,” Axt-Gadermann explained. The same, she said, goes for free radicals, a type of unstable molecule that multiplies as a result of improper nutrition, sunlight and smoking — and attacks the body’s cells.
But there are dietary counterweights: “Berries have a strong protective effect against free radicals; that is, they’ve got a lot of antioxidants,” said Lauber, referring to substances that interact with and stabilise free radicals. “And the rule is, the darker, the better.”
According to Axt-Gadermann, a glass of elderberry juice has the protective potential of 14 glasses of red grape juice and 55 glasses of apple juice. A small amount of sour berries also covers a person’s daily requirement of vitamin C, which improves the elasticity of the skin and promotes digestion.