KNOW YOUR VITAMINS. You know you need to ingest them, but vitamins are also important as topical agents. These are three of our favorites for good skin health.
Vitamin A. Winning our vote for the most valuable skin care nutrient to be applied to the skin—not in a vitamin pill—is vitamin A. Without vitamin A (a “retinoid”), your skin, hair, and nails will be dry and you will be sickly. Vitamin A is found as retinoic acid (Retin-A), retinol (retinaldehyde), or retinyl propionate. Be careful of these if you’re potentially pregnant. All of these forms work, because your body can transform one into another. Retinoic acid decreases acne by knocking out bacteria and decreasing the thickness of the dead layer of skin and oils that plug pores—and this decreases visible pore size. Topical vitamin A increases the stretchy elastin fibers, the hearty structural collagen, and the natural moisturizer hyaluronic acid in the skin. It lessens the dark pigmentation in the skin and is the first-line drug for acne, rosacea, and seborrheic dermatitis. Retinoids are really the only thing you can put on your skin that can repair sun damage, giving you smoother, less wrinkled skin. Most important, retinoids decrease things called actinic keratoses that can become skin cancer. These drugs might even be able to help stretch marks. Light destroys vitamin A. Because of this, you’ll be wasting your money if you put it on your skin in the morning. Use it at night, when it can do the most good.
Vitamin C. Vitamin C is one of your skin’s main water-based antioxidants, although in your skin, vitamin E, because it is lipid soluble, gets the top honor. But you can buttress the vitamin C levels in your skin by 40 times by rubbing in at least a 10 percent concentration of L-ascorbic acid. In your skin and in your orange juice, vitamin C rapidly breaks down with exposure to UV light and oxygen (so remember to close the refrigerator door—and did that light really go out?). So use the vitamin C at night, when it can stimulate your collagen and elastic and help build up your skin. The vitamin C will last a long time in your skin or until it is inactivated by UV light.
Vitamin C protects against sunburn and sun-induced wrinkling. It knocks out those free radicals and inflammation after UV exposure, and it can decrease the rosy look of rosacea. Vitamin C also helps with those brown age spots. If you use it along with vitamin A, you’ll get a better effect than with either alone.
Vitamin E. The major lipid-soluble antioxidant in your skin hitches a ride to the stratum corneum, the dead upper layer of skin, with your natural oils, called sebum. Topical vitamin E needs to be in the form of DL-alpha-tocopherol to make a positive difference to your skin. Many skin creams contain a much more user-friendly form, called tocopherol acetate, but this doesn’t do the magic of alpha-tocopherol. In fact, tocopherol acetate may actually hurt your skin. Vitamin C, by the way, needs vitamin E like Bonnie needs Clyde. Vitamin C is water soluble and an effective scavenger of free radicals in the water-soluble parts of the skin, while vitamin E works on the lipid-soluble portion. But if all you have is vitamin C, the lipid part of the cell ages. The real vitamin E stuff (DL-alpha-tocopherol) enhances the effects of sunscreen, stops the immune system from getting blitzed, and slows wrinkle production. Because UV light degrades vitamin E (just as it does vitamin C), it should be applied along with sunblock and/or at night.
Other antioxidants. Different plants make different sunblocks to protect themselves from the blistering UV light. And each of these usually dark-colored antioxidants can give the skin their benefits. The problem is that many antioxidants have red, blue, or green pigments, unappealing in skin creams. And while these antioxidants may make sense and even may be proven in animals, very few studies have been done to show that they really work in humans. New antioxidants include ferulic acid, idebenone, ubiquinone (coenzyme Q10), alpha lipoic acid, and resveratrol and are already making their way into our friendly neighborhood counters.
EAT FOR SKIN. Perhaps the only food some people associate with skin is a little whipped cream on Saturday night (more on sex in Chapter 10), but a lot of foods or ingredients in foods can help protect it.
Eggs (yolks, unfortunately), legumes, avocados, soybeans, and nuts: All of these contain biotin, an essential chemical for fat and carbohydrate metabolism. A lack of biotin (caused by taking too many antibiotics or an inadequate diet) can lead to dry skin or dermatitis of the face or scalp. (A deficiency can also cause your hair and nails to become brittle and frail.)
Salmon: It contains astaxanthin, the carotenoid that gives salmon its pink color, which improves skin’s elasticity, and the good fat DHA-omega-3, which also makes your skin and hair look younger and healthier.
Green tea: Contains polyphenols that have free oxygen radical scavengers. These protect against photo damage and thicken the epidermis. It can be taken orally or topically. And it may help sunburn.
Pomegranates: In addition to thickening the epidermis and prolonging fibroblast life to produce more collagen and elastin, they contain phytonutrients that seem to accelerate wound healing.
Tomatoes: The nutrients in these reduce the chance that you will get a sunburn, so bulk up on tomatoes (with a little lipid such as a few walnuts beforehand—so the active ingredients are absorbed) before your annual summer vacation. It may be because of the lycopene they contain, but we really do not know the active ingredients for this effect, so enjoy the tomatoes rather than just a lycopene supplement.
ASK FOR A HAND. There are many benefits to massage—relaxation, the release of muscle tension, the chance to chat with strong-handed Sven. There’s also another: aromatherapy. Many people think aromatherapy has to do with smelling, but it’s really about allowing your body to absorb oils that can have a profound effect on your health. There’s an ongoing debate whether massage with aromas is superior to standard massage, but some evidence suggests you may experience more short-term benefits from a massage with scents. The scent with the most data supporting it: lemon. We recommend you use the scent in a variety of ways:
Spray it on a pillow a couple of hours before bed.
Take a foot bath with lemon in it. Some studies show that a foot bath with lemon as opposed to a foot bath without lemon helps promote relaxation.
Have (or give) a massage with lemon oil, or add it to your bathwater.
Rub your body with lemon oil to promote sleep and soothe skin burns.
Some other aromas and oils we suggest:
Tea tree oil for topical infection in some of our “dirtier” areas, such as the feet, armpits, or groin, or even the pilonidal cyst area just above the crack between the buttock cheeks in hairy people.
Rosemary, which can help improve mental alertness and function by reducing the effect of stress so you can focus.
Peppermint and lavender (we suspect these work, but we’re still waiting for good scientific studies to find out).
PUT THE FIRE OUT. Quickly treat burns from both sun and flames with ice water, as mentioned earlier, to slow down the rush of inflammatory cells that create blistering and further the collateral damage of the burn. Sap from the aloe leaf can also be very soothing. Most important, prevent infections in the damaged area (bacteria love dead and burned skin), since infection will worsen the scar. Staying out of the sun for six months after surgery will minimize the risk of brown pigmentation in the scar as it tries to protect itself from UV radiation. By the way, if a new burn hurts, that’s good. It means you didn’t fry the full thickness of the skin. A deep burn through the dermis kills the nerves so you don’t actually feel it. But an old wound that starts hurting is your body’s message for you to see a doctor.
SLEEP AND EXERCISE. They stimulate growth hormone, which promotes fibroblast health and allows more production of collagen and elastin to keep your skin taut. They also accelerate the production of epidermis. See more about exercise and our new band workout in YOU Tools.
OIL UP. We love olive oil, and whenever we find another use for this natural wonder, we get excited. Olive oil should find its way into makeup and skin creams, since it has been shown to decrease UVB damage to the skin. Extra-virgin olive oil seems to work better. (Like