Remember the days when everyone swore that eating a lot of pizza, chocolate, and other fatty junk foods would cause acne and other skin issues? Turns out, it isn’t the fat in those foods that’s the culprit behind everything from breakouts to eczema to premature aging: it’s sugar.
Keep reading to learn just how much sugar affects your skin.
CAUSES BREAKOUTS
A sugary diet creates the perfect environment for acne to thrive. First off, sugar increases inflammation throughout your body, making blemishes extra red and painful. A diet high insugar also suppresses your body’s white blood cells—the soldiers responsible for fighting off infection. This leaves you vulnerable to acne-causing bacteria lurking on your skin. The increase in inflammation also causes your body to produce stress hormones, like cortisol, which boost your skin’s oil production, giving bacteria the greasy environment they need to grow and populate.
Treatments like Mandelic or Azelac Skin Peel will help to keep all the acne bacteria in check and stop them from spreading.
BREAKS DOWN COLLAGEN
When you flood your body with sugar, it attaches to collagen protein in a process called glycation. During glycation, a new type of substance is created: advanced glycation end products or AGEs. AGEs are incredibly destructive to your body’s proteins; they break down elastin and degrade collagen. The most prevalent types of collagen in your skin are types I, II,and III. Type III is the longest lasting and strongest.
When these two proteins link with sugars they become weaker and when these essential skin building blocks are impaired, the signs of ageing become more apparent; skin becomes drier and less elastic, causing wrinkles, sagging and a dull skin appearance.
To help stimulate a new collagen and elastin fibres the best reliable treatment is Mesotherapy and Skin Needling- Dermapen.
SPIKES INFLAMMATION
When you eat something super sugary like a big piece of cake or simple carbs like white bread, your body immediately produces a surge of insulin to help stabilize your blood sugar levels. When insulin increases, so does inflammation. This inflammation can exacerbate existing inflammatory skin conditions like psoriasis, acne, rosacea, and eczema.
If you suffer from allergies or eczema, you’ve probably realized on your own that sugar causes flare-ups. Because sugar stimulates inflammation and suppresses white blood cells, your body is less able to fight off even mild allergens. If you suffer from food intolerances and sensitivities, be extra careful with your sugar intake, which can make your allergies worse.
If you find your skin experiencing a reaction the best solution to that is estGen treatment which will stop the inflammation and start healing process.
How to reduce the effects of sugar
on your skin
Whilst we are not suggesting to cut out sugar completely, it is advisable to look at your sugar intake within your diet and try to have no more than the recommended amount (25g) as this is what the body is able to handle without adverse effects. Added sugars should make up no more than 10% of your daily calorie intake, to help you manage this, Olay advise you do the following:
- Know how much sugar per day you are having. Read food labels and make healthier choices when buying processed foods. Often supermarket brands operate a traffic light labelling policy to help steer you to make healthier choices.
- Know your sugars – honey, fruit juices and alcohol all contain high amounts of sugar
- Drink water – replace fizzy drinks, juice and energy drinks with water and be aware that flavoured waters often include hidden additional ingredients.
- Get your beauty sleep – scientists have found that the sleep hormone melatonin can reduce glycation damage by up to 50%
- Relax and unwind – stress causes spikes in the level of the hormone cortisol, which increases the effects of glycation by up to 20%
Regards,
A