Your Nutrition and Your Skin

Being well nourished is having the right macronutrients and the right micronutrients and making sure they are in balance with each other. Most of us fortunately will not have deficiencies, but in fact we may have excesses that are causing problems with both our health and our skin. Those of us who are under nourished may be so because of avoidance of certain foods because of presumed allergies, and fad dieting and others may have chronic illnesses or malabsortion or medications that interfere with our micronutrients. For instance too much aspirin can interfere with the levels of Vitamin K. Your liver is an important site of storage of nutrients, for instance Vitamin A.Sometimes the key to poor skin health is your nutrition. If you skin is becoming thickened and darkened it may be due to deficiencies of B or C or E or even poor essential fatty acid intake. Actually there are many physical signs of nutritional disease. Too much Vitamin A can cause dry and scaly skin. If you don't have enough Vitamin A your serum carotene levels can fall. In fact many of the essential micronutrients can be measured by blood testing.