There is much more to skincare than creams and moisturisers. Here are four factors of lifestyle health which warrant attention. These factors are taken from a lengthy professional article which you may wish to read in full, the citation for which is shown at the foot of the article.
Factor 1: Nutrition, Diet and Skin Health:
Eating is directly associated with health. Good nutrition is essential to keeping current and future generations healthy across the lifespan. A healthy diet helps children grow and develop properly and reduces their risk of chronic diseases. Adults who consume a healthy diet live longer and have a lower risk of disorders and certain cancers. Additionally, healthy eating can help people with chronic diseases manage these conditions and avoid complications. In other words, nutrition plays a key role in lifestyle habits and practices that impact virtually every chronic disease and there is strong evidence for the role of nutrition in cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, and certain cancers, among many other disorders. For example, in 2022, La Vignera and Basile presented a report entitled “Diet and prostate health: an underrated tool?”, which described how dietary changes can notably impact prostate health and improve the benefit of traditional medical care.
While diet has become a focus to enhance human health, the attention on what types of diets yield the best outcomes is paramount from the perspective of consumers. The “Mediterranean or Eastern” diets versus a “Western diet” have gained popularity to increase the general health status and well-being and address many diseases and disorders. For example, the Mediterranean diet is one of the most widely described and evaluated dietary patterns in the scientific literature with validated health benefits. It is characterised by high intakes of vegetables, legumes, fruits, nuts, whole grains, fish, some olive oil, moderate intake of red wine, where most proteins and fats are derived from vegetable sources with low intake of red meat, potatoes, processed meat, refined carbohydrates, and sweets. Additionally, the Eastern (Asian) diet has high intake of plant-based foods (source of protein from vegetables like bean sprouts, spinach, eggplant, bok choy, cabbage, kale, snow peas, leeks, and mushrooms). Fruits and legumes, grapes, melons, cherries, dates, mangoes, etc.; steamed or stir-fried produce along with nuts, seeds, beans (soy, mung), lentils, tofu, or tempeh, plus rice and whole grains. Moderate intake of fish (dependent upon country’s coastline), dairy, eggs, and poultry. Very low intake of meat, processed meat, refined carbohydrates, and sweets. Conversely, the Western diet, prevalent in high-income countries, contains refined carbohydrates, red meat, processed meats, fats/lipids/cholesterol, which increase sympathetic nervous system, oxidative stress, and inflammation and low intake of fruits and vegetables.
Factor 2: Rest, Relax, Recover (RRR) and Manage Stressors
Another important lifestyle health factor is rest, and the most important aspect of rest is sleep, which is essential for health and well-being. Sleep is a fundamental physiological need to which humans devote approximately one-third of their lives. Sleep duration and quality of the sleep cycle determine health outcomes, because without this critical rest interval the body’s cells/tissues/organs, etc. and functions are adversely affected.
Each sleep cycle begins with non-REM sleep (for memory consolidation), while REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep is critical for processing sensory impressions and each cycle lasts between 70–100 min with an average of four to six cycles per night. The sleep interval in healthy people decreases with aging, where newborns need 14–17 h of sleep per day, while adults sleep 7–9 h. Less than 7 h of sleep is associated with poor health and decreased well-being.
The function of sleep has many components which include: (a) reduction in energy consumption, body temperature, blood sugar, helps to control body weight and strengthens your heart, (b) immune cell production, restores defence mechanisms, decreases inflammation/stress and repairs cells/tissues, (c) removal of toxins from the brain (produced by cellular respiration) by increased blood flow to this organ, and increases memory consolidation/formation, (d) boosting mechanical/hormonal balance, executive functions, performing tasks on vigilance, motor speed, and post-exercise recovery.
Sleep is vital in regulating skin physiology such as the skin surface pH, TEWL (Trans-epidermal water loss), blood flow and skin temperature. For example, in reference to skin health a clinical study of post-menopausal women showed that those who slept less than five hours per day had higher TEWL loss, decreased skin barrier function and longer recovery after UV-induced erythema. Even after a single night of disrupted sleep, periocular areas are known to show dark circles giving a tired appearance. Sleep impairment is associated with chronic inflammatory skin conditions such as atopic dermatitis, eczema, psoriasis, rosacea. In this regard, sleep deprivation is known to increase cortisol levels that suppress the immune response along with impairment of T cell function and antigen presentation that result in increased infections.
Factor 3: Physical Exercise and Skin Health
In dermatology, exercise has positive influences on: (a) skin aging, (b) skin cancer, (c) psoriasis, (d) venous ulcers, (e) androgenetic alopecia, and (f) skin moisturizing and hydration. In brief, the known skin benefits of regular physical exercise include: (a) improving blood flow to nourish cells and remove toxins from the skin, (b) preventing the signs of aging by boosting collagen, elasticity, tone/turgor, the skin barrier, (c) inhibiting the anti-inflammatory actions of oxidative stress and MMPs, (d) decreasing stress by increasing dermal resilience, and (e) maintaining improved overall skin well-being.
However, it must be pointed out that individuals with inflammatory skin disorders (i.e., acne, atopic dermatitis, eczema, psoriasis, rosacea, etc.) should seek medical guidance before starting an exercise program, plus everyone should be cautious and wear protective clothing and limit their sun exposure.
Factor 4: Social/Community and Skin Health
Within the framework of lifestyle health, social interactions and/or isolation play important roles in determining an individual’s well-being because chronic and age-related disorders/diseases are linked to the lack of social contact with meaningful in person activities. Social isolation is well known and common in older groups, but the increased isolation among younger adults is due to greater social media use.
In a recent study by Cudjoe et al., in 2022, found that social isolation in older adults is associated with higher levels of (the inflammatory biomarkers) interleukin-6 (IL-6) and C-reactive protein (CRP) that suggested a link between social isolation and morbidity/mortality. Kottner et al., in 2023, showed that isolation in older individuals displayed skin changes (thinning of the epidermis, flattening of the dermal-epidermal junction, decreases in the fat layer (hypodermis) and collagen and elastin fibres in the dermis, which indicated that clinical practice guidelines to promote skin health in older people might be improved.
One factor associated with social isolation might be a negative body image that is common in men and women (usually associated with an increase in BMI and/or decreased skin health-lack of dermal elasticity and the appearance of wrinkles). However, physical activity and exercise, yoga, massage, dance therapy and body awareness therapy represent alternative methods to address negative body image issues, especially in women.
Lifestyle change is often a gradual process involving multiple forward efforts and some setbacks, but this paradigm is a routine/program rather than an event. Finally, there are many ways to enhance skin health (especially with aging), if people alter their perspective and feelings about making changes based on short duration interventions with healthy goals in mind
This is NOT MY OWN WORK and is taken from a very interesting professional article (citation shown below), where you will also find expansion of the topics mentioned above along with multiple supporting references:
Knaggs, H (1).; Lephart, E.D.(2) Enhancing Skin Anti-Aging through Healthy Lifestyle Factors. Cosmetics 2023, 10, 142. https://doi.org/10.3390/cosmetics10050142
(1) Global Research and Development, Nu Skin Enterprises, Provo, UT 84601, USA
(2) Department of Cell Biology, Physiology and The Neuroscience Center, College of Life Sciences, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT 84602, USA
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