Your skin keeps no secrets. As your largest—and most truthful—organ, it can reveal a lot about your inner health, hydration and stress levels, sleep quality, digestion, diet and your rate of cellular ageing.
If you treat yourself well, your skin will reward you with a radiant and glowy complexion, but by failing to nourish your mind and body, you’re more likely to experience a complexion that’s dull and lacklustre, with pronounced fine lines, wrinkles and congestion.
To make matters worse, when you’re not getting enough nutrients from your diet, or you’re suffering from poor digestion or long-term stress, your body will divert any available nutrients to your vital organs, meaning that your skin, hair and nails can suffer.
Nonetheless, your skin is in constant communication with you—so it pays to listen (and look) closely. Your skin will tell you loud and clear that it doesn’t like to be overfed with sugar, refined carbohydrates, alcohol, trans fats or processed foods. But it will certainly respond with radiance when you nourish yourself with beauty-boosting antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, healthy fats and probiotics, as these nutrients are all essential for cellular repair and rejuvenation.
Remember, building beautiful skin begins deep below your dermis.
The Importance Of Antioxidants
Essentially, these skin-loving superheroes scavenge for free radicals which are caused by UV radiation, environmental pollution, toxins and your body’s own internal metabolic processes.
Free radicals cause inflammation, speed up cellular ageing, damage your DNA and promote the breakdown of collagen and elastin, which ultimately leads to wrinkles. To prevent this, it’s essential to get a daily dose of antioxidants to mop up these free radicals and prevent oxidative damage.
Brightly-coloured, nutrient-dense fruits and vegetables are an excellent source of antioxidants. As are avocados, green and black tea, onion, garlic, leeks, nuts, grains, seeds and legumes. The darker the colour, the higher the antioxidant value, or Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity (ORAC). The more of these nutrient-dense wholefoods you eat, the happier and healthier your skin will be. Be sure to enjoy a wide variety of plant foods every day, as this also helps to cultivate a diverse microbiome.
The Beauty Chef’s GLOW Inner Beauty Essential is a daily beauty powder for radiant skin and gut health, now with a SUPERCHARGED FORMULA. It contains 18 Certified Organic wholefoods, including bio-fermented maqui berries, queen garnet plum and pomegranate fruit peel extract, vitamin C to help boost collagen production and zinc to support healthy hair and nails. Plus, with provitamin A, broad-spectrum B vitamins and more probiotics and postbiotics, our berry-flavoured blend is the perfect way to promote luminous skin from the inside, out.
Keen to cultivate glowing skin? Get set with these skin-loving vitamins...
Vitamin A
A potent antioxidant, vitamin A fights free radicals, promotes the growth of healthy new skin cells and strengthens the skin. Vitamin A also helps to regulate sebum production and is regularly used in the treatment of acne, eczema and psoriasis. It can be found in cod liver oil, liver, egg yolks, organic grass-fed butter. For plant-based sources, look for vegetables that contain provitamin A (beta-carotene) which is converted into vitamin A in your body. This includes foods like carrots, sweet potato and GLOW Inner Beauty Essential. GLOW boasts over 16% of your RDI of provitamin A, thanks to the inclusion of Dunaliella salina, a powerful microalga that grows in Western Australia’s pink salt lakes.
Niacin
Also known as vitamin B3, niacin helps to keep your skin soft, healthy and glowing. It’s essential for cell metabolism, cholesterol synthesis and can even help to relieve arthritic pain. Often, deficiencies in vitamin B3 manifest on the surface of the skin as rashes or dermatitis, so if you suffer from sensitive or inflamed skin, this is one vitamin you’ll want to sure you’re noshing on daily. Good sources include beef, pork, chicken, turkey, liver, yeast, tuna, salmon, green leafy vegetables, mushrooms, green peas, avocado, sunflower seeds and our bio-fermented beauty powder, GLOW Inner Beauty Essential. GLOW contains a complete complex of naturally occurring B vitamins—including activated niacinamide—which is derived from sprouted quinoa. Activated niacinamide is integral for normal skin function and structure and helps with the reduction of tiredness and fatigue.
Pantothenic Acid
Otherwise known as vitamin B5 or the “anti-stress vitamin”, pantothenic acid supports new skin cell growth and wound healing. Notably, it also helps to regulate the production of cortisol, your stress hormone. You can find pantothenic acid in egg yolks, whole grains, broccoli, mushrooms, avocado, sweet potato, liver, kidney, fish, chicken and your daily teaspoon of GLOW Inner Beauty Essential.
Biotin
This water-soluble B vitamin is also known as vitamin B7. Among other things, biotin helps to protect your skin cells from water loss and regulates fatty acid metabolism. If you suffer from a scaly scalp, dandruff, hair loss, brittle nails, fatigue, dry skin or inflammation, this might be an indication that you’re not getting enough of it. You can increase your intake of vitamin B7 by eating egg yolks, beef, liver, salmon, avocado, almonds, walnuts, legumes, whole grains, nutritional yeast and our very own probiotic mouth spray, WELL SPRAY, which also boasts a powerful combination of medicinal herbs to nourish your skin, digestion and wellbeing. Beneficial gut bacteria also synthesise biotin, so maintaining a balanced microbiome helps too!
Vitamin C
Aside from its immune-boosting benefits, vitamin C is crucial for collagen synthesis, wound healing and healthy skin. It also helps to protect your skin from free radical damage and sun damage. For radiant skin, you need to ensure you’re getting your daily dose! Good sources of vitamin C include kiwifruit, citrus, tomatoes, dark leafy greens, capsicum, coriander and parsley, as well as GLOW Inner Beauty Essential and COLLAGEN Inner Beauty Boost. Thanks to the high levels of vitamin C that it contains, COLLAGEN Inner Beauty Boost helps to preserve your skin’s structural proteins, thereby promoting a smoother and healthier complexion. Where possible, don’t forget to eat the above foods raw or lightly cooked, as vitamin C can be destroyed by high heat.
Vitamin D
Not technically a vitamin, but a hormone, vitamin D is produced when your skin is exposed to ultraviolet B (UVB) light from the sun. Food sources of vitamin D include fatty fish, cod liver oil, mushrooms, cheese and egg yolks. Vitamin D is vital for skin repair, strong bones, new cell growth and immunity.
Vitamin E
Another free radical fighter, this fat-soluble vitamin is secreted via your sebum (the oily substance produced by your body's sebaceous glands) to help protect the surface of your skin and prevent inflammation. It’s found in foods like leafy green, Brussels sprouts, avocado, almonds, hazelnuts and olive oil, as well as our fruity, skin-loving elixir, ANTIOXIDANT Inner Beauty Boost.
Omega Fatty Acids
Among other things, omega fatty acids are critical for eye health, hormone production and healthy skin, hair and nails. While our body does produce some of the fatty acids we need—including omega 7s and 9s—as we age, our ability to produce these oils naturally declines. The other essential fatty acids that are critical for our health—omega 3s and 6s—need to be obtained through our diet. You’ll find them in nuts and seeds, oily fish like mackerel and sardines, and our vegan, citrus-flavoured drinking oil, OMEGA ELIXIR. This skin-boosting formula was created to quench dry skin from within and contains a synergistic blend of nourishing plant-based omega 3, 6, 7 and 9 oils from ingredients such as bio-fermented algal oil, sea buckthorn fruit oil and black cumin seed oil.
Want to nourish your skin from within? Take our quiz to discover which products from our range are right for you!
