How many of us care to realize or appreciate the fact that the skin is the largest organ of the body! It’s not our feet, head or heart but the skin that’s the largest. Like tight shrink-wrap, the skin practically protects us like a complete and seamless wrap-around keeping the environment while creating just the right conditions so that essential organs function optimally inside. We can’t even imagine our state had we had no skin! Imagine all our entails and organs all over the place, blood, gore and all of it all over the place.

And yet we afford it scant respect while going about our lives feeding ourselves everything but things that are good for the body and the skin.

Hi, this is Dr Sayali Patil of Cosmetic Sky Skin Clinic, Nashik’s most acknowledged and admired of cosmetic clinics whose speciality range from laser treatment for acne scars and pimples, hair loss, hair fall solution, platelet-rich plasma treatment, tan removal, laser hair removal, body polishing, skin lightening, body peels and eyebrow micro-pigmentation.

Yes, we offer a wide, wide variety of treatments, and where all of them converge is right there, on your skin!

Can you guess the 6 most important nutrients that your skin needs at all times?

Fats!

You can’t believe it, can you! We were told to stay away from fats. And now I tell you to consume it! Where do you think you get your “glow” from?? Not proteins nor minerals or calcium.

What you need for a healthy look and feel, is fat! And not any kind of fat but only polyunsaturated and monounsaturated ones that come from sources including groundnuts, almonds and walnuts.

There’s one kind that the body needs badly but doesn’t produce at all, and that is Omega 3. Found mostly in fatty fish and flax seeds, they fight out cancers affecting the skin and markedly reduce swellings. So without getting bothered about bloating and fattening and the likes, eat fats in moderation for great skin!

Vitamin C!

You mean oranges? Yes, oranges. And others include strawberries, potatoes, bell peppers (also called capsicum), broccoli to name some. Being predominantly ascorbic acid, it’s one of the most known antioxidants that protect the body from damages caused by free radicals.

And no prizes for guessing which part of the body is most prone to free radicals! Of course, the skin. In all our skin treatments including tan removal treatment and acne scar treatments, if there’s one thing we insist on, it’s that our patients go heavy on Vitamin C and go natural with its effects! In fact, from experience, we know that consuming it adequately means skin damage like acne dries up a lot faster!

Protein!

Called the building block of the body, they are to be found everywhere on the body, and inadequate quantity if the body and skin are to retain their shape and use. Proteins lead to amino acids that by themselves lead to the formation of collagen and keratin, substances that form part of our skin. Besides, proteins also help shed and develop newer skins.
Given their building block role, they have to be consumed in quantities, both animal proteins and plant-based.

Some come to our Nashik clinics and complain that they cannot eat meat for which we recommend a diet rich in milk products, peas, brown rice, vitamin D, seeds, spices and leafy greens and veggies. That said, non-vegetarians are lucky in this matter given that the same is considered the complete protein. But, given one’s tastes and emotional preferences, we let people take the route they like but insist that they stick to it.

Zinc!

Our skin on the outside has way more zinc than on the inside. And for obvious reasons. The outside is where the protection-against-the-element including UV action takes place! Yes, our Skin Tan Removal, Eyebrow Micropigmentation and Skin lightening treatments do have the desired effect but without this essential element, no treatment goes far. The best part about Zinc is that it behaves in two ways.

One, as an antioxidant that by itself takes care of UV and free radicals, and two, it combines with others like iron and copper to make the effect more pronounced! That said, a deficiency in zinc leads to conditions including eczema, severe itching and a general feeling of discomfiture that does not go away despite the application of the best skin creams and lotions. The only way one has is to consume foods rich in zinc and apply lotions with zinc as one of the constituents.

Vitamin A!

While laser treatment of the skin for acne scars and pimples is one of our specialities, we know and tell all of our customers that they have to have foods rich in Vitamin A like cod liver oil, sweet potato, carrots, broccoli, spinach. That besides, going out into the sun for a little while is good as sunlight (not harsh sunlight) stimulates the production of Vitamin A which by itself benefits our skin in multiple ways.

Vitamin A incidentally does a lot more! It normalizes and controls cell function making us look young and healthy. Conditions including acne can be controlled by Vitamin C’s capacity to control oil production in the body. This vitamin, in particular, promotes the production of fibroblasts that in turn produce collagen, the main element of the skin. Vitamin C is said to hydrate the skin that by itself speeds up healing, more so when it’s about sunburns and related inflammation.

Vitamin E!

A fat-soluble nutrient that has anti-inflammatory properties, it greatly helps the immune system and skin health. An antioxidant, Vitamin E negates the effects of free radical-related toxins that come about in the environment for varied reasons. It’s to be found in varied foods including green veggies, broccoli and spinach besides nuts and sunflower seeds. Vitamin E is quite beneficial for reducing the damage to our skin caused by UV rays of the sun by absorbing the same and negating its effects substantially.

There then! The list of 7 nutrients that together take care of our skin! We recommend a diet rich in these. And a visit once in a while to Cosmetic Sky Skin Clinic on Gangapur Road in Nashik.