Beauty may be only skin deep, but skin is
deeper than you think: it is marvelously sensitive to goings-on inside the body
and is quick to break out in a rash of protest when it disapproves.
Few beauty blemishes are harder to bear
than unsightly skin. Yet pimples, eruptions, rashes, scaliness, dryness and
changes in color do not often originate in the skin itself.
Usually they reflect some disorder of
nourishment (in other than specific disease
processes) that affects the general health.
Except for certain food allergies, such as
the propensity of strawberries to cause hives, skin troubles are caused not so
much by the foods you eat as by the foods you don't eat. The essentials of skin
health, and consequently of general health, are deficient in the diet, or the
nourishing bloodstream is carrying substances that the skin resents.
One of the first signs of vitamin shortage
is unhealthy changes in the skin. Often both the causes and symptoms are vague
and obscure. Persons who go on regulated diets for other reasons than beauty
are frequently surprised to observe that blemished skins become soft and clear
on balanced food intake.
Indispensable to healthy skin is Vitamin A.
It is the great regulator of epithelial tissue, the stuff your skin and the
linings of your body cavities are made of. When A intake is diminished, an
early sign is roughness and extreme dryness of the skin. It is a special kind
of dryness, not relieved by ointments.
Especially on thighs and arms, the skin
becomes rough with goose-pimples. The hair follicles are plugged with cornified
epithelium. "Cornified" comes from a word meaning "horn"
and it means that your skin is on the way to becoming the same stuff that makes
a bullfighter watch his step. In more advanced cases the skin may break out
with eruptions similar to those of acne except that they are not pustular.
Not only the skin but the external layers
of organs such as the eye become hard and dry in absence o£ Vitamin A. In fact,
the eye can dry up so completely that blindness results. If you remain dry-eyed
at a grand weepy movie, it may not be a sign of emotional inertia but simply an
indication that the tear ducts are becoming dammed up from lack of Vitamin A.
Absence of perspiration may mean that the sweat glands are becoming plugged.
Hair and nails are modified forms of skin.
Just as the skin becomes dry from lack of Vitamin A, so does hair become
brittle and lose its luster. Brittle nails are often improved by high-vitamin
diets. Brittleness in nails is also chargeable to the overenthusiastic use of
some types of lacquer and polish that abstract natural oils.
Vitamin C deficiency can also cause papular
eruptions of the skin, as well as patchy areas of vaguely darkened color.
More characteristic of C shortage is the
tendency of the skin to bruise easily, developing ugly black and blue spots
from causes hardly more severe than being spoken to sharply. In fact, the skin
can become black and blue entirely on its own initiative. Small red pinprick
spots can occur spontaneously. These phenomena arise from the fragility of the
blood vessels, characteristic of Vitamin C shortage.
Among the B vitamins, riboflavin and
nicotinic acid are most commonly associated with skin disorders. The disease of
pellagra, involving the skin, is caused by a dietary lack of nicotinic acid. In
early cases the skin looks as if it were severely sunburned; it is burning,
tender, and dark in color. Later the skin becomes thick and scaly and
pigmentation deepens. Riboflavin (Vitamin G) deficiencies show up in painful
fissures of the skin at the corners of the mouth.
The tragic skin curse of adolescence is
acne, which peppers the face with unsightly pimples at the very age when
personal appearance becomes supremely important to boys and girls. The
irresistible impulse to dig and gouge at the eruptions may leave permanent
beauty blemishes in the form of scarred skin.
In part, at least, acne is a skin response
to the adjustment of the glandular system to maturity. Yet dietary management
has a place in treatment. The mere restriction of fat, greasy, and sugar-heavy
foods is often helpful.
Recently it has been demonstrated that
Vitamin D is sometimes beneficial. Regular daily doses of 5,000 or more units
of Vitamin D have reduced the number of acne eruptions in many cases. Although
not a specific cure, enough work has been done to prove that Vitamin D is a
highly valuable agent in acne treatment.
Psoriasis, a skin ailment manifested by a
curious silver scaliness, has also proved moderately amenable to Vitamin D. It
is a mysterious disease, however, with spontaneous remissions, and
dermatologists are very cautious in making any promises about it.
Some soaps and cosmetics contain slight
amounts of Vitamins A and D, and ballyhoo this virtue out of all reason. It is
true that these vitamins can be absorbed to some extent through the skin. The
advisability of taking them in this fashion is another matter. If the cosmetics
are sold at the same prices as standard creams and ointments your druggist can
show you, there is no need to avoid them; but if they are decked out in fancy
prices, you can suspect that some canny manufacturer is aiming to cash in on
public gullibility.
Indeed, it is amusing to consider that some
soaps, bill-boarding their Vitamin D content, may actually restrict your intake
of that vitamin by washing off the skin oils from which you manufacture Vitamin
D with the cooperation of sunlight or ultra-violet irradiation.
In general, the avoidance of heavy, rich
foods and greater dependence upon milk, eggs, liver, lean meats, fruit and
fresh vegetables is a sound principle in building good health and consequent
skin beauty. The elimination of foods to which you suspect you are
hypersensitive is best left to the offices of a dermatologist, who can usually
determine the offender swiftly with simple tests and thus save you from
possibly eliminating from your diet the very foods that protect against
deficiencies.
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