Is your skin not glowing as you want it to?
Do you have skin tags, wrinkles, sun spots, and other issues that really bug you?
Eating high-quality, unprocessed food, limiting junk food (especially sugar!), engaging in regular physical activity, using clean body and home care products, and practicing mindfulness will all help improve your skin.
But there are also some fabulous and simple super-foods that can give your skin health a big boost!
Green Tea (especially matcha powder)
Green tea is a super-food on many counts. It has been shown to reduce acne (1), improve skin elasticity, roughness, and hydration (2), improve skin condition in athlete’s foot (3), help remove genital warts (4), and it may even protect us against UV radiation (5). And there is a long list of other conditions that it can help with such as many different types of cancer, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, depression, and weight loss, to name a few.
Keep in mind that matcha green tea powder has a much higher content of the magical ingredient in green tea called epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG). Matcha does have a stronger taste but I highly recommend getting used to it or putting a teaspoon in your smoothie every day because this stuff is a mega-super-food!
*Avoid adding milk to your matcha tea or smoothie as it may reduce the beneficial effects of the matcha (6).
Dark Chocolate
Not only is dark chocolate delicious, but it’s also deliciously good for you and your skin!
One double-blind clinical trial found that women that had the appearance of aging (they call it “photo-aged”) found a significant reduction in wrinkles and improvement in elasticity (i.e.: they looked younger) with regular consumption of a cocoa beverage (7).
Another study showed that regular consumption of cacao improved circulation, hydration, and skin density, and decreased roughness and scaling in women (8). Yippee!
And just in case you weren’t convinced, keep in mind that in one major study, regular use of cacao reduced the 10-year risk for heart disease, heart attack, cardiovascular disease, and death from these conditions in both men and women (9).
Yes, cacao is another super-food! But I highly recommend keeping the sugar very low (dark chocolate) or removing it altogether. An easy way to do this is to add 1 tablespoon of 100% pure, organic cacao to your daily smoothie.
Walnuts
Walnuts really don’t get enough press.
They are a super-food in many regards; they are rich in the hard-to-find and potent, anti-inflammatory omega-3 fatty acid alpha-linolenic acid, they contain a bunch of zinc, which is super important for healthy skin and reproductive function, and they contain vitamin E, vitamin C, and selenium, all important antioxidants that can protect your skin.
And perhaps most importantly, walnuts contain a polyphenol (plant nutrient) called ellagic acid, which protects us against free radical damage and has been shown to reduce dark spots (10).
Guess what?
You have just been reading about a special group of foods called “SIRT Foods”. These are all plant foods containing certain nutrients called polyphenols that have numerous health benefits.
One of the top benefits is cancer protection but as you can see, there are many, many more.
SIRT Foods are also known to turn our “skinny genes” and therefore increase muscle mass and rev up our metabolism, helping with weight loss. And they are all delicious, everyday foods!!
Eating walnuts, cacao, and matcha powder on a daily basis will help give your skin a serious boost.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg.
There are many other super-foods that are easy to incorporate into your daily life and come with a huge impact.
If you want to learn more about “skinny-gene” SIRT Foods and get a report on 10 of these SIRT superfoods with recipes click below.
- https://www.jidonline.org/article/S0022-202X(15)36111-X/fulltext
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21525260?dopt=Abstract
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23499394?dopt=Abstract
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17958849?dopt=Abstract
- https://www.spandidos-publications.com/ijo/18/6/1307
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17213230
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26581682?dopt=Abstract
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16702322
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26348767?dopt=Abstract
