Feed Your Face

By Alison O’Neil

Who knew that the famed book entitled “You Are What You Eat”, published in 1940, would ever collide with the skincare term “feeding your skin?” Back then, people were only just beginning to understand the true physiological power of what they ingested in relation to their health. Eighty years later, the skincare industry is going through a similar revolution. Integrative nutritional aesthetics approaches beauty through the lens of nutrition and natural ingredients, with the understanding that what we put on our bodies can also end up in our bodies. The movement even has its own professional organization, the Nutritional Aesthetics Alliance.

Nutrition has direct correlation with the health and appearance of the skin. We drink green drinks full of vitamins, nutritional peptides and other supplements to get a healthy glow. This system can also work in reverse, with those essential nutrients being applied directly to our skin. Some products, like Atlanta’s own SallyB’s Skin Yummies, take it one step further by including food grade organic ingredients. Lycored, a nutritional-science company based in New Jersey, has created an entire line of products for both inner and outer use based around the benefits of lycopene, found in tomatoes.

While it is true not all nutrients can be absorbed through the skin, collagen is a prime example, the effects of skin absorption are apparent in other applications, such as CBD. When placed under your tongue (sublingually) or applied directly onto pain points CBD demonstrates the power of what we put in and on our bodies. The synergy between putting healthy options into our body and putting them on our skin to be absorbed is becoming clear.

Simply stated—trust your gut, your skin does.