Your Skin and Your Health

Dr. Brian Keegan

There is an intriguing connection between your skin and your overall health and wellness. Treating your body with healthy food and regular exercise can vastly increase the chances you will also maintain healthy, beautiful skin.

What triggers flare-ups of different skin conditions?

Many factors can contribute. For example, obesity exacerbates many skin diseases including psoriasis, hyperhidrosis and acne, so it’s important to maintain a healthy weight.  Furthermore, certain food and drinks can trigger skin conditions. For instance, spicy foods, alcohol and caffeine are among the many known triggers for Rosacea flares.

What alleviates flare-ups?

On the other hand, certain foods can alleviate symptoms of different types of skin conditions. Mild improvements with acne can occur by following a low glycemic index diet. Probiotics, such as the live cultures found in yogurt, can also help show mild improvement for those affected by eczema.

Foods that help show more moderate improvements include fish oil for psoriasis, as well as generally maintaining a low-calorie diet and integrating more Vitamin D. Antioxidants like ascorbic acid and green tea extract can reduce oxidation and have anti-aging properties.

How can the skin indicate something more serious?

While maintaining the appearance of skin can be important to some patients, nothing is more critical than their overall health and well-being. The skin can act as a surface indicator that can alert you to more serious health conditions.

Sometimes the skin can alert us to profound issues in the body, such as deficiencies of a certain vitamins. Scurvy, for example, will present with numerous small skin lesions across the body, which shows the patient has a Vitamin C deficiency. Pellagra, a disease that presents with extremely scaly skin patches, means there is a Vitamin B3 (niacin) deficiency. People who develop rough skin lesions with alopecia are showing possible signs of a zinc deficiency. Some rashes could even be a warning sign that a very serious malignancy has occurred within the body, signaling different types of cancer.

It’s important to alert your dermatologist as soon as unusual rashes present themselves, as they could mean you have a more serious health condition. Often these conditions can be treated with supplements or diet changes, however in the rare instance it is something more serious, catching it early on will increase the chances of successful treatment.

Call us at (609) 443-4500 to schedule an appointment to find out more about the connection between your skin and your overall health and well-being. You can also find more resources on our website, www.WindsorDermatology.com.