Taking good care of your body and mind is essential to having beautiful skin. For most of us, our skin is a good barometer of our general health and well being. Over the next series of blog posts I’m going give you my tips for improving your health and having healthy skin naturally with simple diet and lifestyle changes.

Of course, we all know a lucky few who manage to look great without taking good care of themselves; living in the adrenalin rush of chronic stress, sleep deprived partying night after night, living on junk food and cigarettes. For most of us however, we show our wear and tear on our skin with dark circles and bags under our eyes, sallow complexion, acne, worsening of rashes like rosacea, seborrheic dermatitis, psoriasis etc.

There’s a connection between healthy looks and healthy living and I’ve been interested in it since I was 15. For me, the ‘aha moment’ was people watching in the check-out line at my home town Lucky’s supermarket. I could match the person to the stuff in their grocery shopping cart; folks pushing carts full of junk food had dull complexions and didn’t look as vivacious as people pushing carts filled with fresh foods. I didn’t want that for myself and I’ve been a ‘health food nut’ ever since.

I now know that it’s not just diet, but it’s lifestyle as a whole that impacts your health and beauty. To me this means exercise, diet, stress management, and how we choose to spend our time. Patient after patient I see that taking good care of our body and mind ultimately leads to healthier, more beautiful skin naturally.

Over my many years in medicine and practicing dermatology, I’ve paid special attention to any new information on the mind/body/nutrition/exercise connection to beauty and natural skin health. Most health kicks (both mainstream and alternative) come and go, but some have endured and proven their value. I’ve integrated them into the natural health recommendations I give my patients and the health practices I use myself.

I’m going to give you my natural skin health recommendations in my blog series on ‘Dermatologist’s Natural Health Advice for Your Skin’. I’ll cover:

1. My nutritional recommendations for healthy skin,
2. My vitamin recommendations for healthy skin
3. My probiotic recommendations for healthy skin and for people who use antibiotics

Plus my observations and opinions on

1. Exercise and beautiful skin,
2. Stress and healthy skin
3. Random natural health topics unrelated to the skin like inflammation and cow dairy products, gluten and your bone calcium, turmeric and cancer, etc.

Please recognize that my blog content on the topic of Natural Skin Health will be based on my experience, and not necessarily based on rigorous western scientific study. These are just my opinions and observations collected from my experience and the experiences of my patients, as well as my sifting through the health trends I’ve witnessed over the past 35 years. I hope that some of what I find useful will be useful for you too.

If you liked this blog post, you may also want to read:

Cynthia Bailey MD’s Recommendations for The Alkaline Mediterranean Diet

The Alkaline Mediterranean Diet-A Dietary Magic Wand for Overall Health and Beauty

Natural Skin Health: Dermatologist’s Diet Recommendations for Healthy Skin

Dermatologist’s Recommendations for Natural Skin Health: Kefir the best probiotic for healthy skin

It’s  Indian Summer in the redwoods. This is my favorite time of year here in Coastal Northern California. The redwoods are bathed in golden sun instead of shrouded in fog.  There’s a spacious stillness to the air and it’s the most magical season here.  Plus, it’s the time I turn my dermatology focus to helping people remove the ‘foot prints of summer’ on their skin.

The health promoting outdoor activities of summer  have a negative cosmetic impact on our skin; they’re leathering and they darkens age spots and uneven pigmentation.  Most of us also have rough feet after months in sandals and flip flops.  Both of these dermatologic summer remnants  need an exfoliation program.  For the age spots, we need pigment lightening therapy as well, which is best done between early fall and late spring.

In my practice, patients know it’s time to get down to work rejuvenating their skin after summer. Most of my patients have been with me for years.  They know that in the summer we just try to keep the age spots from getting too much darker.  We use a good sunscreen, hats, and clothing to keep the sun off our skin as much as possible.  Many of my patients have to stop using the powerful skin lightener Retin A (tretinoin)  because it makes the skin more sun sensitive and requires really strict sun protection. People often slack off on glycolic acid products in the summer as well because they too create a little extra sun sensitivity, or they just don’t want to be bothered.

As summer winds down, my patients start back on their skin care regimes; they exfoliate, they lighten uneven skin pigment and age spots, they restart their wrinkle treatments.  They also come in for procedures that work best when they are out of the sun.  Here’s some of what we do:

Anti Aging Skin Care Treatment Options for Early Fall to Late Spring in my Dermatology Office

1. Restart Retin A/Renova (tretinoin) therapy on the face, neck and chest.  Sometimes even on the back of the hands
2. Use glycolic acid facial care products either with tretinoin (for the rare few who can handle the combination), or instead of the tretinoin.
3. Use hydroquinoin products if they have a lot of uneven pigmentation and pigmented age spots.  These products are practical for use on the face, neck and chest and the back of the hands.  The most effective are prescription 4% products and include the Obagi Nu Derm system (available in my office by consultation with my aesthetician).  I typically don’t like hydroquinone products used more than 6 months at a time and so late fall, winter and early spring is the most effective time to really lighten pigment with hydroquinone here in California.
4. Consider a monthly microdermabraision program or glycolic acid peel program with my aesthetician.
5. Consider a deeper TCA peel.
6. Start  IPL (intense pulsed light) treatments with my Sciton BBL. These are usually done in a series of 3 to 5 at monthly intervals or a treatment or two for maintenance. These can only be done if a person is not tan. For darker skinned patients, being on a good pigment lightening skin care treatment first is really important to maximizing their results with IPL.
7. Do a single Pro Fractional laser treatment or a series  of treatments (2 or 3 treatments at 2 month intervals to really maximize wrinkle improvement).  The Sciton Pro Fractional laser is state of the art fractionated laser technology to reduce wrinkles and treat acne scars.   Patients have to stay out of the sun after having Pro Fractional treatment, and darker skinned patient get better results if they are on a pigment lightening skin care treatment, so fall, winter and spring are the best times for Pro Fractional laser treatments.
8. For the body, using my Anti Aging Body Kit at least twice a week helps to soften skin and lighten age spots.   Many of the lumpy age spots called seborrheic keratosis are also treated with this kit.  For stubborn age spots we can also freeze them with liquid nitrogen.  We can lighten flat pigmented age spots with  IPL treatments or liquid nitrogen.
9. Rough feet and scaly feet can be treated with Glytone Heel and Elbow Cream (sold through my office to patients, but not on my web site ) if they are really bad (I sent my treatment method out to my email subscribers recently and I will provice it as a blog post in the future as well).  For feet that aren’t so rough, Glytone Body Lotion may be enough to remove the thick scale (along with using a pumice stone).

So for me, the Indian Summer means getting ready for the busiest time of year in my office.  The schedule gets pretty tight and we don’t have much wiggle room. But it’s also a really satisfying time because I get a chance to neaten up peoples skin and I make real headway keeping their skin soft and attractive.

If you found this post helpful, you may want to read these other posts:

Dermatologist’s Own Personal Tricks To Control Age Spots, Sun Spots and Uneven Pigmentation

Brilliant Skin Care for a New Decade

Dermatologist’s 3 Simple Steps for Sandal Ready Feet By Spring