Ask a Dermatologist! | Foods That Are Good for Your Skin

[Music] [Music] welcome to the exam room live brought to you by the physicians committee hello i am the weight loss champion chuck carroll and this right here this is the healthiest half hour anywhere online today and we appreciate you joining us right here on youtube and on facebook so today is all about looking your best and feeling your best and figuring out which foods really affect your skin how is your lifestyle affecting the way that you age is it possible to eat your way into a healthier look well we are going to find out when we talk all things dermatology with renowned dermatologist dr jessica krantz she is here with us on the show to answer your questions when we open up the doctor's mailbag so if there's something on your mind that you would like to ask dr krant go ahead and post that right now in the comments or in the chat you can also tweet it to us using the hashtag exam room live go ahead though send that on over to at pcrm or at chuck carroll wlc and we will do our best to get to as many of these questions as we possibly can with the time that we have on the show today now before i bring on dr krant let me tell you a little bit about her she has been voted one of new york city's super doctors she has also been named a new york magazine top doctor and is a best of manhattan award winner so clearly dr krant knows exactly how to help you out here today so let's go ahead and bring dr grant onto the show thank you so very much for being here it is truly an honor to have you on the show uh no chuck it's an honor to be here you know i'm a a huge fan of you and the exam room podcast so this is a special day for me all right well you you you know it just it's so cool really to have you here we get so many questions about skin care here on the show and i'm really happy that for the first time we're able to do a full live episode about this a full q a so let's go ahead right now and open up that doctor's mailbag and see what the roomies have in store for us today you ready i'm ready all right so here is the first question comes to us from a viewer on facebook they write i'm 40 ish and starting to see some wrinkles i'm hoping that a healthier diet can smooth them out though how much of the aging process is tied to diet and how much is tied to genetics good question wow that is that that question is sort of the headline of everything i like to talk about so diet is a huge major factor in skin health and in anti-aging and genetics always plays a part in our health but i would like to immediately highlight the role of epi genetics and i'm not sure chuck if your audience knows anything about epigenetics but epigenetics are is the study of the ways in which our environment and our lifestyle choices switch on and off the genes that are in our dna and can completely control how we age and what our health is like so we may be born with a tendency for certain things to develop but it can it's really largely our epigenetic profile which controls whether those genes become activated later in life so we can actually complete almost completely i don't want to say 100 but the way we eat the way we sleep the way we exercise our lifestyle if it's active or sedentary uh how much pollution we are surrounded by our stress levels our social life and you know connection with loved ones all of these things have been shown to control our epi genetics which control our dna behavior so food and healthy healthy nutrition is one of the most important factors in controlling our epigenetics and therefore absolutely is a major major factor in how we actually age in real life versus how our dna might say we could potentially age i i love that answer it it reminds me of my grandfather who had these bags under his i mean god loved the man he he was such a great man but these bags under his eyes were just i mean you could really pack them and and carry it on an airplane that's how big these bags were but then you know some of my uncles and my aunts they did not have these same sort of bags and i always wondered like what is it that granddaddy is doing to make these bags happen is he just not sleeping enough like is sleep the top contributing factor uh or would you say one of the top factors when it comes to making sure that your health and your complexion remains uh really good well you know they actually have done some studies now that and the headline of one of the articles is that beauty sleep is real so it turns out that sleep does control not only our immediate appearance on an everyday basis how how we look the next day is absolutely controlled by our sleep even our skin quality can be fresher and more glowing versus duller based on our sleep quality but also you know many nights and weeks and months and years of good quality sleep in a row helps our body restore and recover from damage during the day we we clear out our toxins at night while we sleep and not only from our brains which i'm sure a lot of your audience is already aware of but also from our skin and when we accumulate toxins in our skin it's much more damaging and much more aging so good nights of sleep are a major major factor in our aging of our skin in our appearance but of course in in every aspect of our health let's get into some specifics here sarah is wondering what foods would you recommend to fight the aging process what are your top foods for staying young well that's kind of a slam dunk with you chuck because i really am free to say that a wide variety in eating the total rainbow of a plant-based diet including whole grains including fruits and vegetables including nuts and seeds is really the key to the most anti-inflammatory diet and the most anti-aging when we eat meat when we eat red meat even poultry fish eggs and dairy they each have chemicals and hormones and inflammatory factors that directly contribute to aging so it's kind of easy for me to say i wouldn't even say there's one or two special foods that are you know anti-wrinkle it's not even worth saying that it's really a lifelong or as you know plant forward as much as you can be plant forward and reduce meats reduce animal products reduce dairy and reduce eggs is the most anti-aging diet possible tim is wondering kind of piggybacking on that is it more of a case of what you don't eat versus what you do eat or is it kind of a 50 50 balance well the way i like to help people change their diet to become healthier is never to say don't eat this or don't eat that as you know as little as possible i like to say don't as much as possible i like to say add in you know fill yourself up first with the vegetables the fruits the nuts and seeds and all of the low calorie density high nutrient density uh antioxidants and phytonutrient plant foods and then you will have less room for the bad stuff so i i don't know if that's 50 50 but i say your stomach can only hold so much so if you fill it with the good stuff you just can't fit in the bad stuff well that is a good answer that is a really good answer i like that one that is the first time it's ever been put in those words in the four years that we've been doing this show fantastic wow i'm i can't even believe it um it's just and it's so logical and it makes so much sense too um a couple of people are wondering about this one peter and sasha are wondering about refined sugar versus natural sugar and how the two affect the skin is refined sugar potentially more damaging to the skin than the natural sugars found in whole foods refined sugar is horrific for the skin not only in terms of the health of all of our organs of course and our skin as an as an organ but also it refined sugar directly causes aging and wrinkles so i just love what i what i get to talk about in dermatology because i can lure people in by the appeal of anti-aging which is what everybody's you know they think they're looking for anti-aging but it turns out that all of the things that keep our brains our bones and our our gi tracts healthy is the same our same things that keep our skin healthy which are the same things that keep our skin looking young so it's easy for me the sugar question we i think we know you know refined sugar added sugar is a big no-no um natural sugars if they are inside the whole food like a piece of fruit is i think in my opinion completely healthy and not to necessarily be restricted at all you have the fiber you have the water you have all of the phytonutrients and antioxidants that come with that piece of fruit and you know for me that is a sugar that's allowed any kind of sugar extract or more more natural sugar additive is you know anything called like beet sugar um even date sugar to me those are still sugar and i like to say reduce as much needing to sweeten things as possible i have a lot of people wondering right now about eczema i'm assuming fairly common condition this particular question comes to us from sheena on youtube wondering what are the foods that are good for those who do have eczema eczema is tricky and complicated and ranges from it really covers many conditions and disease entities ranging from true atopic dermatitis which is an a sensitivity of the immune system with comes with rashes and sensitive skin prone to allergies seasonal allergies and asthma that is true atopic dermatitis which can be have a genetic component all the way to the other end of the spectrum which we may call dyshydrotic eczema or xerotic eczema which is basically eczema that we cause to ourselves from over drying and over irritating our skin even if we have no genetic tendency so foods to eat for to help eczema include anti anything anti-inflammatory which you know already i think is a whole food plant-based diet with lots of hydration you know we want food to contain the water we want the food the fruits and vegetables that contain the water as much as possible in our diet and really the other end of eczema is avoiding foods or or skin products that you know you have a true allergy to and anything that causes an irritant contact dermatitis which means a rash that anybody would get if they have too much exposure to that chemical allergic contact dermatitis is a true allergy some people are allergic and some aren't irritant contacts are caused by chemicals that anybody would react to if there's enough exposure as i just said so there is there's very little it's very difficult to prove that certain foods cause rashes unless it's a slam dunk it always happens to you and it's been tested there is um a very common assumption that you can control eczema by avoiding certain foods and that's only true for very few people mainly the issue with most eczema is that people are not doing healthy basic skin care they're over cleaning they're actually over scrubbing over exfoliating using cleansers and soaps that are too harsh and staying in the shower too long showers that are too long and too hot strip the natural oils and melt the natural oils right out of our skin so skin care from the outside in is just as important with eczema as eating an anti-inflammatory hydrating juicy diet same question comes to us from kimberley but this time about psoriasis what is the connection between diet and psoriasis psoriasis is another flaky uh sometimes itchy and scaly skin condition that is a little bit different from eczema in the in the fact that it it's really an autoimmune condition and it can be as minimal as a few spots on you and it can be as extreme as covering your whole body and when people have really systemic psoriasis it's an inflammatory condition of the whole body and unfortunately it also means that though that people may be at a higher risk for heart disease so it's something we really need to take seriously and a lot of people are suffering with these days it has a big genetic component so it can run in families but we have really learned over the years recently that there are some lifestyle and dietary factors that may be able to help psoriasis one of the lifestyle factors that is proven to link to psoriasis is actually smoking so if and it's a lot of people who are just miserable and suffering with psoriasis they turn to anything to make them feel a little bit better so there are a lot there tend to be a lot of people who have psoriasis who are smokers and it's i just want to say to anybody suffering that that it's really really worth quitting smoking because smoking directly flares and triggers psoriasis another factor that has been proven to be directly linked to flaring and stubbornness and recalcitrance of psoriasis is actually being overweight and carrying some extra weight that creates an inflammatory cycle in your body that triggers psoriasis and keeps it going and of course psoriasis is they used to call it the heartbreak of psoriasis you know and i think in the 70s maybe in the 60s they called it the heartbreak of psoriasis because it's such a miserable and unhappy skin condition and people turn to comfort like i said maybe smoking maybe eating comfort foods so it's a really hard cycle to break but if you're able to reduce sugar and studies show reduce baker's yeast and brewers that means bread and beer and eat a whole food plant-based diet um it really can for some people basically clear up the psoriasis which everybody thinks is only treatable by expensive medications in some cases altering lifestyle may be enough uh this is a funny question from sandra you were talking about hydration a little bit earlier specifically making sure that you're eating foods that come with a lot of water naturally but she is wondering is it true that drinking a gallon a day of water can keep the wrinkles away i love this question i'm so glad to answer it because i learned at the international conference on nutrition in medicine with dr barnard that one he had a kidney expert doctor speaking a couple of years ago who said something that absolutely blew my mind and i never forgot it and i loved to tell everybody and it was that the the idea that we have to drink some multiple of our weight in water every day to keep our kidneys healthy and maintain proper hydration actually is a myth that was created by only partially understanding a research study that came out that said that we do need a certain amount of water in our to take in every day but that a lot of that water can just come from our food it can come from the fruits and vegetables that are high in water content that we should be eating mostly every day and the rate the remaining amount of water that we should drink for the most part i hate to say this because people are gonna get a little upset um can basically go based on what our thirst is telling us if we go for plain water when we feel thirsty and we're eating a plant-based diet of whole foods which means fruit whole fruits and vegetables you know that it's not too much of processed dried out food we eat our water and we the rest of the water we drink it's probably enough so as long as we stay hydrated and comfortable as long as when we go to the bathroom and we urinate our urine is a light yellow color then we're hydrated enough and that should be enough to do whatever it's going to do for our skin now if our urine is very little amount or very dark in color that means we're not hydrated enough and really that's the best way to judge honestly from a true medical point of view uh okay so we're not talking about water here naomi isn't but she's wondering about coffee and whether or not that is good or detrimental for the skin well i know i heard that some people are really against coffee and caffeine but coffee i am happy to say also contains antioxidants so i think in moderation as long as it doesn't make your heart race and you're not just drinking coffee all day if you have one or two cups that are reasonable size i'm fine with coffee i think that it has both health benefits and potentially some health risks in extreme overuse but i don't worry about it i'm a tea guy myself i do enjoy a good cup or two of green tea every day um we got a question here from richard he's a funny guy he wants to know is it true and is it your observation that vegans really have a healthy glow you know it is absolutely my observation that vegans who are whole food plant-based and who are taking supplements as needed including vitamin b12 and potentially vitamin d who are hydrated and who are also sleeping enough and taking care of themselves in all of the ways tend to have fewer skin problems and a fresher glow i do think it's true there are many many ways to be an unhealthy vegan so i will not say that all vegans have better skin or are healthier but if we if we follow the whole food plant-based diet minimizing oils and oil extracts and i say minimizing added salt then i think you have the best shot for the most glow uh minimizing salt is that because it sucks out the hydration or what effect does salt play here well i recently learned that the the real effect of salt is that too much salt it actually disrupts the balance of the gut microbiome you know which we know is really what's controlling our health from the inside out and that's why we care about the diet so um they used to say don't eat too much salt because it raises your blood pressure but it turns out that probably just added table salt you know is not really a factor with blood pressure high sodium content in packaged foods is a problem and you know going to a restaurant where they just load everything with mystery amounts of salt is not a good idea but i say minimize salt i actually when i cut out salt completely i didn't miss it at all because i was able to taste everything else better and have much more fun with the other spices i happen to be a huge lover of garlic and onion so that was pretty easy for me oh wow wow okay no salt but plenty of garlic and onion i got that um all right mona here's a good question you talked a little bit about supplements earlier she's wondering what about biotin supplements there's a lot of hype about them when it comes to hair and skin what is your opinion on them biotin now after many years of people recommending it has not actually been proven to necessarily help hair or nails if somebody is not truly deficient in biotin so taking it to boost the levels may have no effect it does however um confuse the thyroid and potentially if i recall correctly troponin testing which is what happens when you go to the emergency room and they're trying to find out if you had a heart attack so i i do recommend that people maybe don't add in a big dose of biotin as a supplement unless you've proven with your doctor that you are actually biotin deficient i want to say really quickly a hi to margaret who is watching us over in scotland she says she's new to being plant-based she's cut out all dairy she's sos so that is fantastic she says that she feel great so margaret thanks so much for tuning in today appreciate you being here um along those lines somebody who is not quite yet vegan but trying to get there is tina she writes she wants to be vegan in the worst way but she loves cheese so much so her question is is dairy truly harmful or is there any health benefits to it in terms of the skin oh i feel for you i also am a recovering constantly recovering she's aholic i do not eat cheese at all and i miss it sometimes you know but as dr barnard showed us in his book the cheese trap which was really you know a shocking eye-opener there's nothing that we need in cheese for our health and so many things in cheese that are not good for us including the fact that the casein in cheese turns into casomorphins which our brain reads as like a morphine analog so no wonder we're addicted to cheese because cheese literally acts like morphine in our brains it's comforting it's really like the quintessential comfort food and it's addictive it's truly addictive but the other factors in cheese are inflammatory for us they're hormonally active which really messes with our skin and our health overall and removing cheese from the diet completely along with other dairy can completely heal and resolve many chronic diseases including even endometriosis can help reduce the recurrence of breast cancer and so many other proven benefits of cutting cheese out altogether that i can't say there are any health benefits i'm sorry uh all right that's going to be heartbreaking for a lot of people um okay from cheese to another one chocolate mary is wondering uh she says she's a chocoholic and she read that eating chocolate can actually cause acne is that true it was a myth for a long time but it has recently been proven that eating chocolate does flare acne for some people and we know that the the lower the cacao uh percentage the the more milk chocolate the more toward milk chocolate on the spectrum the more this is true the more dairy in the chocolate and the more sugar in the chocolate the worse it is for skin so i have gradually over the years from my childhood with hershey kisses to my now wise adulthood have gradually climbed up that percentage ladder and now i eat 95 dark chocolate which i keep in my freezer and on for me one square is enough for a few weeks it's just so rich and you know i i just do it as my rare treat and i otherwise avoid i don't eat milk chocolate at all one square every few weeks we're just gonna go ahead and call that hashtag goals that is fantastic um here is a really interesting question that comes to us from married joe and this one speaks to me personally she writes uh i have lost a lot of weight fantastic uh but my skin is kind of wrinkly and loose what can i do to help that skin bounce back this is such a tough one because you know when people are doing well and taking care of themselves and following all these healthy lifestyle changes that are really a huge win and losing some weight and maybe other getting other health benefits the skin does not always shrink all the way back where we want it to go and i've recently been thinking a lot about this of course as a dermatologist and although i i know that older people full-grown adults are more likely to sometimes be motivated to make these changes i'm going to start trying to talk to my patients a little bit younger because when the skin is younger it has more elasticity and it's a little um more robust with collagen and it's a it's a little bit better at snapping back when we get a little bit older or if we've been overweight for a longer period of time sometimes the skin has stretched out and may not go all the way back we can do things like skin thickening lotions that may contain ammonium lactate and other factors like that and of course eating a whole food plant-based diet really helps repair the skin as much as possible and staying hydrated but sometimes it does require a decision about whether you may want to do some removal some surgery to remove some of the extra skin everybody's different and everybody's situation is different so i would never blanket recommend that but for some people it's the right thing and they just feel a lot better yeah and from personal experience having lost 280 pounds i can tell you that there does come a lot of extra skin with that and the way that i look at that is you know i could choose to dwell on it i could fret over it or i could just be like you know what i'm so much healthier today than i was when i was so overweight and if that means that i have a little bit more extra skin now then so be it i'd rather be you know healthy with extra skin than uh overweight with tight skin so uh mary jo hang in there and i promise you you're gonna be okay i think that you made the right choice nonetheless um question from edith we haven't talked about stress yet uh dr krant as you know this is a super stressful time and so edith is wondering about the effect that stress can have on skin health well edith this is one of my favorite topics to talk about because we all i mean we all have stress all the time but this year has just been absolutely bonkers with stress stress directly affects skin health it flares acne it flares psoriasis it flares eczema it flares anything itchy it's just creates a mess and to be honest long-term stress chronic stress also is aging for our skin so you know we see people from cultures that are just very high stress cultures their their people do seem to age a little bit more than people in lower stress cultures and what's happening is when we have stress our body's cortisol level which is the stress managing hormone that's supposed to give us energy in an acutely immediately stressful situation cortisol rises to just help us power through and have that super energy usually after an acutely stressful time we'll crash and we'll feel extra exhausted that would be normal but when we're in chronic stress and the stress really never goes away the cortisol just keeps getting pumped out and pumped out and cortisol triggers a cascade of all of these other hormonal things that happen in our bodies that create stress and aging on our organs and on our skin so stress is a major factor stress contributes to hair loss and so many other issues so i always include stress management and i actually talk about stress with my dermatology patients in the office because it should not be ignored let's grab a couple more before we close up the doctor's mailbag we have a number of people today who have been asking about dandruff and diet and what the connection there could possibly be flaky itchy scalp can be caused by many things but if it is true dandruff it's a condition called seborrheic dermatitis and that is a condition of an overgrowth of a common skin yeast that lives on everybody's scalp and everybody's skin when it overgrows it creates inflammation and irritation which creates redness and itchiness and increased cell turnover which creates the flakes so there are a few approaches one is to kill the yeast itself and that is what happens when we use these over-the-counter dandruff shampoos that contain zinc pyrithione uh sodium sulfacetimide and some ketoconazole but you notice i said zinc one of the dietary factors or even topical skin factors that may help would be increasing zinc in the diet and zinc is found in nuts and seeds and a lot of our fruits and vegetables that we would normally eat are the whole grains so if ours if our diet's a little bit low in zinc we might have a little bit of a flare of dandruff and we might be able to eat some more nuts and control it through the diet the other thing that affects seborrheic dermatitis and dandruff is actually sun so going through the winter sometimes people's dandruff flares because we're indoors more and we don't have as much sun exposure so that can be a factor too note this dermatologist is not telling people to go out and treat everything with sun because i don't want anyone to get skin cancer and also since we're talking about aging that same sun will also create features of aging so i just wanted to mention it as you know if people notice it seasonally cycling through that could be a factor good caveat there and let's grab two more really quickly here before we call it a day this question comes to us from charlotte good one can fried foods cause acne because of the grease that they contain fried foods can cause acne in some people you know i always say if you feel like every time you eat a certain food you break out the next day i will not tell you that that's not true for you exactly what's causing the breakout after eating fried foods isn't a hundred percent clear is it eating all that extra oil is it eating the extra processed carbohydrates that are usually surrounding the food you're eating is it eating the the meat or the fish that is usually fried or is it that the fried foods trigger inflammatory cycles in your body and inflammation triggers acne because acne is basically your your follicles and your pores on your face becoming inflamed so anything inflammatory in the diet or in the lifestyle like stress will trigger acne and last question comes to us from lana wants to know how will drinking a green smoothie in the morning affect my complexion can you get benefit from uh eating your greens or drinking your greens i should say in the morning you know i i love this question too because we want people to get as much as many fruits and vegetables into your body the variety high variety on a daily and weekly basis as dr will bolsoewitz says in his um fiber-fueled book we want to aim for at least 30 different fruits and vegetables and whole grain plant foods each week if we can get it so smoothies are a way to pack in a lot of variety and get a lot of that stuff in i feel like i'm just quoting all of the greats dr dr michael greger answered this question in a live uh talk that i that i attended back before we had to go through all this distancing and he said something that was i thought was really helpful and valuable he said whatever food you put into this smoothie is still healthy but one of the problems with smoothies is that we tend to drink them down very quickly so all of those calories go in us much more quickly than they would if we were trying to eat and chew all of that food that can spike our glycemic our spica glycemic index which can spike our blood sugar which in turn spikes our insulin and high blood sugar and high insulin are both directly damaging to our cells to our organs into our skin and i didn't even get to talk about insulin resistance and how what if what a huge role that plays in this in our the health of our skin in so many ways but the trick with the smoothie is to remember that you're not chewing it and to sort of trick your body into thinking it's chewing it drinking it more slowly we want to keep it in you know keep it in your mouth a little bit maybe sort of semi-chew it a little bit because some of the digestive enzymes that are healthy for us start in our in our mouths when we're chewing and then take sips of it over a long period of time if you fool your body into thinking that it's eating the stuff in the smoothie it's quite healthy and it's not quite as healthy as actually chewing and eating the individual foods but if we slow it down so that we get full at the same time we would have gotten full if we were eating then it's it's pretty good for us very very interesting and uh you you're right we did not get to insulin resistance today but you have a standing invitation to come back on the show anytime you like and we can definitely do a deep dive into it on that appearance so uh dr krant i want to thank you so very much for coming on today and i encourage everybody to go ahead and follow her on instagram at dr krant the skin md or hop on over to her website artofdermatology.com you can make an appointment to visit her if you're in the new york area i highly recommend it i mean we've rattled off all your awards earlier in the show and clearly you know you have so much knowledge you've acquired so much knowledge about this i think that anybody who were to step foot in your office would really just reap enormous benefits so i cannot thank you enough for sharing a lot of your wisdom with us here on the show today thank you so much chuck it was so much fun and like i said just a very exciting day for me the excitement is felt equally on this and we will talk to you again soon and by the way if you're watching this right now and you want the immediate video replay of course you can get that on youtube and on facebook but then if you head over to apple podcast or spotify stitcher wherever you get your favorite podcast from you look for the exam room by the physicians committee go ahead hit that subscribe button we're going to give you the full audio replay there first thing tomorrow morning as well so go ahead and sign up for that and leave a five star rating if you would be so kind and so today we talked an awful lot about skin health but i also want to shift our focus really quickly here before we wrap things up and talk about heart health because coming up saturday april 17th at noon eastern 9 00 a.m pacific the physicians committee will be be presenting the heart health immersion so if you're looking for ways to lower your blood pressure take control of your cholesterol fight heart disease this is definitely the event for you so you're going to get live cooking demonstrations you're going to get uh one on one one expert opinions from experts on heart health cardiologists including a doctor who has really improved their own heart health by changing up their diet and lifestyle really the proof is in the pudding and now they are paying for it everything that they learned plus you're going to get the opportunity how cool is this to do a workout with celebrity trainer marco borges now if you're not familiar you may be wondering well who in the heck is marco borges well i will tell you who in the heck marco borges is marco borges is the celebrity trainer for beyonce and so look at what he's doing for queen bee and now think about what he can do for you as well so if you would like to participate saturday april 17th head on over to pcrm.org immersion to sign up today and you get a discount if you register along with a friend or a family member so get healthy together raise your heart health iqs in tandem on saturday april 17th pcrm.org immersion is the place to go and for today that my friend is all the time that we have i want to say thank you one more time to dr krant for joining us here on the show today and to the crew behind the scenes that makes the magic happen thank you guys and to you my exam roomies thank you so very much for tuning in and raising your health iq alongside of us and for everyone here at the physicians committee i am the weight loss champion chuck carroll we'll talk to you friday i'll be joined by plant fit meg stick around for that she's an exam roomy regular can't wait for that amazing story such a great story so tune in friday noon eastern 9 a.m pacific right back here on facebook and on youtube but until then stay safe take a stand and keep it plant-based

Channel: Physicians Committee

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Length: 41min 7sec (2467 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 07 2021