Have you been prescribed Roaccutane or topical antibiotics for your skin? Have you been advised by your health professional that Roaccutane is the only solution for your skin condition?



How to support your skin holistically, whilst on Roaccutane.

Or perhaps you feel you have exhausted all other options and this really is your last resort, then please have hope, and know you can still support your skin internally whilst on Roaccutane.


Whether you are currently taking or about to take a course of Roaccutane or topical antibiotics, or perhaps have just come off this medication and are worried about how your skin might respond or change after completing the course, then this post is for you!



If you have made the decision to take topical antibiotics or medications for your skin, there is no shame or judgement, as every journey to healing is different and no two skins are the same! You can still support your skin and health from the inside out, alongside taking your topical medication, to help maintain the long term health and healing of your skin.



Here are 6 keys ways you can support your skin whilst you are on Roaccutane.

1. Support your Liver health

A healthy liver is essential for healthy skin! This is especially important when we are taking a course of medication, regardless of the duration, as we need to ensure our liver is receiving the adequate nutrients to enable detoxification to occur properly. 
Therefore, it is important to ensure we are optimising the liver health and ensuring it is receiving the correct quantity of nutrients to support phase 2 detoxification. This helps to break up the toxins within the body, making them into less toxic substances, and more water soluble, enabling the body to excrete them from the body.

Including cruciferous vegetables is important as these contain sulphur metabolites, which is needed in one of the processes to breakdown the substances.
Vitamin C (found from citrus fruits and green leafy vegetables) is also a key nutrient required to breakdown toxins.


2. Support your Gut Health

Our gut health is interconnected with our skin, with increasing research and evidence showing that the gut has a direct connection with the skin, known as the gut-skin-axis.
Therefore, ensuring we are supporting the growth of the good bacteria within the gut is key for supporting our skin, as this will help reduce inflammation internally, and promote the growth of beneficial bacteria, which helps to support optimal gut health. In particular, focusing on eating prebiotic and probiotic foods, and vegetables high in fibre will help the gut health thrive and support the growth of healthy bacteria.



3. Zinc

Zinc provides multiple benefits for our skin health! 
Zinc helps to protect against free radical damage and to reduce the bacteria within the skin, which is known to increase inflammation causing breakouts. This helps to strengthen the skin cell integrity and reduce inflammation in the skin, protecting against wound healing.

4. Include Vitamin A and Vitamin D rich foods.


These are both key antioxidants which are vital for skin health which play a key part in our skin health, in particularly supporting the structural integrity of the skin.
These are both fat soluble nutrients, which are needed to provide antioxidant properties, and support the structure of the cell membrane.
Both of these nutrients also play a key role in supporting the immune system, and the skins barrier defence system, which helps to reduce proliferation (flaking) and bacterial skin conditions.

5. Essential fatty Acids!
Essential fatty acids, as the name suggests, are essential as our body cannot make them by itself, therefore we need to obtain them from our diet.
These are naturally anti-inflammatory which helps to protect against acne and bacterial skin conditions, and is a vital part of maintaining the structural integrity of the skin. 


6. Selenium

This is another potent anti-oxidant, which has been shown to be lower in patients with chronic acne. Selenium helps to protect the cell membrane integrity, and protecting against free radical damage. Along with its multiple benefits for our skin health, it is also a precursor for glutathione production which helps to support liver detoxification, and reduce toxins that lead to congestion on the skin.



Key Takeaways to remember:

Whether you are on, or have taken topical antibiotics for your skin, you can still support your skin health internally.

 Consuming a diet that is high in antioxidants (coming from fresh fruits and vegetables) will help to support your skin health and maintain optimal health topically and internally, from the inside out!




For more information and key ways to help support your skin from the inside out, be sure to download your Clear Skin Checklist, for you to start implementing today.

Also, if you have a friend who would benefit from reading this, please share this with them.

If you are ready to get to the root cause of your chronic skin condition, and finally break free from the struggle of supporting your skin, please get in contact below, I am here to support you in your next steps!

Dominique

Skin Nutrition Co.
contact@skinnutritionco.com.au

Have you considered a detox to improve your health?

Whether it’s for skin, weight loss or to ’boost’ your health?



Or perhaps you have been told you need to detox to help a certain condition you may be concerned about, but are unsure of where or how to start.



Well firstly, let me break down what a detox is, or rather what a detox is not, in order for you to properly be able to support your health and actually achieve genuine results!

To properly support and improve the health of an organ, it is necessary first to understand the importance and the role an organ plays, in order to know how to best support it for optimum functioning and performance.



This is particularly key for your liver! Contrary to popular belief, your liver does more than just ‘detoxify’. 

Our liver actually provides many essential roles to support our health, particularly our immune system, on a daily basis.



It is involved in many processes which help to support our health including:

• Protein metabolism


• Breaking down toxic substances, making them water soluble in order to be easily excreted

• Protecting against toxic substances and environmental toxins

• The breakdown and metabolism of essential nutrients including carbohydrates, fats and proteins

• Maintaining our immune system
 and hormonal production

In order for the liver to perform these processes effectively, it requires the appropriate food and nutrients to do so.

As the liver plays such a vital role for supporting our health, as well as maintaining our skin health and integrity, rather than focusing on what to avoid, we should focus on how to support to nourish and improve these processes.



Contrary to the overload and false noise promoted in the health and wellness world, our liver does not actually need ‘detoxing’, as this is an ongoing process for the skin.


However our liver does need supporting, and does require key nutrients and foods to help this process. As well as reduce the circulation and accumulation of toxins within the body, which can lead to other chronic issues such as low immunity, gut issues, hormone imbalances and inflamed skin conditions, particularly eczema, psoriasis, dermatitis and certain types of acne.

So, how to properly support your liver?

Supporting your liver may be much simpler than you think, and you don’t have to dread giving up your favourite foods, if at all!



Here are 5 key tips to support and nourish your liver for optimum detoxification.

1. Include clean lean protein

Protein is so important for the function of our liver. It is the building block of each cell in the body and is required for synthesising and replenishing new tissues within the body. In order for the liver to be able to break down and continue its functions, we need to ensure we are consuming enough adequate proteins to enable this process. 

Proteins containing essential amino acids (glycine, taurine and glutamine) are also vital for the function of phase 2 detoxification, which involves the excretion of toxic substances from the body, making them more soluble and easier to be excreted.




2. Include healthy fats and balanced meals

Contrary to the popular beliefs that detoxing requires fasting and skipping meals, our body actually requires essential macronutrients to be able to breakdown and distribute to other organs in the body. Having a full and balanced plate of healthy nutrients enables the liver to efficiently breakdown and excrete these nutrients and distribute them where they are required!



3. Include cruciferous and green leafy vegetables

Cruciferous vegetables are key for our liver health, as they contain sulphur metabolites. These metabolites are required for phase 2 detoxification, which again enables the passing of water toxic substances from the body. These are also very important for hormonal health, and the excretion or potentially harmful or elevated hormones.



4. Include citrus foods


These are high in vitamin C which helps support phase 2 detoxification. 
Vitamin C and Citrus bioflavonoids are required for the first phase of detoxification, which is the process of making phase 1 metabolites (fat soluble) into water soluble and less toxic, so they can be readily excreted. Vitamin C is also a key antioxidant which helps to protect against free radical damage, helping strengthen cellular integrity, and optimising the health and integrity of our skin cells and immune system.


5. Eliminate alcohol, caffeine and refined sugars.


When the body receives these common inflammatory foods, particularly alcohol, it reduces the absorption of other nutrients as it focuses on breaking down these substances first. At a time when trying to support and reduce the load on the liver , consumption of these foods actually places the liver under additional stress.

The easiest way to support your liver is by focusing on eating real, whole foods, and particularly bright coloured fruits and vegetables. These are high in anti-oxidants and help reduce free radical damage. 

Including foods high in flavonoids (bright coloured fruits and vegetables), as these help support detoxification pathways and include plenty of green leafy vegetables as these are high in antioxidants which are key for supporting our liver.

For more information on how to support your liver, skin and overall health from the inside out, head to the blog for more practical and step by steps guides to help you on your journey!



If you are ready to get to the root cause of your health concerns, wether it’s your skin, hormones, gut or liver health and are not sure where to begin, then I am here to help you!

Simply send an email or book in via the contact tab on the blog, and I can help you with take the next steps to understanding your health, so you can ultimately heal and achieve your health goals, from the inside out!

Also, if you know someone who would benefit from reading this, then please share this with them. If you have any questions or comments, please ket me know, I would love to hear from you and answer your questions.

Until next time,

Take Care!

Dominique.

Skin Nutrition Co. X

So, we have delved into the importance of gut health as an essential foundation for skin health.
Next, I wanted to dive into the next important organ for our skin health, the liver!

If you have been told you have, or are currently experiencing hormonal acne, then the liver is definitely an organ for you to consider supporting.

“If you have been told you have, or are currently experiencing hormonal acne, then the liver is definitely an organ for you to consider supporting”

As the liver is involved in the processing, clearing and metabolism of hormones, any imbalance or inflammatory hormonal condition can be supported via the liver. 

Liver health is essential for skin health due to its role in detoxification and the clearance of toxins from the body. Similar to the gut, the liver also needs a healthy microbiome to thrive and to ensure our bodies can excrete toxins efficiently. If the pathogenic (bad) bacteria in the liver is too high, it can impact how well the body is able to excrete toxins. 

This can actually lead to a build up or ‘backwash/recirculation’ of toxins from the liver to the gut as the body has not been able to excrete them properly. Our liver greatly impacts our skin, as any toxins that cannot be broken down are forced to be excreted by our next excretory organ, which is our skin!

A stressed or ‘overloaded’ liver can contribute to hormonal skin conditions such as acne, and even some types of pigmentation. If our liver is under high levels of stress, either due to elevated toxins, free radicals or nutritional deficiencies, this can impact the livers ability to filter out toxins, which can lead to inflammation within, and inflammatory skin. 

4 ways the liver can help to clear your skin

1. Helps reduce excess androgen production (male hormones)
Helps to balance hormones, and reduce the conversions of testosterone to DHT (the active male hormone).
Often acne skin types are largely driven by elevated androgens (male hormones), much of which are converted into the DHT pathway, which becomes inflammatory acne, often showing up on the lower cheeks and jawline, and upper neck area. 
Tip: Aim to eat a high fibre diet in the form of vegetables as fibre helps to clear out elevated hormones. Also aim to include foods high in zinc, as zinc helps prevent the conversion of testosterone and reduces androgenic activity. 

2. Helps with oestrogen clearance and excretion
Our liver helps to excrete excess oestrogen, which can also be a large trigger for skin concerns including acne, breakouts and even some forms of pigmentation (known as melasma)
The liver works to help support the clearance of elevated hormones, particularly testosterone and oestrogen. If this is not cleared properly, or if there is a build up or barrier to this being able to be excreted, this contributes to elevated hormones, a common trigger for acne/breakouts. 
Tip: Include plenty of cruciferous vegetables as these contain a constituent called indole-3-carbional, which is involved in the breakdown and clearance of oestrogen within the body.


3. Helps support and reduce blood sugar levels
If sugar or insulin levels within the blood are too high this causes an increase in insulin within the body, and often triggers inflammation within the gut and liver, increasing free radical damage and impairing the body’s ability to filter and excrete waste. Acne and even some forms of pigmentation can be due to elevated blood sugar levels. This is due to the body having too much sugar in the system and the body is trying to excrete it through the skin. Reducing the overall load of sugar and inflammatory foods within will help support the clearance of toxins naturally.
Tip: Avoid consuming inflammatory foods containing high levels of refined sugar. Overly oily, smoked, takeaway foods, excessive coffee and alcohol can overload the liver and increase oxidative stress within the body. 

4. Helps reduce the bacteria within the skin
As the liver plays an important role in the breakdown and excretion of toxins from the body, this actually helps reduce inflammatory acne and the p.acnes bacteria. P.acnes bacteria is the type that leads to inflammatory acne, which can be due to a high amount of bacteria within the sebum. Often this develops when there is a high amount of oxidative stress and elevated free radicals within the body. By reducing the amount of oxidative stress and free radicals, it helps to reduce this bacteria and topical inflammation. 
Tip: Ensure to include plenty of antioxidant rich fruits and vegetables such as blueberries, strawberries, raspberries and broccoli as these are high in vitamin C, vitamin A and anthocyanins which provide potent anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects. Adding herbal teas such as green tea, dandelion and fennel are also supportive for the liver health. 

So there are 4 keys ways you can support your liver to improve the quality of your skin! 


I hope you found this helpful, and I encourage you to try implement at least one of these steps, and see if you start to notice a difference with your skin!

Also, if you know a friend who would benefit from this, please share this with them. Don’t forget to subscribe if you would like to receive weekly updates on all things skin, health and nutrition. 

 If you feel your liver may need support, or may be struggling with a hormonal issue but are unsure of what to do, then please get in contact below. We would love to assist you on your health journey!

Thank you,

Dominique.

Skin Nutrition Co. X