Impact of Diet on Skin!

[c0rder0sa]

Hi all,

I’m a researcher from MIT working on making a predictive model for skin, measuring what impact different environment, lifestyle and products used have on someone’s skin health.

I thought this would be a great community to ask about what you’ve seen as the impact of diet on your skin. How might this relate to a tool that could help you track it? One initial thought is to look at information from people’s food tracking apps like MyFitnessPal and apply data science techniques to see how it affects the health of their skin.

Would love to learn from this experience of you all and how different diet changes have shown up in your skin!

Best,

Meg

mmaupin@mit.edu

[Todd Allen]

I've noticed some skin improvements over the past 3 years, especially improved tolerance for sun exposure.  But I've made so many other changes in pursuit of better health, better sleep, stress management, toxin avoidance, increased focus on exercise optimization, therapeutic thermal stress, etc. that I couldn't with any accuracy state what role diet has played.  And I've done a lot of dietary experimentation including various approaches to fasting and supplementation.  In my case skin improvements appear to have occurred in modest gradual ways as opposed to dramatic changes in response to dietary changes.

[Genny]

Sun exposure trumps all (except for not smoking!). 

HOWEVER, prolonged (multi-day) fasting has improved fine lines and even an ice pick chickenpox scar, which was unexpected.  It's a subtle effect, but I bet it would be measurable using the surface techniques that most studies on lines and wrinkles use, but it would be expensive.

Take a look at people who have CR for 20+ years, though.  Most of them do not appear younger than their years.