Your diet, not your make-up routine...

Foods that Promote Beautiful Skin

Green foods that promote healthy liver function include chlorella and dark green leafy veggies, such as:

• Kale
• Spinach
• Dandelion greens
• Broccoli

Other foods known to contribute to healthy skin include raw and virgin fats and oils. Coconut oil is especially good for your thyroid.

You’ll also want to include plenty of mineral-rich foods (dark green leafy veggies, ocean veggies and seafood) and antioxidant-rich foods (black currants, blueberries) in your diet.

Another group of foods worth mentioning are fermented (or cultured) foods.

Fermented foods help promote the growth of friendly intestinal bacteria and aid in digestion. They also support healthy immune function, including an increase in B vitamins, omega-3, digestive enzymes, lactase and lactic acid, and other immune chemicals that fight off harmful bacteria.

By keeping your insides healthy and clean, your skin will have no choice but follow suit.

That said, I also believe that feeding your skin from the outside with only the best ingredients from nature, can help. This was a major reason for creating my own USDA Certified Organic skin care line.

Again, you’ll want to pay as much attention to the quality and purity of whatever you put on your body as you do with what you put inside it.

Prematurely Aging Skin May Be a Sign of Emotional Stress

In addition to eating a healthy diet, effectively addressing stress is another aspect of maintaining a healthy and youthful-looking face.

Previous research has found that your life experiences, or perhaps more precisely, how you deal with them, have a greater impact on your looks as you age than your genetic makeup.

For example, people who had been through the stress of a divorce looked nearly two years older than their married, single or even widowed twin. Those who used antidepressants also appeared significantly older.

This lends further credence to the emerging and incredibly interesting field of epigenetics, which centers around the notion that environmental factors such as stress and your diet are directly responsible for the expression of your genes.

And it is the expression of your genes -- NOT the genes themselves -- that dictates whether you will develop certain diseases, and how gracefully you may show your age.

So although you may have a genetic “predisposition” for facial wrinkles, for example, you are not necessarily doomed to develop a face full of wrinkles during middle-age.

According to groundbreaking research by the likes of Bruce Lipton, PhD., a forerunner in the field of epigenetics and The New Biology, your genetic expression is ruled by your mind and your emotions. In other words, being able to maintain a more positive outlook can influence the expression of your genes, and thus directly impact how you age.

Previous research has also determined that stress lessens your skin's ability to function properly, and that extended exposure to psychological stress can speed up the aging process of your cells and cause them to die at a faster rate than normal.

In a nutshell, having a healthy, youthful appearance on the outside involves both a healthy diet that supports your internal cleansing mechanisms, and effectively addressing your stress levels.

And both of these factors can have a beneficial impact on the expression of your genes.

The sooner you start to make these positive changes -- to your stress levels, mental outlook and your diet -- the better. Whether you’re young or old, this healthy lifestyle can help maintain a beautiful complexion and keep the signs of aging at bay, or at least slow them down considerably.