Transcription
This is a question I get asked of me all the time. Dr. Yun, what should I eat to look younger? What foods will make my skin healthier and more youthful? And conversely, what foods will age me prematurely? So, on this video, we're going to go over what to eat to look younger.
My name is Dr. Anthony. I'm known as America's holistic plastic surgeon. I help health-conscious men and women look their best by teaching them a holistic approach to beauty. And today I'm going to go over which foods help you look younger and which foods you need to avoid to avoid premature aging.
So the first thing you need to remember is to eat the rainbow. So what does this mean? Well, when I say eat the rainbow, what I mean is eat the rainbow of fruits and vegetables. Now fruits and vegetables are great for your skin. And one of the reasons why they are is because of the antioxidants that are present in these fruits and vegetables. Now, one thing to remember, very important, the reason why I say eat the rainbow is the antioxidants are often the actual pigments that make up the color of those fruits and vegetables. So, the wider the array of colors that you eat, the wider the array of pigments and the wider the array of antioxidants.
Now, antioxidants are super important because they fight free radicals. Free radicals are one of the things that really prematurely age us. And you may have heard of the process called oxidation. Well, that's what free radicals participate is in oxidation. So, by eating the rainbow fruits and vegetables, you are eating all those pigments. You're getting all those different colors and all of those antioxidants to neutralize those free radicals to slow down that aging process. So, instead of eating, let's say, all green, try to eat green and red and yellow and orange and whatever colors of fruits and vegetables that you can.
Well, try to remember to avoid to eating sugar. This is a tough one because so many of us here in the United States and Canada and really all over the world are addicted to sugar. Well, sugar ages us prematurely in two ways. The first way is it will cause sugar, uh, eating a lot of sugar will cause sugar spikes in your blood. That causes insulin spikes because your pancreas will secrete insulin as a reaction to the sugar spikes. And when you get insulin spikes, you can get inflammation from it. Chronic insulin spikes equals chronic inflammation. And inflammation is one of the driving forces of aging in our bodies.
The second way that eating sugar causes us to age prematurely and gives us worse skin is due to the process of glycation. During glycation, when you eat sugar, those sugar molecules will actually bond to the collagen of your skin. And it can cause that collagen to become more kinked and cause your skin to actually become prematurely aged. So sugar attacks our aging by two different ways, inflammation and glycation. And that's why you got to really stay away from it. So we think sugar desserts, avoid your dessert. That's the first step. But also avoid sugary sodas. You want to avoid these types of sweet drinks and you also want to avoid things as much as you can like white bread, white rice and white pasta because these are also turn to sugar in our bloodstream and give us those sugar spikes. So definitely want to limit the amount of sugar that you eat for good skin.
Well, I encourage you to eat good fats. This doesn't mean to eat all types of fats, but good fats. And there is a big difference here. So depending on when you grew up, depending on what you've read, some people believe that all fat is bad for you and that you should always eat a very low-fat diet. And that's not necessarily true. It's not that all fat is bad for you. It's that some fats are bad, but some fats are actually good. And the good ones to consider are omega-3 fatty acids, uh, and monounsaturated fatty acids. Omega-3 fatty acids are found often in cold water fish. Uh, monounsaturated fatty acids are found in nuts and seeds. Uh, and so these are considered good fats because they actually will reduce inflammation and they can even kind of moisturize your skin from the inside out. So definitely you want to have the good fats, avoid the bad fats.
I encourage you to avoid eating dairy. Okay? So I say that milk does your body good. It is the perfect food if you're a growing calf. Now, dairy isn't necessarily good for us humans, though, because the issue with dairy is it's not made for people. It's made for cows. Now, this does not apply if you're a baby and you're drinking breast milk. That is the perfect food for a human baby is human breast milk. But regular dairy from cows is not a good food necessarily for humans because we react to it and we create inflammation in our bodies from that. Uh, a lot of people react to casein, uh, which is in dairy and so many of the population around the world is also lactose intolerant. Now dairy is real popular in Europe and here in the United States where it's primarily a Caucasian population. But if you get outside of these areas and you have people with darker skin, uh, Asians, you know, um, Latinos, African, Africans, African-Americans, you know, they do not tolerate dairy so much. And there is a high incidence of lactose intolerance. So dairy is not something that I recommend. If you've got acne issues, the first thing you may want to try is going off of dairy. And so it's bad for your skin because of inflammation.
All right. What else should you eat? Fermented foods. So, fermented foods basically are foods that are chalk full of probiotics. Probiotics basically are beneficial bacteria for your gut. Now, there's something called the gut-skin axis. And what this is basically is that there is a connection between the health of your gut and the health of your skin. And people who have an unhealthy gut often will will find inflammation and issues with their quality of their skin as well. So what we mean by a healthy gut is also a healthy microbiome. The microbiome are the trillions of bacteria that live inside our gut. Sometimes that microbiome can be unhealthy. You know, if you've been on a lot of antibiotics, if you're eating a lot of bad foods, then you can have a very unhealthy microbiome and this can show in your skin. Fermented foods and probiotics will are actually will bring in healthy good bacteria to your intestines to your gut and that can then show in healthier skin. So would encourage you eat good amount of fermented foods because the American diet is completely devoid of fermented foods. So what should you eat? Um, kefir, sauerkraut, miso, kimchi, uh, kombucha. These are all good options to get good probiotics into your gut.
And try to avoid processed foods. Now, there are a lot of reasons why processed foods are bad for you because there's a lot of different things in them that you have to avoid. First thing, trans fats. A lot of processed desserts and processed baked goods contain trans fats. And these are basically industrially modified vegetable or plant oils that are really, really inflammatory for your body and for your skin. So you got to avoid processed foods number one to avoid the trans fats. Number two, so many of processed foods are filled with soybean oil that is endemic in processed foods. And about 98% or so of the soybeans grow in the United States, grown in the US are, uh, GMO. Okay? And so you have the risk of the fact that they're GMO and they may actually have, uh, residues of glyphosate, which is a potential carcinogen in them. Processed foods are also filled with different types of sugar. Uh, and so you really want to stay away from processed foods. They will definitely age you prematurely.
And what should you eat? Dark chocolate and red wine. So, here's some good news for those of you who do like to indulge and and go and have a little splurge. Dark chocolate is really, really good for your skin. But dark chocolate and milk chocolate are very, very different. Milk chocolate is not good for your skin or your health because there's too much sugar in it. Okay. Dark chocolate, ideally you want to have a percent cacao of 70% or more. That way you're going to have a lower amount of sugar and it's going to have a higher amount of antioxidants which are great for your skin. Red wine is also really good for your skin, but only about a glass a day. The good thing about red wine is that it contains resveratrol, which we are finding is one of the most powerful anti-aging antioxidants that you can that you can ingest. And red wine is the best place to get resveratrol. But that doesn't mean that you should have three glasses of red wine a day. One glass is typically plenty. And because when you start drinking more than that, then the toxic effects of the alcohol start to outweigh the beneficial effects of the resveratrol.
So, I hope this was helpful for you. If you've enjoyed this, I have a free ebook on my website called What to Eat to Look Younger. And, uh, it goes into a bit more, um, into the different types of foods to choose. Uh, we'll send it to you for absolutely for free if you go to my website at dryouun.com. We'll have a link here on this video. Uh, and we'll send that to you. What to eat to look younger. Just a short ebook to give you all the information you need to know.