Hey there, welcome to Healthy Ish. You are tuned into the daily podcast from Body and Soul. I am Felicity Harley. Now have you always wondered how much your lifestyle habits affect your skin health? Well, to help clear it up today, I am joined by dermatologist doctor Stephanie Ria. She's going to explain the impact of your daily habits, your diet and stress, and a few other things on the health
of your skin. Plus she shares some valuable tips. If you do like what you hear from let's call It Doctor Reha, tune in to Extra Healthy Ish, where she talks about how to maintain healthy, glowing skin despite being right in the middle of the winter vortex. If you want to listen to that one, search for Extra Healthy Ish wherever you eat podcasts. Stephanie, thank you for joining us on healthy Is today.
How are you good? Thanks for having me. I'm very excited to be here.
Yeah, I'm excited to well, I'm always excited to talk about And by the way, listeners, Stephanie's skin is glowing through the screen at me. It is just a beautiful So we'll get to what you do to maintain good skin health. But let's talk about the impact of lifestyle. How does it affect our skin health? Does it?
Is there a big impact here, There's a huge impact. So obviously genetics play a role in our skin, but the environment and what we're exposed to throughout our life plays a really big role. UV is probably the biggest impact that we see on our skin. So UV obviously contributes to photo aging, It contributes to pigmentation and also pre cancerous and cancerous lesions. Sun exposure from other things like solarium use can contribute to aging, and then things
like smoking. Poor diet, specifically a high GI diet we see as a factor that contributes to aging in our skin. So lifestyle is extremely important when you're trying to maintain good skin health.
It's interesting, is it, because often we just turn to products and we think, oh, that's going to help, But really by examining your lifestyle that perhaps should be our first stop when it comes to looking after our skin. Can you talk more about the impact of stress. I mean this is a big one. I mean many of us live such crazy, busy lives, you know, I feel like our stress levels are heightened well, particularly since COVID.
I just feel like they've never gone down. What impact does stress have on our skin?
I think the way stress impacts our skin is multifactorial. So we know that if we're stressed, we sleep poorly. Poor sleep can contribute to poor skin health. We also know that if we're not sleeping well, we make poor dietary choices. If we're stressed, we're grabbing whatever's around, so we might be grabbing highly processed foods rather those that are unprocessed and high and antioxidants, which are beneficial for
our skin. And stress also increases our cortisol, and we know cortisole can contribute to both aging but also things like acne.
Speaking about my personal experience, you know, I get psoriasis here and there, and it's interesting now, you know, I know if I've had a stressful week and then it'll I might get a little flare up on my on my.
Elbows one hundred percent. So we know that lots of inflammatory skin conditions, So, like you pointed out, zariasis, exma, even autoimmune conditions like loopus, which we treat a lot as dermatologists, all have a relationship to stress. So stress impacts the inflammation in our body and our skin is
really a representation of what's going on inside. So I see quite regularly patients come in and they might have had a major lifestyle upset, relationship breakup, a loss of a job, and their skin flares quite significantly with that. So we do know and we can't underestimate the impact that stress has on our skin.
Do we realize this at the time or are we just questioning, oh, I'm having breakouts or this is happening with my skin, or many of us aware of this link between stress some skin health.
Look, certainly some people are very clued up, certainly my patients that I see with chronic inflammatory skin conditions like psoriasis. So you're a prime example. You know your skin really well, you know that stress will flare it. But I think for other people, when they're in the midst of that stress, whatever that may be, they don't necessarily see the correlation.
And it's only after dealing with that stressful event that they then start to pay attention to themselves, including their skin health.
When you're in it, you don't really think about the impact you know that's having on your skin. You're thinking about just getting through whatever you trying to get through. Talk to us about some important lifestyle habits for healthy skin.
So I think first and foremost is photo protection. So we know, as I mentioned earlier, that UV exposure significantly contributes to aging and also increases our skin cancer risk. So there's a couple of things you can do. The first is staying out of the sun when the UV indexes three or more. There's lots of really good apps around now, so checking your phone the app looking at
what the UV index is. Ideally it's staying indoors between ten am and four pm is the general rule, but we do know that the UV will change depending on the season, and it will also change depending on your location. UV can also penetrate through windows, and specifically it's a longer wavelength which is called UVA, and that can contribute to aging and photo damage as well. So yeah, sunscreen all year round, and that's partly the reason why even
on cloudy days. So the clouds can stop visible light, but they don't stop UV radiation penetrating. And we know that sun damage is cumulative, so it adds up over time. So when you're looking to protect your skin, to protect you from photo aging, we recommend broad spectrum SPS, so ideally with a factor of at least fifty one that covers uva UVB and then things like physical blockers so zinc oxide and titaning dioxide, other things you can do
for your skin. So avoid smoking. We know smoking is a major contribution of aging, and it also contributes to other conditions like cardiovascular disease and lung disease. Avoiding solariums. Fortunately in Australia they're now banned. And then as I mentioned earlier, having a healthy diet where you can, so
specifically focusing on a low GI diet. We don't necessarily recommend restricting certain items of food, there's really not significant evidence for that, but low GI and fresh produce where you can.
What are some of your go tos? What do you do? I mean obviously all of the above, but what is there anything extra you do or anything you've tried in the name of good skin health.
Yeah, so I think you'll be surprised to find that a lot of dermatologists actually use really simple skin care. So I think the first thing is working out where your skin fits in, what type of skin do you have, and what are your your skin complaints? Do you have dry skin? Does that skin change with the season, in which case you need to change your products according to
the season. Do you have other medical comorbidities that might be affecting your skin, like low thyroid or medications that can be drying at your skin as well, So I think understanding at base where your skin's at, then recognizing what your concerns are. So what you want to address, is it acne, is it pigmentation? For all of us, that should always be sun protection, and then finding products which you know are reliable. So for sunscreens as an example,
there's no one sunscreen that I recommend. The best one is one that you're going to apply every day, and having a routine that is sustainable is really important. So just like you brush your teeth every day, you want to apply your sunscreen every day. For cleanses and moisturizers, again, it's really just according to your skin complaints. So for a lot of us, you know, our barrier can become quite dysfunctional if you're applying multiple different harsh products all
the time. Start with active. An example would be you know a product that contains a retinol, rettinou or prescription retinoid, and then slowly build that into your team. When we see people adding in lots of different products all at once, that's when we actually see a lot of other problems with our skin. It starts to cause barrier dysfunction. So going slowly and just adding in one active at a time, should you choose so interesting?
Simple is always best when it comes to health, wellness and absolutely yeah, Stephanie, thank you for joining us today.
Thanks very much. Well.
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