Hey, they're Healthyish listeners. Thanks for tuning into this stealy podcast and body and soul. I am Felicity Harley. Now, we haven't done skin health as a topic on this podcast for a long time, so I'm so glad we are visiting it all today. I'm joined by a dermatologist and founder of Australian made skincare brand Bespoke Skin Technology.
Her name is doctor Catherine Ama, and she's going to give us a quick lesson in skin health, from the best foods to eat to the must do daily habits, and also she shares her tricks for maintaining healthy, glowing skin. That's what we want right Yes, if you do like what you hear from Catherine listening to extra Healthy Ish, where she answers your most pressing questions about skin health, you can grab that wherever we get your podcasts. Catherine, thank you for joining us today on Healthy Ish.
Thanks so much for having Mey Felicity, I'm excited to check.
Yeah, me too, especially right now when the weather is getting colder. Okay, big question for a short answer. What is the most important thing for maintaining healthy skin.
It's one hundred percent sun protection. I know that's perhaps not the sexiest answer, but it's one three sixty five days of the year. It is sun protection because something I think a lot of us aren't aware about is that eighty or ninety percent of the UV radiation still reaches us down here on the Earth's surface, even on
cloudy days. So in terms of skin cancer prevention, avoiding flares of skin diseases such as roseata which are very sunsensitive, and of course aging, the UV protection is the number one.
It's not very sexy, is it. But I knew you were going to say that. Is it a matter of just putting it into your morning routine or should we reapply throughout the day? I mean, what's what you do?
Look, I think if I'm I know I'm going to be inside at work all day, I will put it on in the morning, particularly if I'm biking to work, and then I won't reapply it during the day because often I'm wearing a mask and I know I'm not going to be outside over the winter months before the sun goes down. So I'm once a day, I totally admit it, But on my days off, I'll suddenly apply in the morning. And if I was to go for a walk or a run, or do something else outdoors later in the day, I would reapply.
For sure good advice. What are some tweaks we should make to our skin routine now it is getting colder.
So combating dryness is the biggest thing. We move from quite diverse environments, so you know, hot, cold, and particularly I think the environment is generally dry in the winter months. Whether we're actually outside in the cool dry or we're inside with heating blasting at our skin, it is in time of significantly increased dryness. So I would suggest definitely making sure a nourishing moisturizer is part of your daily
routine for both your face and your body. And if you have been moisturizing over the summer months but just using a lotion, a fairy water based and runny preparation, I would increase that to a cream, so something that you either have to put your hand into or squeeze out of a tube. Really the most important time to do that is after you have a shower or bath to lock in the hydration from bathing.
It's funny, I actually just jumped in the shower last week and suddenly my temperature in the shower has just gone extremely hot, and I thought to myself, oh, yes, winter is here. Suddenly everything heaps up around us while we cool down inside.
Absolutely what about when it.
Comes to foods, thank some of the best foods to eat for skin health.
So there's quite a large variety. It does look generally, it does come down to a wide variety of fruit and vegetables so that we don't get nutritional deficiencies. But if we want to be really targeted about avoiding dryness, there are a lot of main groups that we can look at. So dry skin can actually be a symptom of quite a wide range of nutritional deficiencies. So funnily enough, that vitamin A is actually really important for skin hydration,
and that comes from the diet. Really good sources of that are sweet potato, very palatable. I think we'd all like that. But the less desirable beef liver.
Oh wow.
And actually, the funny thing about vitamin A is you've got to be really careful to not get too much vitamin A. So the limit is three thousand micrograms per day, which if you really like beef liver you can very easily suppor So I'm not advocating eating beef forever. I think if you had a little bit of sweet potato every now and again, you'd be absolutely fine. Vitamin C, which I think a lot of us tend to increase in winter anyway, because we're wanting to support our immune
system and decrease coughs and colds. That's also a really good skin hydrator. So good sources of vitamin C. We all know about citrus, but red capskins and key we fruit are another excellent source of vitamin C.
And actually I'll throw in strawberries there. I just learned the other day that strawberries actually are good. Thankfully we consume a lot in the Harley household, but yes, I did learn it. They're quite good, excellent, well good.
That's another good excuse to get into them for us to Vitamin D is another really important thing to be thinking about over winter for hydrating benefits, but also vitamin D has really important anti inflammatory benefits for our total body but also the skin. And obviously we don't want the skin to be inflamed because that increases dryness and discomfort.
So obvious sources of vitamin D are of course milk and dairy, but soy, almond and oat milks are often fortified with vitamin D as well as are many commercially obtained bread so they're good sauces. And again a less palatable source of vitamin D is cod liver oil, which I think is more of a punishment.
Yes, and capsule form, can't you. I saw it at the chemisty the other day.
You can absolutely probably close to the fish oil. I would say with vitamin E, which you can get easily from some flower seeds and almonds, is important for skin hydration and avoiding dryness. It's also an important antioxidant zinc. Again, a lot of us take it and winter anyway orally
to boost our immune system. That's a good one, and you can get it in everyone's favorite baked beans, and I just learned oysters, and the other things are selenium, but also amiga three fatty acids are really great in terms of skin hydration, so they're available in fish oil supplements, but avocados and some nuts and finally tumoric, which is I guess we'd add it to food that's also really good at helping prevent dry skin through its anti inflammatory properties.
So I mean, I think really it's an all round colorful diet is the way to do it.
Really. How do you look after your skin? Do you have what's your daily routine?
My daily routines are quite basic. I'm biased because I have my own skin care range. But in the morning, I would just splash order on my face and I apply a basically a multitasking cosmeceutical product that has many different antioxidants and DNA repair enzymes, and it called the Dream Cream, and then I apply sunscreen plus or minus makeup, depending on what I'm up to. That's it in the morning.
And then at night I do double cleanse because I think cleansing and of course with a gentle, non fragrance, non foaming cleanser, tend to do a double cleans to make sure I've removed you know, makeup, oil, sweat, and pollution which can also all contribute to skin inflammation which can lead to aging, which none of us are that keen on, but it can also drive acne, rosasia other conditions.
And then most nights I would just apply the Dream Cream again, and two or three times a week I apply a product called Luminosity Serum, which again is a very light gentoos foliant and has some anti pigment and other anti aging properties, So that's it. I don't use an I cream because my all in one creams sort of target that area as well, So I'm very simple.
We'll get more into I cream's in extra healthy ish. But thank you for joining us on Healthy Today.
Thanks for having me.
Beef liver. I'm not sure I can go as far as eating beef liver as much as I want healthy, glowing skin. What about you? If you did enjoy this chat with the Lovely Catherine, make sure you rate and review it, or you can subscribe to this podcast and you know exactly when we drop a new EPP. Anything else here to Body and Soul dot com dot you, followus on socials, grab our print edition which is on your local Sunday paper, and until tomorrow, stay Healthy is