If you follow acne diet tips as part of a daily regimen, it is the magic answer to your skin problems. If you want a clear skin with a healthy glow, you have to go an extra mile to achieve it.

How Dietary Habits Affect Your Skin

Good skin reflects your inner health. A nutritious diet is a prerequisite to a blemish-free and healthy skin. Diet has a major role in deciding the state of your skin. Poor nutrition and eating oily or fatty foods can result in skin eruptions. Oil buildup blocks pores, resulting in the appearance of pimples, blackheads, and whiteheads that can get inflamed.

It has been observed that a diet containing excess amounts of meat can increase the levels of male hormone testosterone, which results in skin breakouts. Research suggests that the incidence of acne is less in people who consume more vegetarian foods.

When essential vitamins—including the B group vitamins like B6, B12, B1, and vitamin C, zinc, and iron—lack in our diets, it affects our skin and may contribute to skin eruptions.

Right Food For Healthy Skin – Dos And Don’ts For A Glowing Skin

A balanced and vitamin-rich diet will do wonders for your skin, if supplemented with exercise. Your diet should include the following:

• Water – At least six glasses of water every day

• Colorful Fruits And Vegetables – Five servings of vegetables daily; fruits (including yellow-, red- and orange-colored fruits), garlic, and peas

• Fresh seeds such as sunflower, sesame, and flax seeds are excellent

• Essential oils should include cold-pressed seed oils and fish oil

• Fiber-rich foods, including whole or multigrains, root vegetables, lentils, and beans

• Low-fat or skimmed milk, yoghurt, and cheese

• White meat or fish

The following foods should be avoided:

• Foods rich in fat

• Fried foods

• Alcohol and caffeine-rich drinks and soda pop

• Sweets, white bread, pasta

• Processed foods with trans fats

• Red meat and crustacean fish

A typical daily acne diet for a healthy glowing skin should have the following:

Breakfast – Fresh fruits and low-fat yoghurt, or muesli with sunflower, pumpkin, or sesame seeds and raisins, and fresh fruit juice

Lunch – Rice, salad with fresh vegetables, and cottage cheese, or baked potato with tuna fish

Dinner – Grilled fresh fish or lean meat, or chicken without skin and fat, or a vegetarian dish of lentils or soya; vegetables steamed with minimal quantity of oil.

Snacks – Fresh raw nuts or seeds, salads with chickpea dip

Drinks – Fresh fruit juices, herbal tea, fruit tea, or soya milk

Seeking the help of a nutritionist for an acne diet would ensure an optimum benefit dietary program. You are what you eat is an adage that applies even to the largest organ of our bodies, the skin. By following clear skin diet tips, you will be rewarded with a healthy and clear skin.

Acne Vulgaris is the most common of all skin diseases that affects about 80% of people between the age groups of 12 to 24 years. The symptoms can vary from quite mild to extremely severe.

What Is Acne?

Acne is an inflammatory skin disease originating from sebaceous glands and hair follicles. It is a disorder of the oil glands in the skin. Oil glands or sebaceous glands, which are present in each hair follicle or tiny pits of the skin, secrete oil that lubricates the skin and keeps it soft and smooth. If these oil glands become over active and produce excess of oil, this oil stimulates bacteria present on the skin to multiply and cause surrounding tissues of the skin to become inflamed. Inflammation is characterized by redness, swelling and pain at the site of infection.

Types Of Acne

There Are Two Main Types Of Acne

1. Non- Inflammatory

2. Inflammatory

1. Non-Inflammatory Acne: In the beginning of acne formation it is only the smallest type of lesion, known as micro comedo.It is so small that it cannot be seen with naked eyes. When micro comedones are only non inflamed skin blemishes, they are called comedones - either a whitehead (closed comedo) or a blackhead (open comedo).

* Whitehead: When the trapped sebum and bacteria stay below the skin surface they make an enzyme that breaks down sebum into a substance called “free fatty acids”, which is very irritating, and can cause swelling, redness and puss formation. This is called a whitehead (closed comedo). Whiteheads look like tiny white spots, or they may be so small that they can’t be seen by naked eye.

* Blackhead: When the pore opening to the surface is blocked by excess sebum secreted by the oil gland; which contains the skin pigment melanin, it gets oxidized and turns a brown/black color, giving rise to a blackhead (open comedo). It is not due to dirt or dust as it is dried oil and cannot be washed away.

2. Inflammatory Acne: - Inflammatory acne is a more chronic form of the problem. It is characterized by redness, swelling, pain and puss. There are four main types of inflamed acne blemishes.

* Papules: A Papule is a red and inflamed lesion on the skin’s surface. It occurs when there is a break in the follicular wall, allowing bacteria to spill into the dermis.

* Pustules: A pustule is a typical pimple — with a whitehead. It forms when white blood cells come on the surface of the skin. The white cap on the pustule is puss, sebaceous matter and cellular debris.

* Nodule: Nodules are largely inflamed lesions, with hard painful lumps under the skin. It can be sore to the touch.

* Cyst: Cyst acne is the most severe and painful of all types of acne. They are very large, inflamed lesions and feel like soft, fluid filled lumps under the skin’s surface. It may cause scarring.

Acne can make you feel anxious or depressed but with good management and appropriate treatment on time most people are able to control their acne.