7 Enemies of Healthy Skin You've Probably Never Heard Of
Your skin’s beauty and brightness change over the years. Apart from premature aging, you should avoid the enemies of healthy skin because of the serious health risks that come with them. In this article, we’ll take a look at a list of risk factors for skin health.
While you could be predisposed to be more or less sensitive to external factors that damage skin health, it’s always possible to take care of yourself and prevent long and short-term problems with the proper care.
Seven enemies of healthy skin
This list is focused on the most frequent enemies of healthy skin according to the Spanish Academy of Dermatology and Venereology. Overall, we’ll list factors that can directly cause deterioration and aging of your skin.
1. The sun: one of the worst enemies of healthy skin
The sun, that star around which we orbit, sends out its powerful ultraviolet rays (UV rays) that, far from being blocked by the atmosphere, reach our skin and damage it. Solar rays are considered one of the worst enemies of skin health.
When a person is “addicted to tanning,” they call it tanorexia. The danger is due to the constant cutaneous dehydration, which erodes the dermis little by little. However, photoaging isn’t the worst part of prolonged exposure to ultraviolet rays. Keratosis is a skin issue where darkly pigmented lesions appear and cells grow abnormally. With more sensitive skin, the risk of greater damage is higher.
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2. Tobacco, one of the most dangerous enemies of healthy skin
Second, in the ranking, tobacco is without a doubt one of the staunchest enemies of skin health. Doctors can recognize chronic smokers because their wrinkles are deeper, thinner, more pronounced, and have a gray hue.
In women, the skin weakens much faster when smoking. The reason for the dermis’s reduced resistance is that cigarettes slow blood circulation, taking oxygen away from tissues.
3. Alcohol
Excess consumption of alcohol harms blood circulation. You can see this in the skin’s general health similar to what tobacco does. In addition to causing premature aging, people who drink daily can start to look pale, with dull skin and dark circles around their eyes.
4. Fatty foods
In general, these foods fall under the category of “junk food.” Saturated fats add calories that your body can’t burn. With that, lipid metabolism suffers an inevitable change.
People who eat fatty foods daily can experience effects that range from acne to seborrheic dermatitis, or even a thickening of the external layers of the skin. Additionally, people with obesity tend to show a series of skin health complications, with problems like scarring, edema, and keratosis.
5. Stress
Stress shows itself through a fragile or altered emotional state, or with episodes of sadness or rage. Stress opens the door to physical ailments, which is why you should alleviate stress with relaxing activities like swimming or yoga.
Your skin is your shield to protect you from aggressive elements of reality. When you’re stressed, it can show itself through allergies, dermatitis, or even rosacea and psoriasis.
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6. Pollution
Environmental pollution is another enemy of skin health, and it’s one of the enemies that often goes unnoticed. This is not just in industrialized areas, however: dust, products used to fumigate crops, and in general, impurities in the air also block your pores. The lightest of the consequences is acne, but there are also many more severe consequences.
7. Abrupt weight changes
The elastic fibers in your skin stretch out when you gain weight. If the skin stretches too much, the fibers can break. When you add to this the natural aging of your skin, the skin can stay permanently loose and flabby. That’s why it’s important to ensure that any weight changes are done slowly and healthily.
By avoiding these seven enemies, you should be able to avoid the majority of the factors that negatively affect your skin health. Protecting yourself from the sun, avoiding unhealthy habits, maintaining a healthy, balanced diet, and avoid excess eating are a big part of keeping your skin looking wonderful.
All cited sources were thoroughly reviewed by our team to ensure their quality, reliability, currency, and validity. The bibliography of this article was considered reliable and of academic or scientific accuracy.
- Venancio Martínez Suárez, Alejandra Méndez Sánchez. La nutrición, condicionante de la salud de la piel. Extraído de: http://www.masdermatologia.com/PDF/0171.pdf
- Academia española de dermatología. Vicios de la piel. 2009. Extraído de: https://aedv.es/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/vicios_en_la_piel.pdf
