Your Skin Nutrients Depends on You

Known as “The Healthcare Synergist”, Dr. Mark Tager, MD, draws from his vast experience in both integrative medicine and aesthetics to provide a roadmap for the reader who wants inner and outer beauty by creating a synthesis that is larger than the sum of the parts.

As explained In his latest book, Feed Your Skin Right: Your Personalized Nutrition Plan for Radiant Beauty.” Dr. Tager’s core intention for the book is to give out the right information to the questions his patients, friends, and family members keep asking him. It’s usually down to four:

“What should I eat?” What supplements should I take? “What topicals should I apply? “What procedures should I have?” In Feed Your Skin Right he addresses each of these questions with a simple answer: “It depends”. 

According to Dr. Tager, “This is not the simple answer readers want to hear, but there is a great resonating power behind it. No two people on the planet have the same identical skin, not even twins.  Over the last decade, a surge of knowledge exploded throughout the years about personalized nutrition. This developed how people can tailor their eating habits and skincare regimens. Some of the newer tests include nutritional genomics, gut and skin microbiome testing, food sensitivity analysis, inflammatory markers in the blood, and ways to assess the gut-brain-skin connection. Tager set out to help people create a personalized plan that affords them skin health and beauty inside-out

Tager’s core philosophy says that a skin-beautifying diet begins by minimizing the foods that, in excess, are unhealthy. The first is simple refined carbohydrates—sugars. Americans are number one in the world in their consumption. We eat 4-5 times the recommended amount, with much of it hidden in everyday foods. From a skin perspective, the problem with excess sugar is that it causes glycation. Glycation occurs when the sugar molecules attach themselves to a protein and changes the way it functions. When sugar molecules bind to collagen in the skin, the collagen becomes brittle, and this can contribute to fine lines, wrinkles, and the loss of volume.

The second biggest culprit is too many of the wrong types of fats.

Your brain and your skin love good healthy fats and this shows through your skin because it makes up to be the largest organ, they find their way there as well. Avocados, raw nuts, seeds, and fish are all great sources of the healthy Omega-3s essential fatty acids. Tager stresses the importance of “eating the rainbow” by getting more plants, rich in diverse colors into the diet. You gain the advantage of the 5,000 phytonutrients in the plants that contain the protective antioxidants, and you also get the fiber. The fiber in plants is the preferred food for the good bacteria in the gut that then create short-chain fatty acids that make their way to the skin and help protect it.

One of the topics in the book is “eating right for your genes.” What does this mean, and how can one go about doing this?

When you take a commercial DNA test, let’s say for ancestry, what the tests identify is your pattern of SNPS, which are pronounced “snips.” SNPs stand for single nucleotide polymorphisms, quite a mouthful. SNPs are the most common genetic variation and involve a simple substitution in the DNA. Each of us has 4-5 million of these variations in our genome. We inherit SNPs from our parents, and we create them and pass them along to our offspring. Most of these are inactive and don’t affect how we make proteins, but some do.

There are genetic variations that determine how we metabolize things like alcohol or caffeine, how we handle lactose, or how easily we gain weight. SNPs determine taste perceptions and our genetic need for increased vitamins. There are genetic variations that also affect the skin. These determine how rapidly we break down our collagen and elastin, how easily we develop brown spots, the rate at which we create harmful products through glycation, and our need for skin-supporting antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals. This is extremely valuable information and can help people fine-tune their diet and guide supplement choices.

There are few areas in nutrition that generate as much confusion as supplementation. Dr. Tager points out that, “Each of us must be very clear on the “why” behind taking a supplement. People can take multivitamins, multimineral complexes for insurance, but a personalized approach takes into account other reasons. “Chronic disease; aging; drug-induced nutrient depletions—medicines that interfere with key nutrients—nutritional genomics; gut health—especially digestion and absorption—lifestyle issues like too much or too little exercise; stress and hormones can all play a factor. which is why the right supplement plan is one that is tailored to individual needs. And of course, the supplements must be high quality, safe and pure.”

Let’s now turn to my favorite topic, one that every woman I know loves to ask. What topicals should I apply to my skin? With so many products out there to choose from, where should we begin? Dr. Tager shared a statistic that the average woman will spend between $200,000 and $300,000 on beauty products in a lifetime. Remember this, the vast majority of products don’t do more than sit atop the skin, moisturize and protect it. That’s a good thing. Certainly important. But you don’t want to pay a lot of money for this basic function, and most of us don’t need a special formulation for each area of the face, or body. There are four categories of skin topicals that should make up everyone’s regimen—both men and women. The first is a good mineral-based sunblock with an SPF of at least 30. The next is the topicals that provide good barrier protection. These are your moisturizers. The third—for those who can tolerate them—is retinol. Retinols aid in promoting faster skin turnover, for a more youthful-looking epidermis. The next category is where most of the excitement is in skincare. These are the antioxidants, the peptides, and the probiotics that can either penetrate the skin and affect the dermis to promote collagen and elastin synthesis, or can help regulate the skin microbiome. 

In the final chapter, Dr. Tager provides guidance on how to craft a personal health plan and get the professional guidance they need. To create beauty that lasts you must feed your skin from within!

Feed Your Skin Right: Your Personalized Nutrition Approach to Radiant Beauty is available on Amazon and Kindle. Follow Dr. Mark Tager on Instagram @drmtager. More information on Dr. Tager’s programs can be found at www.drtager.com.

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