I know, I’m always talking about nutrition and how it relates to your beauty. Did you know that beauty actually begins in your colon? When it comes to African American Skin and Hair Care, it’s important for us to take an internal approach.

When you’re not eating the right foods or taking in enough water, your skin and hair will talk to you by showing you breakouts, sometimes to the level of actually having boils come up on your skin.

Often times when you’re experiencing dry hair, dry scalp or breakage, that’s because your body is not hydrated properly. When you look at a plant, for example, and you don’t nourish the plant by giving it food or adequate water, the plant begins to die. It’s actually showing you what happens when it’s not nourished and fed properly.

The same thing happens to you as a human. Your skin will tell you what’s taking place in your body when it’s not nourished properly. So we take a look at food or nutrition as it’s being termed at this point and how it serves as the driving force of beauty.

When your skin’s not exfoliated properly, it can show you a dull, ashy, gray look to it. Your skin has a way of giving you that same appearance when it’s not nourished properly. We take a look at mother nature and the foods that she provides and when you look at how things are grown at this point, not only are we to question what we’re eating, we have to also take a look at how it’s grown and the type of soil it’s planted in.

Nutrition for African American Skin and Hair

A lot of people are going to say “Come on Juliette! How are we going to know where the food was planted or who grew it where we shopped?”. There are so many alternatives popping up in your own neighborhood. It becomes a matter of stepping outside of your house and chatting with a neighbor. You’ll be surprised how many gardens are being grown by people in your community.

People are actually starting community gardens where you can participate and see the “fruits” of your labor, and you know that the food you’re eating is being nourished a certain way. When the food is nourished properly or grown in a certain soil, its pH level, you’re cells, blood and organs are going to take on the nutrition that’s provided in that food. Another thing to also be mindful of is that there’s energy in your food.

If you are coming to your local community garden or the farmers market, the people who actually have grown the food do it in love. So you’re taking in the energy of those people and bringing it into your space and it’s important to your skin, hair and health and how it nourishes your body.

The Color of Nutrition and African American Skin Care

You also want to take a look at your foods of color. When I say foods of color, if you take a look at a garden you’ll see that you have such an assortment of colors around you. Within the pepper family you have red peppers, green peppers, yellow peppers and orange peppers. Each color has taken that pepper through a phase and each phase is going to nourish your body.

Green Foods

Some of the foods that you really might want to consider would be kale, collards, green beans and spinach. You look at the green leafy foods and they’re going to provide you with some form of chlorophyll (what cleanses and nourishes the blood).

Green foods are known as your detoxifying foods (broccoli, spinach, kale, green tea). If there’s one thing that is extremely good for you, it’s to make sure you do an internal cleanse.

We can use all of the creams, cleansers, exfoliants and work it from the outside. However, if we don’t cleanse the body from within, that sludge will back up in your system and colon and that can create dis-ease in the body.

Red Foods

When you look at your red foods (cherries, apples tomatoes, pomegranates, beets), these are often categorized as your anti-aging foods. Not that we age fast, but when the body is not nourished, you begin to see just how quickly you can mature and how your skin and hair will take on a certain appearance. So you want to add these foods to your shopping list when you go out.

Orange Foods

Another color you see your foods in is Orange (orange peppers, oranges, carrots, yams, orange turmeric, lentils). These are your immune boosting foods. In order for your body to maintain health, your immune level has to be at a certain point. When your body and immune are at certain levels, it will nourish your skin and hair.

Yellow Foods

Looking at your yellow foods (ginger, rainier cherries, saffron, turmeric, yellow chili peppers, virgin olive oil, flaxseed), they deal with inflammation.

When your body is not well, inflammation sets in and when that happens there is a certain level of mucus. Mucus is where disease can find a home and cause you so much more trouble. Then your skin will start showing you what’s taking place in the form of a challenge.

Purple/Blue Foods

When we look at purple foods (black beans, blueberries, black berries, plums, egg plant, purple grapes, these are your brain foods. They’re considered good for the brain and we all look for ways to increase our powers of memory, thinking, how to calculate and analyze.

Got It? Now,  How Do You Take In All These Goodies?

Simple ways to get these foods into your system, especially if you’re trying to get certain amounts, would be a smoothie or natural nutritional drink for breakfast. It’s a great way to begin your day. My drink of choice consist of kale, spinach, an apple, ginger, fresh squeezed lemon, a little turmeric and coconut water. I toss it in the Nutri bullet for breakfast especially when I’m on the go.

It’s a great way to begin your day with what you know is a shot of health. As long as you continue to consume water and healthy foods, your natural beauty will begin to shine through.

Should you choose to consume meat with your meals, one of the things to consider is whether or not it’s free range meat (animals allowed to be in their natural space and eat hormone free). Remember, you are what you eat, so if the cow, chicken … has been feed hormone based foods, you’ll be ingesting those same hormones. This is just a way of looking at nutrition and it’s role in the beauty of your skin and hair.

I hope you like what I’ve shared this week.  If so, pass it on to a friend or two.

As always …

Dedicated to Your Beauty,

Juliette Samuel
Esthetician/Author/Publisher

Nyraju Skin Care