Sugar and Your Skin: The Quiet Thing That Ages Your Face
If I could change one thing in my clients' kitchens, it would not be the coffee or the wine. It would be the sugar. Sugar is the quiet one. It does not give you a hangover or a crash you notice. It just slowly changes the face.
How sugar ages a face
When there is too much sugar in the blood, it attaches itself to the proteins in your skin. The two that matter are collagen, which keeps the skin firm, and elastin, which lets it snap back. Sugar makes both of them stiff and brittle. There is a name for the result, advanced glycation end products, and the name fits: skin that has lost its bounce, lines that set in deeper, and a jaw and neck that soften early.
It also feeds inflammation. Inflammation is the redness in rosacea, the swelling in a breakout, and the puffiness under the eyes. Sugar keeps all three going.
How sugar causes breakouts
A sugar spike means an insulin spike. Insulin tells the oil glands to make more oil and tells the skin to make more cells. More oil plus more cells equals clogged pores, and clogged pores plus inflammation equals acne. This is why the chin and jaw break out after a weekend of desserts, and why the breakouts are the deep, sore kind rather than the small ones.
Sugar also feeds the wrong bacteria in the gut, and I have written before about how the gut shows up on the face. Bloating in the belly, breakouts on the chin. They go together.
Where it hides
Flavored coffee drinks, soda and energy drinks
Juice, even the fresh kind. A glass of orange juice is several oranges' worth of sugar with the fibre taken out.
Bread, pasta, white rice and anything from a packet with a long shelf life
Sauces and dressings. Ketchup is a dessert.
"Healthy" bars and yogurts
What I tell my clients
Thirty days. Take out the obvious sugar for one month and photograph your face on day one and day thirty. Nobody who has done this has asked me for a second argument.
Water, 150 ounces a day, so the lymph can carry the inflammation out.
Protein and fat with every meal. They slow the spike down.
Fruit over juice. Eat the orange.
Where Scheál comes in
Changing what you eat is the long game. In the meantime, the skin still needs help. For an aging face, The Lift is built around the oils and botanicals that keep collagen supple, with pomegranate, rosehip and sea buckthorn doing the heavy lifting, and the Mask and Exfoliant taking off the dull layer that sugar leaves behind. For a breaking-out face, Clear Skin keeps the pores clear and the inflammation calm while the diet catches up. If your skin is doing both, which is most of us over thirty-five, we build a routine from the two lines together. Ask me.
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This is my experience from twenty-eight years in skin, not medical advice. If you have diabetes or a blood sugar condition, follow your doctor's advice first.