Dry skin

[Tony Ferous]

Any recommendations for dry skin? Poor skin in often linked to poor health generally, though generally i dont get ill very often at all.
I often get dry skin on my face, acne too sometimes. Oddly the rest of my body is fine.
I've just read Serranos T-mag article, ive not yet tried olive oil/GLA combo topically. I do use coconut oil topically, which works great, im not sure if its will clog pores though.
My preferred method would be to nurish from the inside out, ie via nutrition. Im eating total paleo, meat, veg, fruit and nuts.
Recently i've been having fruit only at around 10am, then 2 mail meals. A typical days fat would come from meat, olive oil(~60ml),
1 avocado, 1-2 tbsp coconut oil, 80g soaked almonds, 3 tsp fish oil, so i should have must fatty acid bases covered, id think.

I stopped all fish oil for 2 weeks and noticed no real change.
Could i be 'crowding out'(De Vany term) my essential fats with excess mono's from olive oil?
I've tried GLA before at 300mg per day, and not noticed any change.


Thanks all!!

[Mike ODonnell]

since the skin is mostly fat...I would suggest more healthy fats including GLA....personally I would keep the fish oil up....you don't have to notice a difference to reap the benefits...it's the inflammation that you do NOT know about that you should fear....prevention will save you the hastle later on....

[Scott Kustes]

A few years back, I had dry skin too. The addition of coconut oil and later palm oil to my diet worked wonders. I no longer have dry skin unless I take too many showers in the winter, but that's from too much hot water.

[Garrett Smith]

I'd suggest upping your good saturated fat intake--along what Scott said.

Also, you may want to look into the iodine thread--skin issues can be very related to thyroid function (and hence iodine sufficiency). That may also be a reason that the coconut oil may help--it seems to help "balance" the thyroid. On that note, know that it's very hard to "balance" a thyroid that just plain doesn't have enough iodine.

[Steve Liberati]

Funny I was going to tell you to decrease your saturated fat intake (as Cordain recommends as well in the Acne Diet). I know the evidence is not very clear on this subject (especially after The Great Cholestorol Debate debunked most of the conventional wisdom on saturated fat) but from what I uderstand, while saturated fat is NOT the bad guy is it percieved to be, too much of it causes inflammation amonst a host of other problems as well. Sure too much of anything is bad for you, but based on records a generalized profile of hunters and gathers diets of both past and present suggest their diet was low in saturated fat. Although meat constituted the bulk of their diet, much of it is/was wild game which contains so much less fat than domesticated meat. Skin issues were rare if not mostly non-existent for these cultures who relied on wild game and uncultivated plants to survive. In the same boat, I'm in the process of eliminating saturated fat from my diet (its very hard) for at least 2 weeks to reintroduce them into my diet and see what happens.

[Scott Kustes]

Another note from increasing my saturated fat intake is that I can tan. Now, I'm still a pasty white German-Irish boy with slightly reddish hair, but my skin actually develops some hint of brown and I don't burn as easily. I still avoid overexposing myself to the sun and will still turn pinkish pretty easily, but the skin heals itself quickly and goes to brown instead of back to white. Just a thought....I think getting good saturates from coconut and palm oils and grassfed animals helps. Of course, I can't discount the removal of all forms of poly's other than those that occur naturally in nuts, seeds, oils, and meats/seafoods.

[Tony Ferous]

Iodine documented as aggravating acne, so id be wary of supplementing with it...