COVER
HEALTHY
STORY
KIDS · OCTOBER
· MARCH 2018
2017
E
USING NATURAL
HERBS FOR
SKIN HEALTH
veryone is familiar with
the proverb that “beauty
is only skin deep,” but
unfortunately when it comes to
skin health, the path to beauty
actually runs much deeper.
There are many different factors
which influence the luster of
our largest organ, including not just what we put
on it, but what we eat, how much rest we get
at night, our stress levels, hormones, acute or
chronic illnesses… and so much more! The skin is
so responsive that in the time before lab testing,
traditional cultures would use changes in the
color, tone, and temperature of different areas of
the skin as a diagnostic method to make educated
guesses at what might be going on inside the
body.
Knowing that there are so many factors which
can influence skin health often leaves people
wondering where to begin. Others try to
make as many positive changes as possible
but feel defeated when they are unable to
find “the answer.” Oftentimes, a great way to
build upon other positive lifestyle changes is
dietary supplementation using traditional herbal
medicine.
But why herbs? Besides the typical nutrients
like vitamins and minerals, plants produce a
spectacular array of chemical compounds. Plants
“have it hard”, being rooted in one spot with only
four organs (roots, stem, leaves, and flowers/
fruit) and still having to do all the same things
we do to live. To survive in their environment,
plants have to make different chemicals to
compensate for their lack of bones, muscles,
nerves, blood, brains, and so on. Take the aloe
plant for example, which thrives in full sun and
dry soil. In order to do so, our prickly friend
produces a number of different compounds with
water-retaining and anti-inflammatory properties;
compounds which we can use to soothe our
own sun-damaged skin or inflamed bowels. Many
of our pharmaceutical medications originally
came from herbs; the benefit of going straight to
the original source is you get the natural mix of
different complementary compounds rather than
one ingredient.
Here are a few well-researched herbs that are
commonly used in clinical practice to treat
different skin conditions:
JOB’S TEARS
(Coix lacryma-jobi)
This plant produces a grain that is often
mistaken for barley, giving it the common name
of Chinese Pearl Barley in the supermarket. As
an herb, it is not considered to have a very
strong action, meaning that it is usually taken
over longer periods of time, or in large doses.
Two compounds in the oil fraction of the herb,
coixol and coixenolide, have been found to have
moderate anti-inflammatory properties, and are
used clinically to help with cystic ac