Chapter 5
Good Taste Equals Good Looks: How Nutrition Can Support Beautiful Skin
In writing the original book in this series, The Cortisol Connection: Why Stress Makes You Fat and Ruins Your Health-and What You Can Do About It (2002), and the follow-up book, The Cortisol Connection Diet: The Breakthrough Program to Control Stress and Lose Weight (2004), and after conducting dozens of cortisol-control programs (mostly geared toward weight loss) for hundreds of participants, something dawned on me and my research staff in sort of a collective "lightbulb" moment: We realized that the lifestyle regimen for cortisol control is the same as the regimen for weight loss and for skin health and for mental functioning and for energy levels…and on and on.
Whenever we looked at a chronic health condition and investigated its metabolic underpinnings, we found the same dysfunction and imbalance between the "usual suspects": those aspects of metabolism primarily related to cortisol, oxidation, inflammation, and glycation.
At first, we were perplexed-after all, how could a single regimen (even as multifaceted as it was) change the course of such a range of disparate diseases across every single organ system? The reason, we would eventually discover, is because in controlling and rebalancing these primary metabolic pathways, we were uncovering the very root of many modern disease processes, which are merely metabolic imbalances left unchecked.
These realizations provided us with some satisfaction (because we were helping hundreds of thousands of readers get to the root of their chronic conditions), but they also left us with a sense of unease-primarily that we might be missing something that could help people even more-and that's where dietary supplements and other natural products come in.
Although the general diet and exercise regimens you'll find in this book are essentially the same as the ones you'll find in The Cortisol Connection Diet, the supplement regimen outlined here is specifically tailored to support the unique metabolism of the skin. For example, two people could be following the same diet/exercise regimen to control cortisol, oxidation, inflammation, and glycation, but differences in their dietary supplement regimens will provide the tipping point to emphasize weight loss benefits for one person and anti-acne effects for the other.
Some readers may view this admission as a cop-out. They'll say, "Hey, this is the same weight loss diet I've already read about." While others, such as the hundreds of satisfied participants who have tried our diets, will instead say, "Terrific! I already know that this diet helps me lose weight and control my appetite. Now I know it can make me look better, think better, and feel better." What could be better than that?
If you're not convinced that a single way of eating can offer so many different benefits, then I invite you to give it a try. You have nothing to lose except your flab, your wrinkles, your pimples, your depression, and your fatigue.
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