In the treatment of any type of skin ailments, the one nutrient you would always hear about is Vitamin E. Including vitamin E rich food items in your diet is essential to maintain an overall healthy skin. Most skin creams and skin treatment solutions have vitamin E as one of the main ingredients. So let’s see how important vitamin E is and how effectively it treats scars.
What does Vitamin E do in the body?
Most skin ailments are due to cell damage and the buildup of dead cells. The free radicals in the blood can react with the cells and cause their damage. Cell damage is eventually the reason behind skin problems and aging. Another big culprit that has a negative effect on the health of your skin is insufficient blood circulation or the insufficient supply of oxygen to the cells. Vitamin E helps the cells fight against the free radicals. It thus helps prevent cell damage. Vitamin E is also an important component required for the red blood cells (RBC) formation. RBCs are vital in oxygen distribution to the cells. Thus, Vitamin E plays a crucial role in maintaining a healthy skin, repairing the damaged skin cells and preventing further cell damage.
Vitamin E creams- the hype:
There is an unwanted amount of focus given on how important vitamin E-infused creams are to help repair and rejuvenate your skin cells. But there has been no valid research to prove the same. Vitamin E, in ideal quantities, is indeed essential for the body to repair and prevent cell damage. But this should come mostly from your diet. Vitamin E oil or vitamin E rich creams and lotions aren’t really worth all the hype around them. How much of vitamin E really enters the blood from those creams and how effectively those creams work on the scars is totally dependent on the skin type and a lot of other factors as well.
Vitamin E diet:
Scars are formed in the areas where some damage occurs up to the inner layers of the skin. Vitamin E doesn’t really help in making the scars vanish quickly. It can, however, help in preventing further cell degeneration. As we had already seen, it can also improve the blood circulation and keep the skin healthy. This is important because the skin in the area of the scars is more exposed and thus the skin under the scars is more vulnerable to damage. As the external application of vitamin E isn’t really a proven method to heal scars, and as it can sometimes have adverse effects on the sensitive skin, it is advisable to instead follow a vitamin E rich diet.
Here are a few food items that are rich sources of vitamin E:
- Vegetable oil
- Peanut butter
- Sunflower seeds
- Almonds
- Broccoli
- Avocado
- Tomatoes
Remember, however, to maintain a healthy mix of all the required nutrients by following a balanced diet. Vitamin E, when present in the required proportions in your diet, can help in gradually healing repaired skin. Thus, it can, to some extent, reduce the visibility of scars and can prevent further cell damage.