Skincare From The Inside
FEBRUAURY 2026 EDITION
3rd of March 2026
The skincare roadmap can be confusing, from skincare gurus' advice to the vast line of products, to the terminology and trying to find out if your skin is compatible with anything.
I have had my own fair share of confusion in the skincare world. It’s not just confusing but exhausting. But when you do find the right formula and routine, it can be absolutely life-changing.
However, as much as products are important, it wouldn’t work to its full advantage if your lifestyle and diet says other wise. People often forget that their skin is an organ — the largest one at that — so, just as much as you take in food and supplements for other internal organs, the skin needs it to.
Lifestyle coaches recommend cardio for the heart. A psychiatrist advises puzzles and games for the brain. Nutritionists endorse a Mediterranean diet for a healthy liver. So what should be proposed for the skin?
What’s On The Menu?
Many food companies prioritise sales over health benefits. That’s why the food and drink we buy most likely contain high sugar, unhealthy fats and oils, high saturated fat, and questionable food additives that link to behavioural changes (e.g. Red 40). These are found in everyday grocery items such as processed foods, beverages, snacks and sweets.
Accumulation of such edibles leads to acne, inflammation, dehydration, an increase in oil (sebum) production and accelerated ageing.
The skin needs food rich in antioxidants, healthy fats (omega-3), vitamins A, C and E. So think, fish (salmon & mackerel), dark chocolate, berries, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, leafy greens, seeds (chia, walnuts, cashews, pumpkins), avocados and fruits.
And most importantly, WATER. Water is essential for keeping the skin and body hydrated. We’re so addicted (and encouraged) to go for drinks that increase energy like coffee and energy drinks instead of gently waking the body that stores energy with a glass of water.
More on drinks, there are a variety of beverages to introduce to your daily life are smoothies, ginger shots, tea, and water infused with cucumber and lemon. There are so many drinks to choose from, other than cartoned juices and carbonated drinks that are high in sugar.
Our menu is important to boost the skin, but what about the way we interact with our environment and ourselves?
Spring Cleaning Came Early
A huge game changer in how your skin reacts to things is the environment where you are. Your home, room, and bed are your sanctuary; keep it sacred and keep it clean.
The bed sheets you keep untouched for weeks are likely to be rid of dead skin cells and dust. The human body sheds around 500 million to a billion dead skin cells within 24 hours. When those 24 hours pile up to weeks, imagine the skin cells your pillow gathers as you put your skin on them. Depending on how busy someone is, it’s not easy to change bedsheets every two weeks, so, as advice from my mother, dust your bed every night before you go to bed. You don’t know the amount of dust that has dropped on your bed while you were away. Those little things can clog up pores and cause skin irritation.
C’mon Let’s Move More
Have you ever finished a workout session and noticed a little brightness in your skin? Well, that’s the “post-workout glow” in effect. This is because exercise increases blood flow and blood delivers oxygen to your muscles and organs—including your skin—which makes it look healthier. According to the National Institutes of Health (.gov), “Regular exercise is associated with increased blood flow to the skin, elevated skin temperature, and improved skin moisture. Furthermore, it has been shown to improve skin structure and rejuvenate its appearance”.
It is common to see people’s skin clear and ‘brighten’ when they go through a fitness journey. So, exercising frequently is another step that aids in that ‘clear skin’ goal.
Cortisol On The Down Low
Cortisol is the primary stress hormone. In survival mode, it’s like a superpower meant to overcome difficult situations that trigger fight or light mode. From Kurzgesat “stress is a very fast, drastic change of the state of the body that prioritises survival. an emergency program that lets the organism push way out of its comfort zone to survive.”
Key word: ‘emergency’. However, in today’s world, the way our cortisol spikes stems from deadlines, traffic, work, school, literally anything that increases anxiety. Too much cortisol in the body causes weight gain, fatigue, acne and sleep problems, which makes that ‘skincare journey goal’ further to reach.
In life, we may not be able to control the situation around us, but we can control the way we react to it. So, we can reduce our stress.
Coming back from an exhausting day of work or school, we should not be near our phones as outlets to relieve stress. What we need is our body, mind and something physical to reduce the spiking stress hormone. A warm bath, music, journaling, sleeping — even lying down and doing nothing helps, reading and other ways that make you feel as light as a feather.
Sleeping Beauty
Staying up late at night is cool and all till it starts showing the side effects on your face.
We do not need to sleep for 100 years like Princess Aurora, because a minimum of 7 hours is enough. Sleeping for 7 hours is like a far-fetched dream in today's society because of how busy and time-consuming it has become. And that is why I urge you to become strict with your time.
I am someone who needs to be up by 5-6 am, so I try to be strict with my night routine in order to hit the hay by 10-11 pm. I may not always sleep punctually, but I am lying on my bed by that time. Letting my body sink and get ready to sleep while I give my brain little activities to do before REM, such as sudoku, reading or playing mahjong.
For the days I can’t meet the 7-hour sleep quota, I use the weekend to be as lazy as I can (if I have time to be, lol). Afternoon naps and staying in bed longer help once in a while.
Worth Having —
[NEXT BLOG: How To Build Endurance]
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This was a really good reminder that skincare isn’t just what we put on our skin. The lifestyle side of it gets overlooked so often. The point about stress and cortisol affecting skin is something a lot of people don’t talk about enough.