Three Secrets to Beautiful Skin on Your Wedding Day

By Diann Daniel on January 7, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Lessons from a recent study show that a healthy lifestyle may be key for a rosy, golden glow on your wedding day.

Want to look your best for your walk down the aisle? Then make sure brightly colored fruits and vegetables form a large portion of your diet, and get your blood pumping with exercise.

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These practices can promote your skin’s healthiest color, says a recently published study in the International Journal of Primatology, conducted by researchers from the universities of Bristol and St. Andrews in the UK. And if health for its own sake isn’t enough to motivate you, add this reason to your wellness motivation list: A healthy glow indicates more than that you’re pretty on the inside—in study after study, markers of health are associated with attractiveness.

In the Bristol and St. Andrews study, lead researcher Ian Stephen and his team of researchers set out to investigate what role overall facial skin color plays in determining perception of health. They asked 54 Caucasian men and women to manipulate skin color of Caucasian faces of both sexes to make them look as healthy as possible. Using special computer software, participants chose to increase the rosiness, yellowness and brightness of the skin.

That subjects enhanced skin rosiness supports findings of previous studies. Increased blood flow and blood oxygenation are both associated with physical fitness, the latter particularly with aerobic fitness. This is because when you exercise, your body must supply more oxygen to your muscles. (Deep breathing exercises—like the kind you do in yoga—are also associated with increased blood oxygenation.) On the flipside, deoxygenation is associated with cardiac and respiratory illnesses and cancer, and causes a dull, blue tint to the skin.

But skin rosiness wasn’t the only factor. Participants also chose to make the faces lighter—especially the females ones—and more yellow. The researchers say that the preference for golden or yellow-tones as an indicator of health may be explained by dietary carotenoid deposition in the skin. In English? That’s the boost of yellow tones we get from a diet high in fruits and vegetables. These plant pigments are powerful antioxidants that fight disease and enhance the immune and reproductive system, so it’s no wonder that they can boost our healthy, beautiful glow.

“In the West we often think that sun tanning is the best way to improve the color of your skin,” said Stephen in the study’s press release, “but our research suggests that living a healthy lifestyle with a good diet might actually be better.”

“This discovery is very exciting and has given us a promising lead into cues to health,” said Professor David Perrett, head of the Perception Lab at the University of St. Andrews, where the research took place. “The only natural way in which we can make our skin lighter and more yellow is to eat a more healthy diet high in fruit and vegetables.”