Improve your diet and you’ll start to see changes to your skin within weeks, says dermatologist and nutrition expert Dr Thivi MaruthappuPeople Writer“There’s a big myth about skin care,” says Dr Thivi Maruthappu, the UK’s first dual-qualified consultant dermatologist and nutritionist. “My motto is always: skin care starts on your plate, not on your bathroom shelves”.
Maruthappu, 42, runs a practice at the Cleveland Clinic in London and conducts research on nutrition and skin at King’s College London. She studied medicine at Oxford University and then went on to study nutrition at Stanford in the US. Now, she is on a mission to tell the world about the impact diet can have on the skin.
Until recently, the diet’s effect on the skin had been largely dismissed. At the beginning of Maruthappu’s career, sugar was not considered to be. Food wasn’t discussed in dermatological textbooks or in morning meetings at Maruthappu’s hospital. “Diet is the foundation for the skin. You don’t just want to look young, you want to feel young, and you want to feel good,” says Maruthappu. “Rather than injections, it matters so much how you look after yourself. Start with what you are eating.”, Maruthappu develops a four-step skin solution, starting with nutrition, stress and rest levels, then moving on to skin care and medical treatments. Diet is, of course, the first step.