The Best Possible You is a practical nutritional and lifestyle guide to improving your health and healing your body. It is an easy-to-understand guide to how your gut works, giving you helpful information on how to keep your gut healthy and problem free. After all, many health issues start at the gut and many internal and external factors (diet, mental wellbeing and environment) cause it to go out of whack.
I highly recommend giving The Best Possible You a read - you'll find it on Amazon for £11.74, here! I've included a sneak peak below, just to quench your thirst...
The Skin The Body's Boundary
Perhaps the most fascinating organ of the body, the skin is the body’s boundary, on average stretching to cover a total area of 6 meters (20 feet). It is a boundary between the internal and external world, and its function, among other things, is to protect and serve the best possible you. The skin is often not seen as an organ at all, but it is in fact the largest organ. We all have different skin depending on our cultural make-up, heritage and genes. The skin you live in is as complex and clever as an encyclopedia, so let’s make sure you’re equipped to read and understand what it is telling you.
It is said that the eyes are the windows to your soul, but I like to think of your skin as the story of your life. Every little blemish tells a tale, every scar stems from a story. It’s like looking into a crystal ball of your past, present and future health. During the first consultation with any client, I’ll do something called ‘face mapping’, where I look at the condition of and elasticity of the skin on the face. Your skin is your curriculum vitae, your covering letter and book jacket all in one. Healthy skin reveals how old you are, how much you respect, feed and water your body. Face mapping gives you an immediate insight into the organs of the body and which ones could do with support, especially the liver, kidneys and the gastrointestinal tract (GIT), helping to build a symptom profile that enables us to put together a bespoke health plan. So, in our quest for the best possible you, the skin is a great place to start.
The concept of face mapping is as old as man. Hippocrates, the shaman and traditional Chinese medicine all used it as a tool for diagnosis. It can show a weakness in the organ systems and other systems of the body.
- Spots around the chin line can indicate an hormonal imbalance.
- Dark circles under the eyes can indicate the detoxification pathways need some support.
- White or pale lips can indicate an iron deficiency.
- Cracks at the corner of the mouth indicate low vitamin B2 levels.
It is important to note that none of these signs alone are indicators of there being a disease state in an organ but rather are an indication that more investigation should happen. The signs simply suggest imbalances or inflammation in the organ system.
The body contains slightly more bacteria cells than human cells and we come into contact with numerous various potential pathogens (disease-causing microbes) every day, but the body does not get dis- eased every single day. This is because the skin is doing its job of protecting us. Think of the skin as a security company, with its main job being to provide safety in an unstable or insecure environment. Consider how robust your skin is, how many layers it has, how it stops you from bleeding to death or losing all the organs it houses. It is elastic and robust. It can regrow and heal itself – if you cut your skin it can (or should) heal pretty quickly. It is a boundary, a fence that keeps everything in.
There are other structures in the body that share this security role too, which work in conjunction with the skin; the brain is protected by the skull, and the heart and lungs by the ribs. The body is like an extended family, with every organ linked to another, ensuring every- one is happy and functioning to optimal levels.
Facts:
- Your skin covers on average 6 meters (20 feet) – the size of a boxing ring!
- Over 14 species of fungi live between your toes.
- Sweat is odourless; it’s the bacteria that make the smell.
- When you are born, you don’t get fingerprints until the third month. Your skin sheds 50,000 cells a minute.