This time of year always brings with it some very harsh reminders that winter time requires a little more effort to stay healthy and well. In many areas, winter means drier, colder, harsher air and this can cause a variety of skin issues.

What a lot of people don’t notice, though, is that digestive trouble and skin irritation often appear at the same time.

Diseases, such as Fifth disease and medications, such as antibiotics, can wreak havoc on your tummy and skin at the same time. Those are pretty easy-to-spot symptoms of the same problem, though.

What about if you notice just sporadic problems with your skin, or your stomach and bowel upset are just occasional?

It seems like it would be a real hassle to have to track everything you put in your mouth, but being able to eliminate some skin issues and at the same time regulate your digestion makes it more worthwhile .

Keeping a food diary helps to highlight not just what is actually being eaten (a very effective tool if you are trying to lose weight, anyway), but also makes finding irritation relationships a lot easier to spot.

Jotting down what you eat isn’t the whole task though. Whenever you notice that your skin is doing something odd or out the ordinary, write down what is happening, and also the time and date. The same goes for digestion problems. Make a note of the time and date you had diarrhea, for example.

Then, after a couple of weeks you should be able to start to string together a timeline of events that leads up to the different problems you experience.

Once you identify the ‘bad guys’ in your diet, you can make changes to replace the offending foods with something more peacefully tolerated.

Items known to cause skin and digestion upset (this is just a partial list…these are the top offenders):

Dairy
Soy
Wheat
Corn
Foods with added Vitamin C
Eggs

While many diet adjustments call for some of these foods to be ADDED, it should be done with caution, and always keep that diary nearby so you can see if any of these foods are causing problems for you.

For instance, soy in and of itself isn’t a terrible thing. It’s generally considered a staple in the diet of many cultures which have better overall health than Westerners. However, when we start tinkering with it and modifying it or otherwise changing the intended use of it, we can wind up with frustrating symptoms.

If soy is your problem food, be warned…it is in almost every packaged food known to man. It is also in milk, meat, and eggs of animals that have eaten it in feed. There are a great many people who have taken to raising their own poultry and other animal food sources so they can carefully control the amount of soy they digest, but this is kind of a drastic measure.

Wheat and wheat gluten are also on the top of the list because of the rising number of people identified with celiac disease. Sometimes a simple food intolerance to wheat causes skin, stomach, bowel, behavior and vision problems, so it’s good to monitor what you are eating here.

The good news is that if you find in your journaling that your skin and tummy trouble is linked to wheat gluten, you may be finding really delicious alternatives to old favorites. The last estimates of the gluten-free food industry pegged its 2010 growth as over a billion US dollars.

So keep that journal and make some adjustments. It’s a temporary blip in the road but once you get past identifying what offends your system, you can begin to experiment with food that heals as well as satisfies your taste buds.

For more information on finding healthy foods and lifestyle changes, try my Cholesterol or Acid Reflux guides today.

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