The Nutritional Aesthetics Alliance:
What excites you the most about The Nutritional Aesthetics Alliance?
Georgia Tetlow:
The Nutritional Aesthetics Alliance is an opportunity to collaborate with like-minded professionals so we can offer a powerfully integrative voice in the healthcare community. We bring holism and deeper understanding of health, through acknowledging nutrition, mind body medicine and integrative medicine. We offer that looking good on the outside can come from healthy living and thinking, not just skin deep solutions.
The NAA:
How has nutritional aesthetics (integrating nutrition and lifestyle changes with skincare and self-care) impacted your practice and/or work?
Georgia Tetlow:
Self-care is the center of my work as a physician, and our mission at Philadelphia Integrative Medicine is to “inspire your self-care”. Nutritional choices, and all our day to day and moment to moment choices impact our health, consciousness and attitude. These in turn act as the foundation for feeling whole and feeling good! Our skin is one level of our health and can be a source of feedback about our microbiome, how we’re handling stress, how we’re eating and our inner well being. The field of nutritional aesthetics is key to help us link our skin health with our general health, and show us how to feel and look great, from the inside out.
The NAA:
Complete the sentence: “For optimal skin health, I wish people would do more of ___________________, and less of ___________________.”
Georgia Tetlow:
For optimal skin health, I wish people would commit more to their most important health habit each month, rather than waiting for providers and services to bring peace and inner and outer beauty. Many don’t realize that diet, exercise, sleep, the air we breathe, quality and quantity of water we drink change us in quantum ways. How does this change occur? How do day to day and moment to moment choices actually change our body, thoughts and skin? The change occurs through gene expression. As a physician, I help patients on all levels, from the physiological and biochemical, including gene expression. One example of how lifestyle choices change genes is the consumption of antioxidant rich vegetables–the colorful ones. Eating 2-3 cups of these on a consistent basis preserves the telomeres (a fancy name for the tips or ends of our chromosomes), in that way preventing them from shortening. Shorter telomeres is equivalent to an older age. In my practice I identify the most important environmental and lifestyle habits that will facilitate their health goals, whether it’s increasing energy levels, looking and feeling younger, preventing cancer, or addressing autoimmune conditions including ones that affect our skin (like rosacea). Sometimes those colorful veggies can mean the difference between feeling good and falling ill, especially when it becomes a habit.
We want to hear from you!
Dr. Tetlow shares her belief that small, daily choices impact our body, thoughts and skin in major ways. What seemingly-small habits have had a significant impact on your own skin and wellbeing?