Image: Thinkstock | Bananastock

It’s a code red! No, not for a patient, but for your skin and hair! Sometimes your schedule shifts into overdrive and the first thing that goes out the window is your instinct to pamper yourself. Here are some fast, healthy ideas to pump up your skin to a radiant glow and your hair to a glossy shine.

We all know by now that the right foods can help you maintain a healthy weight, keep your arteries unclogged and reduce inflammation. But antioxidant-rich foods also help you stay beautiful and keep your skin looking youthful. Hydrating, collagen-building foods aid the skin in remaining smooth and elastic, and also strengthen hair. Foods rich in carotenoids give skin a warm glow and keep the eyes healthy.

Emergency: Dry Skin
“I drink way too much coffee and the air in the hospital dries out my skin!”

Beauty Prescription: Hydrating Foods
Oats, rice, cucumbers, mangoes, asparagus and strawberries contain silica, a mineral that helps form collagen to keep skin elastic. Silica also strengthens hair and renders it less likely to break or split. Try my skin-friendly Mango Tapioca or my skin-strengthening Strawberry Tofu in my cookbook, FoodTrients: Age-Defying Recipes for a Sustainable Life. Both give a boost of vitamin C, one of 26 FoodTrients (powerful nutrients that promote health, wellness and longevity) featured in my recipes.

Omega-3 fatty acids, found in fish, flaxseeds and nuts, are excellent for retaining moisture in skin and hair. Omega-3 is another essential FoodTrient to add to your beauty diet, as it protects against sun damage and skin aging.

Emergency: Breakouts and Blotchy Skin
“After an 18-hour shift, I’m exhausted and it shows on my face!”

Beauty Prescription: Anti-Aging Snacks
Carrots, pumpkins, squash, kale, spinach, mangoes, papayas, sweet potatoes and jackfruit are examples of foods rich in beta-carotene and other carotenoids, which our bodies turn into vitamin A. This vitamin keeps blood circulating well, helps clear blemishes and keeps eyes and skin moist. My Sweet Potato and Jackfruit Delight recipe contains coconut milk, which helps hydrate the skin, while the sweet potatoes provide carotenoids, another age-defying FoodTrient.

A recent study, reported on in the Los Angeles Times, identified fruits and vegetables as a great beauty aid: “Fresh from the March issue of the journal PLOS ONE comes word that scarfing down a few extra fruits and vegetables—yes, those again—could give you a significant leg up in the attractiveness department.” The study, which involved university students in Scotland, showed that eating fruits and vegetables rich in carotenoids gave the test subjects’ skin a healthy glow.

That glow was measurable on scientific instruments (a spectrophotometer) and in the eyes of other students: “On average, a difference of about 2.9 servings of fruits and vegetables a day was enough for the students to discriminate on the basis of healthy appearance, with more servings associated with looking healthier. Similarly, about 3.3 servings a day was enough for them to discriminate on the basis of attractiveness—with more servings associated with better looks,” the Times noted.

Emergency: Nonexistent Beauty Regimen
“I don’t know one nurse who gets up extra early to massage three different creams into her face and neck before a shift.”

Beauty Prescription: Multitasking Skin Treatments
Some antioxidants—an important category of FoodTrients—can be used topically to treat skin and hair. Antioxidants can be absorbed directly through contact with skin, nails and hair. Skin creams have long added antioxidants to their formulas with new varieties coming on the market daily.

Lately I’m seeing skin creams with green tea and soy additives in addition to the classic retinoic acid, the active form of vitamin A. Vitamin E oil is still sold in pure form for smearing onto skin and painting directly onto nails. Virgin coconut oil has been gaining ground in beauty products and is used in exactly the same way as vitamin E oil. Eggs contain vitamin B and biotin, both of which are good for skin and hair and can be absorbed topically. Dr. Mark Rosenberg suggests applying olive oil to skin and hair for beauty benefits.

Irina Smirnoff, a Beverly Hills facialist and friend of mine, offered to share two of her grandmother’s recipes for healthy hair masks that I like to use:

• Hair Mask #1: Mix 2 eggs with 5 tablespoons of olive oil and apply to hair. Cover hair with a shower cap and let it soak for 1½ hours before washing the mixture out.
• Hair Mask #2: Combine 2 tablespoons of honey with 2 tablespoons of coconut oil (or almond oil). Massage mixture into the hair and scalp for serious hydration and shine. Allow it to sit under a shower cap for 15 minutes before washing it out.

Above all, for healthy skin, remember to wear sunscreen. But if you do get sunburned, slice open an aloe leaf and apply it directly to the burn. I have some growing outside my door right now.

Image: Thinkstock | Far Eastern Cookery

For nurses who are at high risk for chronic back pain and other injuries that result from tight, overstrained muscles, loading your diet full of anti-inflammatories on a daily basis is a MUST to keep yourself out of the hospital bed.

Anti-inflammatories keep your arteries young and less likely to clog, your skin from turning red or scaly and your nasal passages from becoming blocked.

As nurses, you know there are plenty of pharmaceutical anti-inflammatories like aspirin, acetaminophen and steroids (for example, hydrocortisone cream) that are designed to keep swelling down and reduce redness.

A high-impact profession like nursing can cause inflammation within the body such as bursitis and tendonitis. Over the course of your career, inflammation inside your body can be very damaging if it continues over many months or years. According to Dr. Oz, “Inflammation, a process meant to heal, can often become a danger; chronic inflammation causes heart attacks, stroke—and even cancer.”

From Dr. Nicholas Perricone’s book Forever Young, I learned that “the key to preventing accelerated aging and age-related diseases is controlling inflammation.” I look to food to help fight inflammation before I reach for the medicine cabinet—and of course I’m not the only one to do so. Noted Indian scientist Bharat B. Aggarwal, PhD, wrote in his book Healing Spices, “Oxidation and inflammation are the evil twins that cause many chronic diseases including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s, cancer and arthritis,” and he discusses ways that his country’s native spices help heal the body, like turmeric, ginger and cardamom.

Incorporating anti-inflammatories into your diet doesn’t have to be a chore for your taste buds. Try dressing up a dessert like an apple-pear tart with liberal amounts of cinnamon, an anti-inflammatory spice, or kick back after a long shift with a nonalcoholic mojito drink (because mint is also a wonderful way to reduce swelling). Many other foods have anti-inflammatory properties. Fish, soybeans and whole grains are laden with omega-3 fatty acids, which naturally reduce swelling and irritation inside our arteries. See the “Resveratrol Suppresses Inflammation” report to read details about how resveratrol, a “foodtrient” found in red wine(!), cranberries and grapes, reduces inflammation in the body, too.

Anti-inflammatory (and anti-aging!) foods and spices to try:

• turmeric
• garlic
• ginger
• chili pepper
• cilantro
• parsley
• mustard
• cinnamon
• mint

The best way to take care of your patients is to take care of yourself first. Start by nourishing your body with foods that can help you sustain you through your work and your life. The world will thank you for it! Be well, nurses!