The connection between eating, aging and beauty- Mena Imasekha

Mena Imasekha is the founder of Omnutri, a nutrition and lifestyle company. She is quite popular for her talks in the healthy living industry.

Mena was one of the speakers at the Bel Fiore Wellness Series which held on Sunday June 19. Health Journo was there and noted some of her shared tips on improving your beauty, slow down the process of aging and understanding the connection between food beauty and aging. 

EAT MORE RAW FOOD

Raw foods have more energy and more nutrients. If you cook foods, they tend to lose nutrient value. So, if you’re eating a lot of salads, a lot of fresh fruits, you’ll get maximum benefits. Lots of seeds as well, like Avocado.

FRUITS AND VEGS

You need to eat some carbs, proteins and vegetables, those are the building blocks that your body needs.  Your brain needs carbs for energy and proteins are great for your muscle cells but where you would get the maximum benefits if you’re looking at beautifying yourself  would be from fruits and vegetables because they have antioxidants in them and they prevent against  free radicals which help you age faster. They also provide many nutrients.

Especially green leafy vegetables like pumpkin leaves, kale or spinach, all these things. They have fighting chemicals which can help detoxify your body, they chlorophyll in them. Chrolophyll helps to detoxify the body. Chlorophyll rich foods are also healthy in their own right and contain essential vitamins and nutrients needed for cardiovascular, muscular, and neural health. Consume foods containing chlorophyll or take a dietary supplement for best effect.

They also help to get rid of heavy metals or chemicals. Even though you don’t exactly eat chemicals directly, they find their way into the body from food and water.

If you are one of those people who don’t really like to eat fruits and vegetables, you can have a juice juice.

CUT OUT PROCESSED FOODS

That’s basically saying that sugar is a toxin in your body especially at a high level. If you’re eating a lot of sweets, you’re damaging your skin because sugar binds the collagen and makes it rigid.  Collagen is supposed to be soft and supple. That’s where you get that nice, fleshy, fluffy, lovely skin; when your collagen is all pumped and hydrated.  If you’re eating sugar, it binds to the collagen, it makes it stiff. Sugar also makes you irritable as well. There are other toxins in processed foods and one of them is excess salt, additives and preservatives. 

What happens with additives and preservatives is that you don’t eliminate a lot of them. They get stored in your fat cells and if your fat cells are full, your body creates more fat cells because it doesn’t know what to do with the chemical and up until your fat cells are being processed for energy, they are inert, inactive and your body stores a lot of stuff in there. 

SUPER FOODS

Super foods are awesome because they have a lot of nutrients in them, in such small quantities, which is why they are called super foods. This is really important if you want to improve your aging process, your skin, hair and nails. I think that the best super foods are the green powders. So, Moringa, Goji Berries, Maca powder and Wheatgrass powder is great.

SUPPLEMENTS

People believe that if you’re eating a balanced diet, you shouldn’t really  use supplements.

Sometimes if you are in a stressful environment like Nigeria, a good idea to have supplements like basic vitamins or specific things like Omega 3 or if you want to go really complex, you can get one of the anti-aging pills, like Resveratrol which is an anti-aging chemical found in grapes. This is why many people go for wine because it protects the heart and it does help you age well. It’s better to take raw supplements which have no preservatives in them.