Dry Skin

[wanderlust]

Hello there! I have only been a vegan for a matter of months. Recently I have noticed the skin on my elbows getting extremely dry and wondered if this could be caused by my diet. I know that it may sound an odd thing but I was just wondering if it was perhaps due to lack of fatty oils or anything?

[Erin Pavlina]

That's interesting as the first thing I noticed when I went vegan was that the skin on my elbows got soft and wonderful for the first time in my life! After 7 years it continues to be soft there.

So, I'm not sure what to say. Are you drinking enough water and getting enough high water veggies and fruits?

[VOW]

Did you change soaps, laundry detergents and/or body lotions when you became Vegan?

Typically, anything doing with the skin is related to external factors. INTERNAL factors also play a part, too, but the externals need to be examined first.



~VOW

[wanderlust]

That is interesting - thanks. I will try and see if I have used anything different over the past weeks! It is a rather odd thing!

[sophie]

I don't know if this will help... but my son had very dry skin on his face, but it really improved with daily doses of flaxseed oil. Nothing I put on the surface made any difference, so I guess it was a lack of fatty acids.

[Violin]

It could also be the weather. Whenever it changes, my skin takes its time to adjust. I have rosacea, so it will get both flaky and oily.

But I think that elbow skin can be treated easily with any one of the super-moisturizing lotions out there. Neutrogena has a good one that is non-greasy; but I understand from the PETA website that they still test on animals. So test a few brands in the drug store lotion aisle, write them down, and check them against the PETA site to see if they are cruelty-free.

[mabelkitty]

Originally posted by sophie
I don't know if this will help... but my son had very dry skin on his face, but it really improved with daily doses of flaxseed oil. Nothing I put on the surface made any difference, so I guess it was a lack of fatty acids.


I am newly vegan (vegetarian for almost 10 years), and so I've added flaxseed oil to my diet. And wouldn't you know... the skin on my elbows is no longer dry and flaky! So it would seem I was lacking in fatty acids, similar to Sophie's son. I had been cutting out eggs and dairy from my diet for a long time, so this may explain why my flaky elbows responded so well to the flaxseed oil even though I wasn't 100% vegan.