Do you know? The hot summer is the best season to eat fruits and vegetables to nourish your skin. For example, eating lychees can drive away dull skin, eating cucumbers can detoxify and beautify, eating tomatoes can whiten and protect from the sun, eating kiwis can prevent aging... Let the fruit and vegetable therapy that satisfies your cravings and beautifies your skin help you thoroughly achieve perfect skin.
One, Lychee - Driving Away Dull Skin
Lychee has a sweet and sour taste, warm in nature, with the effects of replenishing the spleen, benefiting the liver, quenching thirst, and detoxifying diarrhea. Li Shizhen wrote in *Compendium of Materia Medica*: "Eating lychees regularly can replenish the brain and strengthen the body..." The *Dietary Spectrum of Suishenju* records: "Lychee is sweet, warm, fragrant, invigorates the spirit, enhances intelligence, fills essence, nourishes the heart, enriches the liver blood, is an excellent fruit, and fresh lychees are especially good."
Modern medicine believes that lychees contain vitamins A, B1, C, as well as pectin, free amino acids, proteins, and elements such as iron, phosphorus, and calcium. Modern medical research proves that lychees have the effects of replenishing the kidneys, improving liver function, accelerating toxin removal, promoting cell generation, making the skin delicate, and are ideal fruits for driving away dull skin during the hot summer.
Two, Cucumber - Accelerating Detoxification for Your Skin
Cucumber is also known as green melon, Hu melon, Wang melon, and prickly melon. It is the fruit of the cucumber plant from the gourd family, an annual climbing or trailing herbaceous plant with slender stems, longitudinal ridges, covered with short bristles, which was brought back by Zhang Qian during the Han Dynasty's mission to the Western Regions.
Cucumbers contain cucurbitacin, which can promote human metabolism and expel toxins; they also contain abundant vitamin C, which can whiten the skin and inhibit melanin formation... Cucumber flesh is crisp and tender, making it a rare food for detoxification and beauty. Eating cucumbers raw with the peel on can accelerate detoxification.
The cucumber peel contains more bitter substances, which are the nutritional essence of cucumbers. The nutritional advantages of cucumbers are mainly determined by the sweet, neutral nature of the cucumber peel, so they can clear heat and detoxify, generate fluids, quench thirst, especially detoxify, clean the intestines, and beautify the skin.
Therefore, eating cucumbers raw with the peel on not only has the above benefits but also allows for full absorption of vitamin C, promotes human metabolism, thus accelerating detoxification. However, when eating with the peel, make sure to wash it thoroughly with salt water. Since cucumbers contain high levels of vitamin C, it's best not to eat them raw with other vegetables to avoid reducing their nutritional content.
Additionally, cucumbers have the effect of lowering blood sugar, making them a great food for diabetics, functioning as both a vegetable and a fruit. However, people with weak spleen and stomach, abdominal pain, diarrhea, cold lungs, and cough should not eat too much.
Three, Tomato - Pure Natural Sunscreen for Your Skin
Tomato is also known as small golden melon, happy three yuan, tomato, foreign plum, golden tangerine, foreign tomato, and foreign eggplant. It is the new fruit of the tomato plant from the nightshade family.
It tastes sweet and sour, cool in nature, slightly cold. It can clear heat and quench thirst, nourish yin, cool the blood, and enter the liver, stomach, and lung meridians. It has the effects of generating fluids and quenching thirst, strengthening the stomach and aiding digestion, clearing heat and detoxifying, cooling the blood and calming the liver, replenishing blood and nourishing blood, and enhancing appetite; it can treat thirst and loss of appetite.
Tomatoes contain carotene and vitamins A and C, with the effects of removing freckles, beautifying, anti-aging, and skin care, treating fungal and infectious skin diseases. Niacin can maintain normal gastric juice secretion, promote red blood cell formation, beneficial for maintaining vascular wall elasticity and protecting the skin. Another study shows that tomato juice also has a certain effect on eliminating body odor.
In the hot summer, tomatoes are pure natural sunscreen. Because tomatoes are rich in the antioxidant lycopene, consuming 15 milligrams of lycopene daily can reduce the risk of sunburn by 40%.
Four, Kiwi - Eternal Youth Elixir for Beautiful Skin
Kiwi, also known as hairy peach, vine pear, white-haired peach, hairy pear, hairy pear, monkey pear, wood nut, hairy wood fruit, budong (folk name in Guizhou), starfruit, sheep peach, fox peach, kiwifruit, and sheep placenta.
Kiwi has a sweet and sour taste, cold in nature, with the effects of relieving fever, quenching thirst, promoting urination, and strengthening the stomach. Li Shizhen described the shape and color of kiwi in *Compendium of Materia Medica*: "Its shape is like a pear, its color like a peach, and monkeys like to eat it, hence all these names."
Kiwi has the effect of anti-aging. Tang Dynasty pharmacist Chen Zangqi introduced the efficacy of kiwi as regulating the middle energizer, descending qi, treating arthralgia, paralysis, long-term white hair. Modern medical research analysis shows that kiwi fruit contains sugars, proteins rich in amino acids, twelve kinds of proteases, vitamins B1, C, carotene, as well as calcium, phosphorus, iron, sodium, potassium, magnesium, chlorine, pigments, and various components. Its vitamin C content is five to six times that of equal amounts of citrus fruits.
Five, Chili - Regulating Your Endocrine for Beauty from Within
Chili, also called pepper, sea pepper, spicy seed, spicy corner, Qin pepper, etc., is a plant from the nightshade family.
Chili has a dry-hot nature, dispelling evil and cold, brightening eyesight and killing insects, warm but not fierce, entering the heart and spleen meridians.
Chili contains the highest amount of vitamin C among vegetables. Chili can promote hormone secretion and improve skin condition. Many people think eating spicy food causes pimples, but it's not actually chili's fault. Only those who are prone to acne will worsen their condition after eating chili.