Tune In: I'm A Lifestyle Dermatologist & Here's My Best Advice For Glowing, Clear Skin

"Health is wealth. Without your health, you can't do anything. And it's a job to stay healthy. That's why you need a team and partnerships to help you," says board-certified dermatologist Naana Boakye, M.D. Boakye considers herself a lifestyle derm, which means she focuses on nutrition, mental health, and day-to-day choices—not just topicals or prescriptions. "Radiant skin is a lifestyle." 

In this episode of Clean Beauty School, I spoke with Boakye about why it's so important to find a skin care pro (or team of them!) you trust—plus all the lifestyle habits she tells patients to adopt for clearer, more youthful-looking skin.

Stress is a huge contributor to acne if you're genetically predisposed to it—consider it public enemy No. 1. (This is thanks to the hormonal reaction stress triggers—you can read about stress's effect on skin and acne here.)

"If you don't manage your stress levels, then you're always gonna have some form of acne. And acne is a spectrum—these breakouts could be whiteheads, blackheads, cysts, and everything in between," she says. "So it's really key to manage stress levels—and managing stress levels also helps with other skin conditions too."

"It's important that the skin barrier stays healthy too. When the barrier is disrupted, then it becomes more inflamed, and that exacerbates the acne," she says. "And a lot of our acne medications are irritating. So it can be complicated to balance the two." 

One of the best ways you can support your gut microbiome (and therefore your skin health—the gut and skin1 are deeply intertwined) is to eat a wide variety of plants, notes Boakye. To do so, she actually practices the 30-plant challenge weekly, where you eat 30 different plants every week.