"The food you eat can be either the safest most powerful medicine or the slowest form of poison" - Ann Wigmore

The food that you put into your body is more than just a source of fuel, or a form of enjoyment. The eggs you eat in the morning are making your hair and nails grow stronger. On the other hand, the fast food you have for lunch maybe be causing your unwanted breakouts, and the coffee you drink can be the reason for yellowing teeth.

Ann Wigmore, the raw food activist, knew that the food you consume has the power to make you or break you. Problems like thinning hair and bloating can be solved by taking a closer look at your diet. Health and beauty go hand in hand. Your outer beauty is a reflection of the internal work your body is doing. Here are some common beauty struggles and their food related causes and solutions.

Brittle and Thinning Hair:

Have you ever genuinely thought you were going bald? I definitely have. For a long time I was noticing that my hair was thinning. At the time I was eating a mostly plant based vegan diet, but I was not regulating the amount of protein I was consuming. When my doctor told me that my iron was low it all made sense!

What was happening was that my body wasn't getting the iron that it needed so it stops producing enough hemoglobin in my blood. Hemoglobin carries oxygen in the blood - growing and repairing cells, the same cells that promote hair growth.

The quickest way to raise your iron levels (through food) is eating animal protein like chicken, meat, fish, and eggs. You can also get iron through eating beans, nuts, and leafy greens (for a meatless option), but you need to make sure that you're eating enough of it. If you think you might have an iron deficiency your doctor can easily verify this through a blood test.

Bloating:

I really can't imagine a greater discomfort than bloating; It's the equivilant of someone sitting on your stomach. But bloating is not confined to the stomach area, it can pretty much happen anywhere; from your under eye bags to the occasional puffy face.

A common reason you might be experiencing this eating a salt heavy diet. Have you ever eaten too many chips and your lips start to feel swollen? That is the effect of salt pulling water out of your cells and into your tissues making your lips bloated and dehydrated.

Processed foods have the same effect on our bodies because of the high percentage of sodium (yes it is the same thing as salt!). Other common bloating causes can be too much acid, like from tomatoes and oranges, and some dairy products can cause inflammation.

Although, if you're anything like me, you might still experience bloating, even when eating a low sodium diet. After years of trial and error tests with my diet I found that my sporadic bloating was due to a sensitivity to gluten (wheat products). Before I knew this, some foods that almost instantly helped reduce bloating were honeydew and melon.

These fruits are full of water and help hydrate and reduce bloating. Remember that everybody's body is different and crave different nutrients to support our personal health and beauty.