The stage of the slow tissues

RDr. Raj Dhadwal on the slow tissues

By the eighth month, the fast parts of the body stopped being the story a long time ago. Blood vitamin C settled within the first box. The outer layer of the skin has renewed itself many times over. What is left to talk about are the tissues that work on a slower clock.

Two of them matter for this stage. The first is the dermis, the deeper layer of skin under the surface you see. It is where collagen lives, and collagen is the protein that gives skin its firmness and its ability to spring back. The second is the nail, which is less glamorous but far more useful to a doctor, because it grows at a pace you can measure with a ruler.

What sets these tissues apart is that they keep a record. A blood test tells you about the last few weeks. A nail tells you about the last several months, laid down one millimetre at a time. Skin structure reflects years of sun, sleep, age, hormones and food, all at once. Neither will ever give you a clean before and after for one food, and I would be suspicious of anyone who claimed otherwise.

Two lines on the label matter most for this stage. One is 201 mg of vitamin C per pouch, 223% NRV. The other is the oil from the seed and pulp, which carries omega 3, 6, 7 and 9, including the omega 6 that comes up below. The rest of the label, 190+ naturally occurring compounds and 0 g sugar, has not changed since the first morning, 240 mornings ago.

Why skin cares about vitamin C

RDr. Raj Dhadwal on collagen and the deeper skin

General nutrition science, not a sea buckthorn study. A review from the University of Otago in New Zealand sets out what vitamin C does in skin.¹ Normal skin holds high concentrations of it, both in the outer layer and in the dermis underneath. The cells that build collagen need vitamin C to do the job, because it is required by the enzymes that finish and stabilise the collagen molecule. Vitamin C also takes part in the skin's own antioxidant defence against UV light.

That is the reason vitamin C comes up in every serious conversation about skin, and it is why I wanted this stage of the series to sit with it for a while. Collagen is not made once and kept forever. It is laid down and broken down continuously, slowly, over months and years. A daily food that carries vitamin C is a steady input into that slow process, not a switch.

The same review is honest about the gap, and I want to be just as honest. It notes that whether vitamin C from food helps skin more than vitamin C applied to the skin, and by how much, is still poorly understood, and that more research is needed. Skin gets its vitamin C from the blood supply, and how much reaches the outer layers from the diet has not been mapped in the way you would hope. Both halves of that belong in this article. The mechanism is well established. The size of the effect from eating more is not.

What 4,025 women's skin showed

RDr. Raj Dhadwal on the population evidence

General nutrition science, not a sea buckthorn study. The most useful human data for this stage comes from the first US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.² Researchers looked at 4,025 women aged 40 to 74 whose skin had been examined by dermatologists, and compared how it was rated with what they reported eating.

Women with higher vitamin C intake were less likely to have a wrinkled appearance, with an odds ratio of 0.89, and less likely to have the dryness that comes with age, with an odds ratio of 0.93. An odds ratio below 1.0 means the outcome was less common in the group that ate more of that nutrient. Higher intake of linoleic acid, an omega 6 fat, was associated with lower odds of dryness, 0.75, and of skin thinning, 0.78.

The researchers adjusted for age, sun exposure, menopausal status, body mass index, physical activity and total energy intake, and the associations held. That matters, because women who eat more fruit and vegetables also tend to differ in other ways, and those adjustments remove some of that noise.

Diet is one input into skin among many. It is also the one you choose again every morning.

Dr. Raj Dhadwal

Now the limits. The differences are modest. Diet was measured with a single 24-hour recall, a snapshot of one day, not eight months. And the study is observational, so it shows that women who ate more of these nutrients tended to have better-rated skin. It does not show that adding a food changes skin. I would read it as a reason the pairing of vitamin C and omega fats makes sense, not as a forecast.

The nail record

RDr. Raj Dhadwal on the tissue you can measure

General nutrition science, not a sea buckthorn study. Nails are useful precisely because they are slow and steady. In a University of North Carolina study, healthy young adults marked their nails and measured the growth one to three months later.³ Fingernails grew an average of 3.47 mm a month and toenails 1.62 mm a month.

Multiply that out and eight months is close to 28 mm of fingernail and about 13 mm of toenail. For most people, that means the fingernail you look at today was made, from the base to the tip, entirely during the habit. Toenails are slower, and take much longer to replace fully.

Two cautions. The participants were young adults, and the study saw a trend, though not a statistically significant one, toward faster growth at younger ages, so nails after 40 may grow more slowly. And no study has measured nails on sea buckthorn. The nail is not proof of anything here. It is a clock. It tells you how long the diet behind it has had to show up.

Movement and the slow tissues

JJade on pairing the pouch with recovery

Dr. Raj just spent a few sections on the tissues that change slowly. Movement works on the same timescale. Nobody becomes more mobile in a week. You get there by doing a small thing most days for months, which is exactly the shape of a daily pouch. So by month eight, my suggestion is to stop treating the pouch as its own task and fold it into how you move and recover.

The simplest pairing I know is my ten-minute fascia release. Fascia is the connective tissue that wraps around and through your muscles, and a short daily release routine, done slowly with your breath, is one of the easiest ways I know to start the day feeling less stiff. Ten minutes is short enough that you will actually do it. Here is how I would stack it:

• Take the pouch out of the fridge first thing and put it beside your mat, so it is cold and ready when you finish.
• Do the ten minutes. Move slowly, keep the pressure comfortable, and never push through sharp pain.
• Finish with the pouch and a full glass of water. The routine ends the same way every day, which is what makes it stick.

The release gives the pouch a fixed place in your morning, and the pouch gives the release a clear finish line. Neither one has to rely on willpower.

Walks, the recovery most people skip

JJade on walking as the base of everything

Most people think of recovery as something you do after hard training. I think of it as the base the training sits on, and the base is walking. My daily walks guide sets it out, but the short version is that an easy walk most days, at a pace where you can still talk, does more for how your body feels over a year than any single hard session.

By month eight the walk can carry the pouch with it. A few ways I suggest:

• The walk-out pouch. Put a pouch in your jacket pocket. Take it at the turnaround point, then walk home. You come back with it done.
• The rest-day anchor. On days without training, the walk becomes the anchor for the pouch, so the habit never depends on a workout happening.
• The evening reset. If mornings are crowded, move both to the evening. A walk after dinner and a cold pouch when you get home is just as good a routine.

Whatever you choose, keep it boring. A routine that looks the same every day is easier to keep through month nine, ten and eleven than one you have to think about.

Recovery is not what you do after training. It is the base the training sits on, and the base is a walk.

Jade

Four ways to fit it around training

JJade on food for before and after you move

Part 1 already covered the pouch straight after a session, so these four go somewhere else: into the snacks and meals that sit around training. None of them appear earlier in the series, and none of them heat the puree.

2. Stirred into coconut water

Pour the pouch into a glass of cold coconut water and stir until the orange runs all the way through. The light sweetness of the coconut water meets the tartness halfway, and it makes a long, easy drink for a hot day or the end of a walk. Over ice it is even better.

3. A finishing drizzle for grilled fish

Grill salmon, trout or a white fish the way you normally would and let it rest on the plate for a few minutes. Then, at the table, squeeze the pouch straight over it and scatter torn herbs and a little flaky salt. The puree never goes on the grill or in the pan. It does the job a wedge of lemon would, with more colour, and it turns a plain recovery dinner into something you would serve to guests.

4. Over a cold rice pudding

Rice pudding made the day before and kept in the fridge is one of the simplest snacks to have ready after a long walk or a hard session. Spoon it into a glass cold and squeeze the pouch over the top. The soft, sweet rice and the sharp berry balance each other well, and because the pudding was cooked a day earlier, the puree only ever meets it cold.

Looking for the basics? Part 1 of this series covers the eight everyday ways, and none of them are repeated here.

What to look for, slowly

RDr. Raj Dhadwal on judging slow tissues fairly

If anything at this stage is visible, it is likely to be slow and easy to miss. Nails that have grown out entirely during the habit are the clearest marker, simply because of the timing. Some people describe their skin as feeling less dry through a second change of season. Both are reasonable things to look for, given the research above.

None of them has been measured for the puree, and diet is one input among sleep, sun, age, hormones, medication and everything else on the plate. If you want a fair way to judge month eight, compare it with the same season last year rather than with last week. Slow tissues need a slow comparison.

What no study has measured

RDr. Raj Dhadwal on the gaps in the evidence

• No sea buckthorn trial in people ran eight months, and none measured skin structure or nails.
• The skin study is observational and used a one-day food recall. It shows that women who ate more vitamin C and linoleic acid tended to have better-rated skin, not that adding a food changes skin.
• The vitamin C review states plainly that how much dietary vitamin C changes skin is poorly understood.
• The nail growth rates come from young adults, so nails over 40 may grow more slowly.

Questions about skin, nails and training

Previous and next in the series

Previous, part 3: what happens after 6 months of daily sea buckthorn

Next, part 5: what happens after 1 year of daily sea buckthorn

A note from both of us. Sea buckthorn is a food, not a medicine, and nothing in this article is medical advice. If you are pregnant, nursing, taking medication or managing a health condition, talk to your doctor before changing your diet. If any movement causes pain, stop and get it checked.