A dietitian with eczema shares the 3 simple ways she lowers inflammation for clearer skin — without restrictive eating

Before she became a dietitian, Rakhi Roy Chowdhury wanted to be an actor.

Her eczema flare-ups got in the way. “It was pretty much a geographic patchy map of eczema that was all over my body,” Chowdhury, 36, told Business Insider.

She felt the red blotches she got on her face, hands, chest, back, elbows, and behind her knees made it difficult to go on auditions for TV and film roles.

Chowdhury has dealt with eczema since she was about six months old.

She said her breakouts were so bad that, when she was 10, her parents even relocated their family from New York City to Florida on a doctor’s recommendation, who told them the latter location had fewer environmental pollutants and dry winter weather that could trigger symptoms.

Chowdhury felt better, but still dealt with flare-ups, trying topical skincare products such as steroid creams.

She started experiencing side effects when she went off them. “My skin was thinning,” she said. “I almost looked like a burn patient.” In her early 20s, she saw a dietitian on her allergist’s recommendation — a solution considered more “outside the box” back then, she said.

Chowdhury was advised to eliminate potential inflammatory triggers, such as ultra-processed foods, and to diversify her diet overall with more fruits, vegetables, grains, and healthy fats.

She said that within about six weeks, she noticed significant improvement.

While she still experiences flare-ups from triggers like dust, pollen, and cat dander, she said cutting down her inflammation greatly cleared her skin.

The experience motivated Chowdhury to switch career paths and become a registered dietitian, now focusing on gut health and anti-inflammatory foods.

She shared the three dietary habits she follows to reduce inflammation — without feeling too restricted.

When she first started changing her diet, Chowdhury felt the biggest improvement after increasing the variety of plants she ate.

Now, she understands that eating a wider range of plant foods can support a more diverse gut microbiome.

That diversity helps maintain the intestinal lining and produce compounds that support the immune system, which may help reduce chronic inflammation.

She aims to eat 30 grams of fiber a day, which also supports gut health.

An easy way to reach her goal is to snack on fruits, she said, such as kiwis, which have even more fiber when eaten with their skins on.

In the morning, she usually has oats, switching out the fruits she tops it with — sometimes raspberries, sometimes blueberries.

She also pairs it with a protein source such as eggs or Greek yogurt.

For lunch, she loves bean soup, even in the summer, which makes it easy to pack a variety of beans.

She’ll top it with avocado, a rich source of both fiber and healthy fat.

Including more fiber and plant diversity is also the advice she gives her patients when they’re first starting to address their diets.

Often, “they actually do see an improvement without doing a lot of these crazy diets that exist now,” she said, such as extreme elimination diets.

For dinner, Chowdhury keeps it pretty simple if she cooks at home: “I’m always having some kind of a protein with rice and then some variety of sheet pan veggies that I can pop into the oven.” When cooking for herself, it’s easier to avoid using ultraprocessed ingredients like sugar, sodium, and saturated fat that can lead to inflammation.

If she’s in a pinch, she looks for to-go meals with fewer processed ingredients.

She likes Kevin’s Meals (she no affiliation with the brand), which don’t use as many heavy artificial preservatives or highly processed stabilizers.

With most of her patients, Chowdhury usually starts by suggesting they cut back on alcohol and ultraprocessed foods, which are inflammatory triggers.

However, she doesn’t necessarily believe you need to cut them out entirely.

Personally, she follows the 80/20 rule, in which roughly 20% of the time, she lets herself have alcohol and sweets. “The majority of the time, I am not having ultraprocessed foods or alcohol, but I think there’s also a balance in when you’re out to eat with friends and family, especially if there are weddings,” she said. “I think that is absolutely okay to have in moderation.”