No matter how well you look after your skin with moisturisers, sunscreen and lotions and potions, there is no substitute for making your diet your first line of defence.

So how many of these are already part of your daily diet?

1. Apricots this fruit is full of carotenoids, some of the most powerful antioxidants known, and that really helps your skin look more youthful as they regenerate our body fluids. More fluid means plumper, more dewy looking skin.

2. Powerfoods may sound like a marketing dream, but kale, spinach and blueberries have anthocyanins and lower certain cancer risks. They also improve memory function, and staying sharp is definitely on the list of how to seem younger.

3. Organic olive oil is packed with omega-3 fatty acids which prevent cell destruction, but keep the temperature low if using in cooking so you don’t destroy those great ingredients. The best diet for weight loss is the Mediterranean Diet and olive oil is key in that so as well as helping you look younger it could ensure you lose a few pounds too.

4. Salmon, particularly wild salmon, can give you a huge antioxidant boost. The salmon feed off nutrient-rich krill, which makes it also anti-inflammatory, plus the mineral selenium to protect your healthy skin cells.

5. Organic tomatoes keep your skin healthy and build strong bones, so helping protect from osteoporosis, which is a major killer at menopause. Tomatoes are high in lycopene and that protects your skin from too much UV sun exposure, and there is nothing more damaging to your skin. They are also high in vitamin A, so can also protect from age-related vision problems.

6. Almonds when raw are packed with hard-to-get vitamin E, and just one handful gets you half your daily needs. Researchers from several leading medical schools verified the health benefits for people over age 65. Almonds help neutralize free radicals, balance your central nervous system and defy the aging process.

7. Avocado is a brilliant source of Omega 3, and needed to counter the increase of Omega 6 in our diets. Avocado is the top alkalizing food and can increase longevity.

8. Cruciferous vegetables such as cauliflower, kale, broccoli and cabbage have been recommended since the Romans for the treatment of health conditions such as cancer. Staying healthy is key to anti-ageing and these vegetables protect us from the many chemicals now in foods from food dyes to bleached white foods, pesticides to herbicides. The gut needs these vegetable to keep our reproductive system, and our lungs, healthy and a clean gut is seen in a clear complexion with a dewy glow, and what is more youthful than that?

9. Water is such an obvious tool for health and vitality, and yet we so often overlook it. One of the benefits of drinking water is softer, moister skin so if you are not drinking enough you will soon see the signs which are dryness, tightness and flakiness. Dry skin has less resilience and is more prone to wrinkling so water is essential to maintain skin moisture and is the vehicle for delivering essential nutrients to the skin cells.

10. Hormone balance plays a part in anti-ageing too as progesterone helps with ‘brain freeze’, and is the hormone behind your sex drive, as well as promoting weight loss at menopause. For the majority of women restoring progesterone levels is sufficient to deal with most menopause symptoms, but if you are also low in oestrogen you can find that vaginal dryness is also an issue. In that case a combined cream with both progesterone and oestrogen might be the answer.