Acne, breakouts, rosacea, sun damage and premature aging caused by sun exposure – are any of these issues keeping your skin from living its best life? Well here’s some good news – many common skin issues can be dramatically alleviated using natural skin care products made with probiotics. Here’s why.

Our skin is not only a series of deep, middle and upper layers (with dead skin cells laying on top) it’s actually a complex and highly individual microsystem of cells, microbes and friendly bacteria (also called “flora”). This biological wonder is called the skin’s microbiome.

If you’ve been hearing or reading anything of late about “gut health”, you may already be familiar with the idea that your internal microbiome can really improve with the addition of friendly bacteria to your diet. Adding topical probiotics does the exact same thing for your skin’s microbiome.

Meet your microbiome 

Seed.com (one of my favorite places to read about the human microbiome) breaks it down like this – 

“There’s a community of 38,000,000,000,000 (that’s 38 trillion) microorganisms, mostly bacteria, living in and on your body. The majority of them reside in your gastrointestinal tract, but many others live in diverse places like your mouth, your skin, and your armpits. They represent 50% of you by cell count. Collectively, the genes harbored in these trillions of microbial cells constitute your microbiome.”

So how do we best care for this natural wonder?

Go easy

Any product used on the skin that kills off our naturally occurring friendly bacteria (think anything that foams, lathers or contains alcohol or any kind of scrubby bits), puts your skin in the position of frantically trying to rebuild friendly flora that gets killed off using products like these on your skin.

Your skin care routine may, literally, be putting your skin into a state of chronic fatigue.

The chronic stress of trying to rebuild this lost flora diverts cellular energy away from defending and repairing the skin and puts your skin in the position of constantly playing catch up. Which as we all well know is freaking exhausting.

Combine these foaming soaps and cleansers with products that contain ingredients like retinol or alpha hydroxy acids and things just got a whole lot worse. 

Healthy boundaries

To top it all off – most people are not giving their skin the hydration and moisture it needs which leads to impaired skin barrier function. 

Think of it this way – your skin cells overlap each other very much like fish scales. When your skin’s barrier function is healthy, those cells lock down evenly over each other and do two things –

1. Keep water in your skin from evaporating

2. Keep harmful bacteria from invading

When that barrier function is comprised we start to see things like chronic redness and irritation, uncontrollable breakouts, fine lines and flakiness.

Here’s your takeaway

Adding topical probiotics to your skin care routine helps rebuild flora that has been lost which means your skin can get back on the road to healthy vibrancy. 

Switching to gentle, non-foaming cleansers with clean ingredients helps rebuild your microbiome and protect your skin’s barrier function, which will, in time, also calm redness and breakouts and create a healthy glow.

Giving your skin a break from disruptive products like Retin-A gets your skin back on the road to healthier barrier function.

We can help

Got questions? We’re here for you. Reach out any old time.

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