The health and appearance of your skin is a major indicator of what else you have going on in your body. Maintaining great skin relies on maintaining a great diet, a healthy gut and regularly getting a good night’s rest(1)(2). Stress, hormone imbalances and exposure to harmful chemicals can also play a role in skin conditions.

Skincare from the inside out

The first step towards healthy skin is to review your diet and what’s going on inside your body. Gut health in particular is linked with skin issues such as acne and eczema, with recent studies showing that probiotics can help improve chronic inflammatory skin diseases(3).

“Overall, probiotics modulate the development of the immune system, often shifting the immune response toward regulatory and anti-inflammatory conditions. This ability of probiotics to modify chronic inflammatory states suggests that probiotics may have a role in treating chronic inflammatory conditions, ranging from inflammatory bowel disease to reactive airway disease to acne, rosacea, atopic dermatitis, and photoaging” (Benyacoub et al., 2014; Bowe, 2013).

Removing inflammatory foods, food additives and harmful chemicals from your diet will give you the best environment for resolving skin issues. This is because inflammation in the gut is thought to be linked with skin flare-ups via the gut-brain-skin axis(4).

There are two components of gut health to focus on, the gut flora or community of microbes living in your gut (think probiotics), and the permeability of the intestinal wall.

Skincare from the outside in

What you put on your body is just as important as what you put in your body. Like the gut, the skin also has its own microbiome, a diverse ecosystem of microbes living on your skin. Harsh soaps and synthetic skincare products can disrupt the balance of your skin microbiome, so wherever possible choose high quality, skin-friendly products. Ideally your skincare regime will not contain any preservatives, triclosan, phthalates, parabens or sulfates. (These potentially harmful chemicals have been linked with health issues including certain cancers(5)).

When selecting products for your skin, the ingredients are what matters most. The focus on quality, natural ingredients is one of the main reasons we chose to work with Alitura. We believe that Alitura make the most well thought out, nutrient-dense, and highly effective skin care products on the market.

Top tips for great skin:

  • Eat a nutrient-dense, whole foods diet 
  • Choose spray-free/organic vegetables and fruits 
  • Avoid inflammatory foods (commonly gluten, dairy, grains, soy products)
  • Consider taking a probiotic to aid the gut and immune system
  • Regularly get a good night’s rest 
  • Use natural, biome-friendly skin care products

References

1. Does poor sleep quality affect skin ageing?

2. Can poor sleep affect skin integrity?

3. The effect of probiotics on immune regulation, acne, and photoaging

4. Acne vulgaris, probiotics and the gut-brain-skin axis

5. Chemical Exposures: The Ugly Side of Beauty Products