If you’re struggling with acne or inflammation like eczema, it’s time to treat these skin problems as a symptom, not a condition. Stomach inflammation, chronic body inflammation, gut imbalances, and oxidative stress (which is essentially free radical damage) are all huge contributors to skin problems. The skin microbiome is also a complex part of your body that you probably have not heard about. Even if you don’t struggle with chronic skin symptoms, there are ways that you can take care of your skin to keep your microbiome in balance. Let’s dive into this bacteria ecosystem and talk about ways to help your skin.
The Skin Microbiome
The skin has a very special environment for good bacteria to thrive while warding off bad bacteria and other pathogens. In the world we live in, it is very easy for the skin microbiome to become imbalanced and overrun with bad bacteria as well as inflammatory responses that cause the tough situation to become worse. The food we consume can also wreak havoc on the skin microbiome. Trying to find the balance in the skin after toxin overload, hormonal chaos, and inflammatory response can be more than just eating some carrots and drinking a glass of water.
Eating right will help keep your gut happy & ultimately your skin happy. Hydrating is an essential part of preventing acne or keeping your skin happy. Drinking water, lots of water, will help get rid of dead skin cells, transport antimicrobial proteins to the skin’s surface so that they can keep acne-causing bacteria in check, and keep the environment moist so that it can heal. Eating mineral-rich foods like dark leafy greens (spinach & kale), pumpkin seeds, avocados, and cacao. Don’t love eating pounds of spinach and kale? Drink them instead! Our cold-pressed juices are designed to deliver the minerals and nutrients you need in a convenient USDA-certified organic bottle.
Watching what you put on your skin is another way to lessen the absorption of chemicals that could lead to inflammation and trigger health problems. Take deodorant for example. A guest on our BeOrganic Podcast, Skyler Stein, talked about the harmful properties in traditional deodorant and antiperspirants.
“There are specific bacteria in armpits that cause body odor. When we use antiperspirants we are killing all of the bacteria in our armpits, all of the good and the bad. So we are completely burning down the forest every day that we use it.” -Skyler Stein
With deodorant, Skyler argues that not only is the bad bacteria being killed but the good along with it. When you go a few days without deodorant, that skin environment is more imbalanced than ever before, causing more odor, and then come full circle to you needing to apply deodorant once again (and maybe more throughout the day). It’s a feedback loop of the stinkiest kind.
ENDOLYSINS
Endolysins are superheroes when it comes to policing bad bacteria and creating more of the good in the skin microbiome. Skyler Stein, a recent BeOrganic Podcast guest, works with endolysin technology with his product Gladskin that essentially creates a healthy environment for the skin microbiome to flourish without the help of steroids, sulfates, alcohol, fragrance, parabens, or preservatives. Traditional skin treatments contain harsh chemicals and steroids that often strip your skin and don’t give it the chance to heal itself.
Endolysins have the unique ability to break through foreign pathogen cell walls and represent alternatives to conventional antibiotics. They also have something called “host specificity” meaning that they can effectively target the pathogen causing distress in your body, so they work more focused without the contraindications that some antibiotics can have. Even better yet, endolysins are naturally occurring all over the globe – experts are just now learning how to use endolysin technologies. Pretty cool right? If you like science, here’s a link on endolysins’ efficacy in treating Staph infections. These endolysins are powerful healing agents for skin conditions that extend beyond acne and have been particularly useful in healing eczema.
Want to learn more about the skin microbiome and Endolysins? Check out our BeOrganic podcast episode with Skyler Stein here!