WHEN BACTERIA ARE GOOD FOR YOUR SKIN
Brands are looking to probiotics to give you healthy and youthful skin. PEARLYN THAM finds out why
IF PROBIOTICS HAVE been sounding more hipster recently, they have kefir and kombucha to thank for elevating them from their association with human elements of a rather less savoury nature.
The interesting thing is, most of us have been consuming probiotics all this while – across dietary cultures at that. What is commonly known as friendly good-gut bacteria is actually found in many dishes, from Cheddar cheese to kimchi and from miso to pickled cucumbers – and, of course, the mother of all probiotics, yogurt.
But what do probiotics do exactly? A lot, it seems. They can restore gut health (by balancing the ratio of “good” bacteria with bad), improve digestion, prevent diarrhoea, keep your heart healthy – and keep away those dreaded yeast and urinary tract infections.
In the Google sphere, denizens trade tips on making DIY yogurt masks for sensitive, acne-prone, eczema-inflicted skin. Why? Because if probiotics can fight inflammation in your gut, the, ahem, gut instinct is they can fight inflammation of your skin. Inflammation is associated with all the allergies and other nasties that pop up from time to time.
But it’s not an exactly sensorial experience to apply yogurt to one’s face. It’s messy, it doesn’t absorb and, ugh, it makes you smell like milk gone bad. This is why some beauty brands have leveraged the popularity of probiotics and launched products and lines that supposedly contain some form of good bacteria. A few have even gone all the way by building their brands and products solely or largely around the idea of applying friendly bacteria to problem skin.
Take, for instance, Gallinée, a brand launched in London in
2016 by French pharmacist Marie Drago. The team is so serious about probiotics it even offers something known as The Happy Bacteria
Set (a trio of bestsellers) in the product line-up. There are just six key products for now, with a serum slated to come on board this month.
Drago herself struggled with an autoimmune disease that’s linked to gut microbiome health and soon became interested in studying skin microbiomes. Her brand describes