Monday 3 October 2022 10:48 PM DR MEGAN ROSSI: My 10 best foods for spots and wrinkles trends now
What you eat doesn’t cause acne — but it can affect how wrinkly you look. These apparently contradictory facts are because the state of your skin is closely linked to your gut health, although not necessarily in the way you think.
Your skin and gut are very similar: they both help defend the body against invaders. They’re also both in a constant state of renewal, shedding their lining (gut) or outer layer (skin) roughly every week and month respectively, making them hungry for good nutrition.
And last but not least, each houses a community of microbes vital to health.
Yes, there are microbial communities living in — and on — us.
These gut and skin microbes are key players when it comes to skin blemishes.
What you eat doesn’t cause acne — but it can affect how wrinkly you look. These apparently contradictory facts are because the state of your skin is closely linked to your gut health, although not necessarily in the way you think
Those skin microbes also help protect our skin from environmental damage.
A recent study by the University of California involving nearly 9,000 people found that the microbes on our skin (there are billions of them) were a better predictor of age than the gut or oral microbiotas — making it the ideal testing ground for anti-ageing treatments.
That’s not all: we know that imbalances in the skin microbe colony (microbiota) play a role in common conditions such as acne, eczema and certain skin cancers.
This is why oral and topical antibiotics are the go-to treatment for acne, which is linked to an overgrowth of bacteria, including Cutibacterium acnes.
The trouble is, antibiotics can knock out the useful bacteria, too, which is why scientists are looking at probiotics for treating skin problems.
What we eat and how we treat our gut microbiota really plays out on our skin, as anyone who’s experienced skin breakouts after one too many glasses of wine knows
There’s some particularly exciting work on the potential benefits of topical probiotics (applied directly to the skin) to protect against skin cancer, for example.
Early research also suggests we may be able to transplant a healthy person’s skin bacteria as a way to treat acne and eczema.
However, you don’t have to wait for the scientists and new products. You can target your skin health via that other microbe community — in our gut.
What we eat and how we treat our gut microbiota really plays out on our skin, as anyone who’s experienced skin breakouts after one too many glasses of wine knows.
That’s because there’s a two-way conversation going on between your gut microbes and your skin — the gut‑skin axis.
Most of this gut-skin communication happens via your immune system; an imbalance in your gut bacteria seems to set off a response from the immune system, triggering inflammation.
And guess what: lots of skin problems — acne, dermatitis, eczema, psoriasis, rosacea and even premature ageing — are inflammatory in origin.
If you have a more abundant and diverse gut microbiota, however, the microbes keep each other in line and can have anti-inflammatory effects (partly thanks to the compounds — short-chain fatty acids — the bacteria release when they digest plant fibre).
There are other food factors at play. Take acne. There’s a growing body of evidence suggesting that diets lacking in healthy, plant-based foods, but high in things such as fruit juice, sugar and refined starches (e.g. white bread or pasta) can worsen symptoms.
That’s because they have a high glycaemic index (high GI), meaning they raise your blood sugar level faster than other foods.
Spikes in blood sugar have been linked with inflammation and can also trigger the release of insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1), a hormone that can cause your oil glands to produce more sebum (which mixes with dead skin cells to form an acne plug).
Large amounts of dairy, particularly skimmed milk, can also be a trigger (by ‘large’ I mean more than 500ml of milk a day).
