The Gut-Skin Connection

As a gastroenterologist, I see remarkable improvements in my patients’ skin once they’ve healed their gut issues – which in most cases involve an increase in prebiotic and probiotic foods and a robust probiotic supplement.

A gut-skin connection is strongly supported in scientific studies – more than half of all acne sufferers have significant alterations in gut flora, and societies that eat a microbiome-friendly diet with little or no processed sugar have virtually no acne!

In fact, recent studies show a clear indication for using probiotics to treat acne. The idea is that probiotics help to balance the bacteria in your gut, improving intestinal permeability and inflammation that are linked to skin conditions. Oral probiotics, unlike topical ones, treat the root cause of skin conditions – gut inflammation – and not just the symptoms manifesting on the surface.

These findings come at a good time – long-term antibiotic use, which is the conventional go-to treatment for acne, is strongly linked to antibiotic resistance and dysbiosis (imbalanced gut bacteria; which is also associated with autoimmune disease, depression, obesity, and a host of other conditions).

If you’re looking to treat your acne with probiotics, choose a robust one that contains Lactobacillus, L. acidophilus and B. bifudum strains, and eat plenty of indigestible plant fiber to keep the probiotics well fed and thriving.

Seeing multiple examples of the gut-skin connection in my practice has brought me to a new way of thinking – the gut as the innermost layer of the skin and the skin as the outermost layer of the gut. #LiveDirtyEatClean #GlowFromTheInsideOut

By: Dr. Robynne Chutkan