Good news for women who suffer from acne, rosacea, or eczema: Your new go-to skin healer may already be inside your fridge. Yogurt and other foods containing probiotics (like kefir and miso) can be used to combat skin issues that are caused by inflammation, says Whitney Bowe, M.D., a dermatologist in New York City. This is due to what Bowe refers to as the "gut-skin axis," meaning the connection between your gut health and the condition of your skin.
Stress, anxiety, and depression can slow digestion and movement in the gut, says Bowe. When you combine that with eating refined comfort foods—"your typical Western diet, devoid of fiber," says Bowe—this can cause the amount of bad bacteria in your gut to increase quickly. And all that bad bacteria can then leak out into your bloodstream, leading to system-wide inflammation, which can cause acne, rosacea, eczema, and signs of aging.
How Probiotics Can Help Calm Your Complexion
If your diet and stress levels are causing bad bacteria to thrive in your body, eating more healthy bacteria (i.e., probiotics) can help balance out your system, reseal your gut lining, and decrease inflammation. Eating probiotic-rich foods—such as yogurt, kefir, miso soup, and kombucha—or taking oral probiotic supplements can help increase the amount of healthy bacteria in your system. If you're thinking of taking an oral supplement, Bowe recommends making sure that the probiotic strain in that particular supplement have been proven to indeed decrease inflammation. Currently, she says the strains with the most scientific evidence include lactobacillus, bifidobacterium, and bacillus coagulans, but you can also check with your dermatologist for recommendations.
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Interestingly, probiotics may also help you maintain younger-looking skin. While there's nothing you can do about genetic aging, probiotics may help reduce the effects of aging caused by external factors. In fact, animal studies have shown that consuming probiotics before sun exposure results in less skin damage, as well as a quicker recovery time after being out in the sun, says Bowe. This doesn't mean you should ditch your SPF just because you eat lots of yogurt, but knowing that there's one more thing you can do to protect your skin is a definite plus.
Should You Be Putting Yogurt on Your Face?
There are also new studies indicating that there may be benefits associated with using probiotics topically. The mechanism behind this is still being explored, but Bowe says she has been recommending yogurt masks to her clients for years due to the positive results she has encountered in her research. Yogurt has also been used as an ingredient in Indian bridal facials for generations, and celebrities like Lauren Conrad swear by masks made from the food.
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The benefit of applying yogurt to your face is twofold. First, yogurt contains lactic acid, which is a natural exfoliant and great for acne-prone skin. Second, much like ingesting probiotics, using yogurt that contains live active cultures topically has also been shown to decrease inflammation through skin absorption. While scientists are still researching which bacterial strains survive best on the skin's surface, Bowe believes that probiotics in skin-care products is going to be a big trend.
Where to Find Products with Probiotics
Does the thought of putting live bacteria on your face weird you out? Many skin-care companies have developed products that contain "probiotic technology." While some face creams, like Epicuren Acidophilus Probiotic Facial Cream ($78, epicuren.com), contain actual probiotic cultures, a lot of other companies have created products that contain ingredients derived from the extracts of bacteria or that are made up of broken-down probiotic cells that are no longer alive.
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Products with probiotic technology include Burt's Bees Intense Hydration Night Cream ($18, burtsbees.com) and Clinique Redness Solutions Makeup with SPF 15 ($27, clinique.com). And we love TULA Hydrating Day & Night Cream ($49, tulaforlife.com). TULA—a skin-care brand founded by Roshini Raj, M.D., a gastroenterologist who also studies the benefits of probiotics in skin-care products—uses probiotic technology in all of their products.
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