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Start here if you want to understand how gut health and skin health are connected. These introductory guides explain the gut–skin axis, the role of the gut and skin microbiomes, and how immune signalling, microbial metabolites, diet, stress and the body’s protective barriers may influence your skin.
You will learn how your gut can affect your skin, why skin health involves more than topical products and what happens when microbial ecosystems become disrupted. The evidence supports an important connection, but it does not mean that every skin problem begins in the gut or has one simple cause.
What Is the Gut-Skin Axis?
The gut-skin axis is the two-way communication network connecting your gut, your gut microbiome, your immune system and your skin.
The trillions of microorganisms living in your gut produce compounds that interact with your immune system and metabolism. These signals can travel throughout your body and may influence inflammation, skin barrier function and the community of microorganisms living on your skin. Your skin can also send signals back into this wider system, which is why scientists describe the gut-skin axis as bidirectional rather than a one-way pathway.
Think of your gut and your skin as two gardens within the same larger ecosystem. They grow in different environments, but they share the same weather system. What affects one part of the ecosystem can create ripple effects elsewhere.
Your gut and skin are more connected than they look
At first glance, your digestive system and your skin seem completely separate.
Your gut is hidden inside your body. Your skin forms its outermost boundary.
But both are major interfaces between you and the outside world, and both are home to complex communities of microorganisms. Research increasingly describes communication between these systems as the gut-skin axis.
Your gut microbes help break down components of food and create metabolites, including short-chain fatty acids and other signalling molecules. These microbial products interact with your intestinal barrier, metabolism and immune system. Because immune cells and metabolic signals circulate throughout your body, changes within the gut ecosystem have the potential to influence tissues far beyond the digestive tract — including your skin.
Think of it as an ecosystem, not a pipeline
A useful way to imagine this is as a garden.
Your gut contains an enormous microbial ecosystem. Different species compete, cooperate and feed one another. The food you eat provides part of the raw material for that ecosystem.
If you continually give a garden the conditions its plants need — nutrients, water, diversity and protection — it is generally better able to remain resilient.
Your gut ecosystem works in a similarly interconnected way.
But the gut-skin axis does not mean that every spot, rash or flare-up is caused by the gut. Skin conditions are complex and can involve genetics, hormones, allergens, infections, environmental exposures, medications, stress and many other factors.
Instead, your gut microbiome is one part of the much larger biological environment influencing your skin.
How do your gut and skin communicate?
Scientists are investigating several overlapping pathways.
Immune signalling: Your intestinal microbiome interacts extensively with the immune system. Changes in microbial communities and their products can alter inflammatory signalling, which may have effects throughout the body.
Microbial metabolites: Gut bacteria transform dietary components into metabolites, including short-chain fatty acids. These compounds can influence intestinal barrier health, immune activity and metabolic processes.
The intestinal barrier: The cells lining your gut form a controlled barrier between the intestinal contents and the circulation. Disruption of intestinal barrier function can alter exposure to microbial products and inflammatory signals.
The skin microbiome: Your skin has its own ecosystem of bacteria, fungi, viruses and other microorganisms. These microbes interact with the skin barrier and immune system and can help defend their habitat against potentially harmful organisms.
Together, these processes help explain why researchers are finding associations between gut microbiome changes and inflammatory skin disorders including atopic dermatitis, psoriasis, acne and rosacea. Importantly, association does not always prove that gut changes caused the skin condition.
Why is the gut-skin axis called a two-way street?
The relationship does not appear to run only from gut to skin.
The skin is itself an immune and microbial organ. Damage, inflammation, infection and changes within the skin microbiome can influence systemic immune signalling.
That is why modern research increasingly considers the relationship a bidirectional gut-skin axis: two microbial ecosystems participating in the same whole-body network.
~38 trillion bacteria live in and on the human body, with most associated with the gut.
2-way communication defines the gut-skin axis, with signals travelling between the gut, immune system and skin.
4 major microbial groups live on the skin: bacteria, fungi, viruses and mites.
18 different skin sites have been shown to host distinct microbial communities.
3 main skin environments – oily, moist and dry support different types of microbes.
4 major skin conditions commonly studied in gut-skin research are acne, eczema, psoriasis and rosacea.
622 prokaryotic species were catalogued in a major skin microbiome genome collection.
How Does Your Gut Affect Your Skin?
Your gut can influence your skin through immune signalling, inflammation, hormones and microbial metabolites produced by your gut bacteria.
Why Does Skin Health Begin Beneath the Surface? — Healthy-looking skin is influenced by what is happening inside your body as well as what you apply externally, particularly your gut, diet and microbiome.
What Role Does the Microbiome Play in Skin Health? — Your gut and skin microbiomes form interconnected ecosystems that interact with your immune system and may influence inflammation and skin-barrier health.
What Is Gut Dysbiosis? — Gut dysbiosis means the microbial ecosystem in your gut has become imbalanced in composition or function, which can affect wider processes including inflammation
What Are Short-Chain Fatty Acids? — Short-chain fatty acids such as butyrate, acetate and propionate are beneficial compounds produced when gut microbes ferment fibre.
Research into the gut-skin axis is developing quickly.
Current reviews describe a biological network involving the gut microbiome, microbial metabolites, immune regulation, inflammatory signalling and barrier function. Alterations in gut microbial composition have been observed in people with several inflammatory skin disorders, although researchers are still working out which changes are causes, consequences or simply associations.
Research increasingly describes the gut-skin axis as a bidirectional communication network involving the gut microbiome, skin microbiome, immune system, microbial metabolites and barrier function.
Featured Research
The Good Skin Solution: Natural Healing for Eczema, Psoriasis, Rosacea and Acne
Author: Shann Nix Jones
Publisher: Hay House UK
Publication date: 7 February 2017
The Good Skin Solution introduces Shann’s experience of discovering the connection between skin health, the immune system, the microbiome and digestive health while trying to help her own family.
A central idea in the book is that persistent skin problems should not always be viewed as purely surface-level issues. Instead, Shann encourages readers to think about the internal microbial ecosystem, diet and wider health alongside topical skin care.
Key ideas
- Skin should be considered within the context of whole-body health.
- Your microbiome behaves like an ecosystem and needs to be nurtured.
- Diet can influence the environment in which your gut microbes live.
- Fermented foods such as kefir introduce microorganisms and fermentation products into the diet.
- Skin care can support the outside while nutrition and lifestyle support the inside.
Read or buy The Good Skin Solution.
“Is my skin problem really coming from my gut?”
Not necessarily. Skin problems have many possible causes. But Shann’s published work encourages people to look beyond the surface and consider the gut and microbiome as part of the bigger picture, particularly when skin symptoms occur alongside digestive or other wellbeing concerns.
“Where should I start?”
Rather than trying ten different interventions at once, begin by understanding and supporting your ecosystem. Look at what you eat, how much plant diversity and fibre you consume, your fermented foods, stress, sleep and what you are putting directly onto your skin.
If you want more personalised insight, a microbiome test can provide information about the composition of your gut bacterial community rather than relying entirely on guesswork. Chuckling Goat’s current test reports on 86 biomarkers across areas including diversity, probiotics, prebiotics, postbiotics and pathogens and includes Nutritional Therapist support.
The goal is to support the ecosystem, not claim to treat or cure a skin disease.
Understand your ecosystem
The Gut Microbiome Test Kit can provide a snapshot of your gut bacterial ecosystem and includes interpretation with a Nutritional Therapist and a personalised action plan. It is not a diagnostic test for skin disease.
Introduce live cultures
Probiotic Goat’s Milk Kefir is traditionally fermented with live kefir grains and currently contains 95 identified live and active cultures. Its nutritional profile also supports authorised nutritional claims relating to normal skin maintenance through the nutrients it contains.
Feed your existing microbes
Complete Prebiotic combines 18 prebiotic fibres designed to provide fermentable substrates for gut microorganisms. Think of probiotics as adding plants to the garden and prebiotic fibres as helping provide the food that allows the garden to thrive.
Support your skin from the outside
Probiotic Kefir Lotion provides a gentle topical pathway alongside internal gut support. The lotions are handmade from goat’s milk and kefir and are available in formulations designed for different skin needs.
How Does Your Gut Affect Your Skin?
Your gut can influence your skin through the immune system, inflammation, microbial metabolites, nutrient metabolism and communication between your gut and skin microbiomes.
When your gut ecosystem changes, the compounds produced by your microbes can change too. Those signals interact with your intestinal barrier and immune system and may influence inflammation elsewhere in the body, including your skin.
This does not mean that every skin condition starts in the gut. It means your gut is one important part of the biological ecosystem that helps regulate skin health.
Your skin receives messages from inside your body
Skin may look like an external covering, but it is living tissue supplied by blood vessels, nerves and immune cells.
So the environment inside your body matters.
Your gut microbiome continuously interacts with food, your intestinal lining and your immune system. In doing so, microbes create a huge collection of metabolic compounds.
Some stay within the gut. Others influence signalling pathways that extend throughout the body.
1. Your gut helps shape immune activity
Your immune system constantly needs to distinguish between harmless organisms and genuine threats.
Gut microbes participate in that education and regulation.
When the microbial ecosystem or intestinal environment changes, inflammatory and immune signalling may change alongside it. Because skin itself is an immune organ, these systemic signals may influence inflammatory activity within the skin.
This is one reason researchers are investigating the gut microbiome in conditions including eczema, psoriasis, acne and rosacea.
2. Gut microbes turn food into signals
Your dinner does not interact only with you.
It also feeds your microbes.
Different bacteria can transform dietary fibre and other nutrients into compounds including short-chain fatty acids. These compounds participate in intestinal barrier maintenance, immune regulation and metabolism.
So your diet is not simply feeding a human body.
It is feeding an ecosystem that then communicates with that body.
3. Your intestinal barrier matters
Imagine the lining of your gut as the carefully managed fence around a garden.
It must allow useful nutrients through while maintaining separation between the enormous microbial population inside the intestine and the circulation.
Changes in microbial balance, inflammation and barrier function can alter exposure to microbial molecules and influence immune responses. These mechanisms form another proposed bridge between intestinal health and inflammation elsewhere in the body.
4. Diet can change the gut ecosystem
Your microbiome is dynamic.
Diet is one of the environmental factors capable of influencing it.
In a randomized dietary intervention, researchers at Stanford found that a high-fermented-food diet increased microbiome diversity and was associated with reduced levels of several inflammatory proteins in healthy adults. The study is important evidence that dietary changes can influence both microbiome composition and immune activity, although it did not demonstrate that fermented foods cure skin disorders.
5. Stress joins the conversation
Your gut, brain, immune system and skin do not operate independently.
Psychological stress can influence the gut environment and immune signalling, while stress itself is a familiar trigger or aggravating factor for many skin complaints.
That means the wider picture may include gut + skin + brain, rather than a single isolated axis.
Chuckling Goat explores these connections in its gut-skin content and recommends including stress management, sleep and relaxation alongside nutritional and microbiome support.
- 3 key short-chain fatty acids – acetate, propionate and butyrate are produced when gut microbes ferment fibre.
- 4 inflammatory skin conditions frequently linked with gut dysbiosis are acne, eczema, psoriasis and rosacea.
- 2 major barriers – the gut barrier and skin barrier help regulate interactions between microbes and your immune system.
- 1 immune system connects your gut and skin through shared inflammatory and immune signalling.
- 5+ types of microbial signals can influence gut-skin communication, including short-chain fatty acids, bile acids and tryptophan metabolites.
- 24 hours a day– your gut microbes follow daily rhythms influenced by meals, sleep and your body clock.
- 2 directions of communication make the gut-skin axis a bidirectional relationship rather than a one-way pathway.
Can Stress Affect Your Gut and Skin?
Chronic stress can alter the gut microbiome and influence inflammatory signalling, which may have knock-on effects on skin health.
How Does Your Immune System Connect Your Gut and Skin?
Your gut microbes interact closely with your immune system, creating signals that can influence inflammation elsewhere in the body, including the skin.
Can Fermented Foods Support the Gut-Skin Axis?
Fermented foods introduce live microbes and microbial products that can help support a diverse gut ecosystem.
Can Poor Gut Health Show Up on Your Skin?
Changes in the gut microbiome are associated with inflammatory processes that may coincide with skin concerns such as breakouts, itching and redness.
How Are Gut Health and Eczema Connected?
Research is exploring how gut dysbiosis, immune signalling and skin inflammation may interact in atopic dermatitis.
Scientists are investigating several routes through which the gut may influence skin, including immune regulation, systemic inflammation, intestinal barrier function and microbial metabolites. Research also reports associations between altered gut microbiota and a number of inflammatory skin diseases.
Featured Research
The Good Skin Solution
Title: The Good Skin Solution: Natural Healing for Eczema, Psoriasis, Rosacea and Acne
Author: Shann Nix Jones
Publisher: Hay House UK
The book’s central philosophy is that skin health cannot always be understood by looking at the skin alone.
Shann describes her family’s experience and introduces the microbiome as an important internal ecosystem, with food, fermentation, immunity and gut health forming part of an inside-out approach to skin wellbeing.
Key idea
Your skin is part of a whole-body ecosystem.
Modern gut-skin research provides an increasingly detailed biological framework for that principle, while also showing that the relationship is complex and varies between individuals and skin conditions.
“Why does my skin sometimes flare when my digestion is bad?”
There isn’t one explanation that applies to everybody. But your gut, immune system and skin share inflammatory and metabolic pathways. Changes in diet, stress, digestive function and microbiome activity may therefore occur at the same time as changes in your skin.
Shann’s approach is to look for the pattern, not simply suppress the visible symptom.
“Should I only focus on probiotics?”
No single ingredient creates a healthy ecosystem.
A garden needs plants and food, water, soil and the right environment.
Likewise, microbiome support is better understood as a combination of dietary diversity, fibre, fermented foods where appropriate, sleep, movement, stress management and sensible skin care.
First: help identify
Use the Gut Microbiome Test Kit if a personalised view of your bacterial ecosystem would be useful. The test is paired with Nutritional Therapist interpretation rather than being positioned as a diagnostic skin test.
Next: support microbial diversity
Probiotic Kefir supplies a diverse community of live and active cultures through traditional fermentation.
Feed the garden
Complete Prebiotic supplies 18 prebiotic fibres intended to nourish gut microbes.
The two are also available together as the Chuckling Goat Synbiotic, combining probiotic cultures with prebiotic fibre.
Medical disclaimer: These products are designed to support gut health and nutritional wellbeing, not replace appropriate medical treatment for eczema, psoriasis, acne, rosacea or another diagnosed skin disorder.
Why Does Skin Health Begin Beneath the Surface?
Healthy-looking skin depends on much more than what you put on it.
Your skin is supplied with nutrients from your diet, regulated by hormones and immune signals, affected by stress and sleep, and inhabited by its own microbiome. Your gut microbiome can influence several of these systems through the gut-skin axis.
That is why a complete approach to skin health considers inside and outside together.
Topical care supports the skin barrier from the outside. Nutrition, your microbiome and your wider lifestyle help create the internal environment in which skin has to function.
Your skin is an organ, not wrapping paper
Skin is your body’s largest organ, covering roughly 1.5–2 square metres in an adult. It forms a physical and immunological boundary between you and your environment.
It helps regulate water loss, provides sensory information, participates in immune defence and gives trillions of microorganisms somewhere to live.
So healthy skin depends upon far more than moisturiser.
What reaches your skin starts inside
Your skin cells depend on the nutrients and biochemical environment supplied by the rest of your body.
Diet contributes protein, essential fatty acids, vitamins and minerals needed for normal tissue maintenance.
Your immune system influences inflammation.
Hormones affect sebum production, pigmentation and other skin functions.
Stress affects nervous and immune signalling.
And your gut microbiome participates in nutrient metabolism, immune regulation and production of microbial metabolites.
The surface is therefore only one chapter of the story.
Picture a plant
When the leaves of a plant look unhealthy, you might wipe the leaves or protect them from wind.
But you would also inspect the soil.
Is it getting enough water?
Is the soil rich enough?
Are its roots healthy?
Is something disturbing the ecosystem around them?
Skin works differently from a plant, of course, but the analogy is useful: what you see at the surface can be influenced by conditions beneath it.
Your skin barrier still matters enormously
An inside-out philosophy should never become an excuse to ignore topical skin care.
The outermost layers of your skin form a physical barrier that helps limit water loss and protects deeper tissue from environmental challenges.
The skin microbiome lives in intimate contact with this barrier. Healthy commensal microorganisms can interact with immune cells and compete with potentially pathogenic species.
So rather than asking whether gut health or skin care matters, a better question is:
How can you support both ecosystems at the same time?
Inside + outside
From the inside:
Support a varied diet rich in plant foods and fermentable fibres, include fermented foods where suitable, get sufficient nutrients, move regularly, sleep well and manage chronic stress.
From the outside:
Avoid unnecessarily harsh cleansing, respect your skin barrier, moisturise where needed and choose products appropriate for your particular skin.
For persistent, severe or unexplained symptoms, speak to your GP or dermatologist rather than assuming the microbiome is the sole cause.
- Up to 1 million bacteria per cm² can live on certain areas of healthy human skin.
- 18 body sites have been studied to show how dramatically the skin microbiome varies by location.
- 3 ecological zones – sebaceous, moist and dry create different habitats across your skin.
- 3 dominant bacterial phyla commonly found on skin include Actinobacteria, Firmicutes and Proteobacteria.
- 1 main epidermal cell type, the keratinocyte, plays a central role in skin barrier and immune function.
- 968 microbial strains from healthy skin were cultured in one recent study exploring natural antimicrobial compounds.
- 8 different skin sites were sampled in that research to uncover how microbes contribute to skin defence.
How Does Nutrition Support the Skin Barrier?
Nutrients such as protein, essential fatty acids, zinc and certain vitamins help support normal skin structure and repair.
Can Dehydration Affect Your Skin?
Your skin’s appearance and barrier function can be influenced by overall hydration as well as the oils and lipids that help reduce water loss.
How Do Hormones Affect Skin Health?
Hormonal changes can influence oil production, inflammation and breakouts, which is why skin changes are often linked with puberty, menstrual cycles and other hormonal shifts.
Why Is the Skin Barrier Important?
Your skin barrier helps limit water loss and protect you from irritants, allergens and environmental stressors.
Can Your Skin Repair Itself?
Your skin is constantly renewing and repairing itself, but that process depends on healthy skin cells, adequate nutrients and a supportive external environment.
Skin is not simply an outer covering. It is a complex physical, microbial and immune barrier, and its condition can be influenced both by its external environment and by biological processes occurring inside the body.
Featured Research
The Good Skin Solution
Author: Shann Nix Jones
Publisher: Hay House UK
One of the defining ideas running through The Good Skin Solution is that focusing exclusively on what you apply to your skin can miss part of the picture.
Shann connects skin health with the internal microbial ecosystem and describes her journey towards an approach that combines food, kefir and microbiome support with topical care.
Key idea
Care for the roots as well as the leaves.
For a modern evidence-based interpretation, that means supporting nutrition, lifestyle and microbial health internally while protecting and caring for your skin barrier externally.
“I’ve changed moisturisers repeatedly. Why is my skin still unhappy?”
A moisturiser can be extremely useful for supporting the skin barrier, but it cannot control everything affecting your skin.
Shann’s philosophy has long been to ask what else is happening beneath the surface: digestion, diet, microbial balance, stress and the wider health picture.
That doesn’t mean stopping medical treatment or throwing away your moisturiser. It means widening the lens.
“Should I treat my gut or my skin first?”
You don’t necessarily need to choose.
Think of them as two gardens belonging to the same property.
You can feed the internal ecosystem while gently supporting the external one.
Internal support
Probiotic Kefir provides traditionally fermented goat’s milk containing live cultures and nutrients that contribute to normal body functions, including nutrients supporting normal skin.
Complete Prebiotic provides a broad mixture of fermentable fibres for your resident gut microbes.
External support
Probiotic Kefir Lotion combines goat’s milk and kefir in topical formulations designed for daily skin care.
Probiotic Goat’s Milk Soap is handmade with goat’s milk and kefir and can be used on the face, hands and body.
For people dealing with persistent or worsening skin symptoms, products should be considered supportive care rather than substitutes for medical assessment or prescribed treatment.
Medical disclaimer: These products are designed to support gut health and nutritional wellbeing, not replace appropriate medical treatment for eczema, psoriasis, acne, rosacea or another diagnosed skin disorder.
What Role Does the Microbiome Play in Skin Health?
Your microbiome helps create the biological environment in which healthy skin functions.
Your skin microbiome consists of bacteria, fungi, viruses, mites and other microorganisms living on and within your skin. These organisms interact with your skin barrier and immune system and can help occupy ecological niches that might otherwise be exploited by harmful microbes.
Your gut microbiome forms another large microbial ecosystem. Through metabolites, immune signalling and the gut-skin axis, it may influence skin health from the inside.
Healthy skin therefore isn’t about eliminating bacteria.
It is about supporting a balanced, resilient ecosystem.
You are an ecosystem
You are not living alone in your body.
The human body contains tens of trillions of bacterial cells, alongside fungi, viruses and other microorganisms.
Collectively, these microbial communities form microbiomes.
Two are especially important when talking about skin:
your gut microbiome and your skin microbiome.
Your skin has its own tiny ecosystem
Every patch of skin is a habitat.
But your forehead is not the same environment as your forearm.
Your armpit is not the same as your hand.
Temperature, moisture, oil production, exposure and skin structure all influence which microorganisms can thrive in each location.
Large metagenomic studies have confirmed this striking geographical variation across the human skin microbiome.
Imagine your body as a continent.
Some areas are humid rainforest.
Others are dry grassland.
Others are oily wetlands.
Different microbes thrive in each ecological niche.
Good bacteria versus bad bacteria is too simple
Microbiology rarely divides neatly into “good bugs” and “bad bugs.”
Many organisms normally live peacefully on healthy skin.
Whether a microbe causes trouble can depend on its strain, abundance, location and the surrounding microbial community as well as your skin barrier and immune system.
That is why balance, diversity, function and ecological context are more useful concepts than trying to sterilise your skin.
Your microbes can help defend their territory
Resident skin microorganisms compete for nutrients and space. Some produce substances that suppress competing organisms, while others interact with the immune system.
Modern skin-microbiome research increasingly investigates these protective functions and their potential relevance to future dermatological therapies.
What happens when the ecosystem changes?
A disturbed microbial community is often described as dysbiosis.
Changes in skin microbial communities have been associated with several dermatological disorders.
But dysbiosis can be complicated.
In some circumstances it might contribute to disease.
In others, inflammation or changes in the skin environment may cause the microbiome to change.
Often, both may happen together.
That is why microbiome research increasingly focuses on function and interactions, not just lists of bacterial species.
And then there is your gut microbiome
The microbial garden in your gut is vastly different from the one on your skin, but the two systems communicate indirectly through your body.
Gut microbial metabolites interact with the intestinal barrier and immune system. Those systemic pathways create one plausible mechanism through which changes within the gut ecosystem could influence skin physiology and inflammation.
So when thinking about skin health, you have two gardens to nurture:
the microbial ecosystem on the outside and the microbial ecosystem within.
- 9.4% of the global population is estimated to be affected by acne, making it one of the world’s most common skin conditions.
- 129 million people worldwide were estimated to be living with atopic dermatitis in 2021, up from 107.5 million in 1990.
- At least 100 million people worldwide are affected by psoriasis, according to the World Health Organization.
- 0.09%–11.43% is the reported prevalence range for psoriasis across different countries, illustrating how strongly rates vary between populations.
- 47% of people with acne were estimated to have acne scarring in a meta-analysis of 37 studies involving 24,649 patients.
- 4 skin conditions – acne, eczema, psoriasis and rosacea were analysed together in research investigating possible causal relationships between gut microbiota and inflammatory skin disease.
- 211 different gut microbial taxa were examined in that gut–skin research, showing how many individual microbial groups may potentially be relevant to skin health.
What Happens When the Skin Microbiome Becomes Unbalanced? Changes in the skin’s microbial ecosystem may affect barrier function and inflammation.
Can the Microbiome Influence Eczema and Psoriasis? Research is exploring how changes in gut and skin microbial communities may be associated with inflammatory skin conditions. Read More →.
Why Is Microbial Balance More Important Than “Good” and “Bad” Bacteria?
Microbes behave differently depending on their abundance and surrounding ecosystem, making balance and resilience more useful concepts than simple “good versus bad” labels. Read More →
How Do Skin Microbes Help Protect You?
Resident skin microbes can compete for space, interact with the skin barrier and help maintain a balanced microbial environment.
Can Your Skin Microbiome Change Over Time?
Your microbial ecosystem can shift in response to factors such as hormones, environment, lifestyle and changes in your skin.
The skin microbiome is a diverse ecosystem whose microorganisms interact with each other, the skin barrier and your immune system. Modern sequencing has shown that this ecosystem is considerably more diverse than scientists once realised.
Featured Research
The Good Skin Solution
Title: The Good Skin Solution: Natural Healing for Eczema, Psoriasis, Rosacea and Acne
Author: Shann Nix Jones
Publisher: Hay House UK
Publication date: 7 February 2017
The microbiome is one of the book’s central themes.
Shann presents the body not simply as a collection of human cells but as an ecosystem containing huge populations of microorganisms. From this viewpoint, nourishing microbial balance becomes part of caring for the whole person, including their skin.
Key ideas
Don’t wage war on every microbe.
Microorganisms are normal inhabitants of healthy bodies.
Feed your ecosystem.
Food supplies substrates to both you and your microbes.
Think diversity and balance.
A resilient ecosystem depends on relationships between organisms rather than the presence of one magical species.
Work inside and outside.
Support your intestinal ecosystem while respecting the ecosystem living directly on your skin.
“Aren’t bacteria something we’re supposed to get rid of?”
That idea made sense when bacteria were thought about mostly in the context of infection.
But modern microbiome science shows that enormous communities of microorganisms normally live with us.
Shann’s work has long encouraged people to think of these organisms as an ecosystem to nurture, rather than treating every microbe as the enemy.
“What’s the difference between probiotics and prebiotics?”
A simple garden analogy:
Probiotics are the living organisms.
Prebiotics are substrates that particular microorganisms can use.
Taken together, they can be thought of as adding useful organisms to the garden while also providing the kind of food that helps selected members of that ecosystem grow.
A product combining the two is commonly called a synbiotic. Chuckling Goat’s current Synbiotic combines its kefir and Complete Prebiotic.
“How do I know what is actually living in my gut?”
Modern microbiome tests analyse microbial DNA from a stool sample.
Chuckling Goat’s current test uses 16S rRNA sequencing and reports bacterial markers across areas including diversity, probiotics, prebiotics, postbiotics and pathogens. Results are interpreted alongside your history by a Nutritional Therapist.
A microbiome test can provide useful information about bacterial composition, but it should not be confused with a medical diagnosis.
Explore your ecosystem
Gut Microbiome Test Kit
For people who want data about their own gut bacterial community rather than applying generic advice.
Add live cultures
Probiotic Goat’s Milk Kefir
Traditionally fermented with live kefir grains and currently containing 95 live and active cultures, including members of Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium.
Feed your microbial garden
Complete Prebiotic
Provides 18 different prebiotic fibres as part of a broad-spectrum approach to feeding gut microorganisms.
Combine probiotics + prebiotics
Chuckling Goat Synbiotic
Combines Kefir and Complete Prebiotic as one gut-ecosystem pathway.
Respect the external ecosystem
Probiotic Kefir Lotion and Probiotic Goat’s Milk Soap provide topical options made using Chuckling Goat kefir and goat’s milk.
The principle throughout is support rather than cure: nourish the ecosystem, protect the barrier and seek appropriate clinical care where a skin condition requires diagnosis or treatment.
Medical disclaimer: These products are designed to support gut health and nutritional wellbeing, not replace appropriate medical treatment for eczema, psoriasis, acne, rosacea or another diagnosed skin disorder.
