Your skin barrier is home to thousands of different types of skin flora, which number into the trillions! Together, these microbes (or skin flora) interact closely with your immune system and create a first line of defense against free radicals attempting to make their way into your barrier.
Here’s why your skin barrier matters, how it can become compromised, and what you can do to keep it balanced while avoiding skincare products with toxic chemicals.
The Skin Barrier: Your First Line of Defense
How well do you know your skin barrier? Before we dive into how to help your skin barrier diversify the bacteria of your microbiome, it’s important to understand what exactly your skin barrier does.
Basically, your skin barrier is the protective wall between you and all the bad stuff you want to keep out.
The bad things trying to make their way into your barrier? That could be:
- Bacteria
- Viruses
- Fungi
- Pollutants
- Chemicals
- Allergens
- Microbes (the ones that don’t belong)
Read More: Ancestral Wisdom: The Power of Natural Skincare for Your Skin Barrier Needs
When your skin barrier is healthy and balanced, it’s hard at work, actively warding off all of these free radicals that are trying to make their way into your body.
But when your skin barrier is compromised, whether it’s dry, cracked, or experiencing a pH imbalance, it creates a welcoming environment for all of the things you want to keep out to find their way in, making it important to diversify the good bacteria on your skin barrier.
Microbes & The Skin Ecosystem
Your skin maintains this protection through a naturally acidic pH balance, which is home to a community of microbes, known as your skin microbiome. These ‘good guy bacteria’ on your skin barrier are completely harmless to you; actually, they’re highly beneficial to your skin!
Through a balanced skin microbiome, your body is able to produce its own antimicrobial substances. These aid in warding off all of the bad bacteria and pollutants we mentioned above (the stuff you want to keep out). Additionally, those beneficial microbes help you develop a tolerance that reduces allergic reactions. [1]
Hydrating the skin with tallow, rich in vitamins A, D, E, and K will support a balanced skin pH and protect your skin barrier while encouraging a beautifully vibrant microbiome to do the work for you.
How to Diversify Your Skin Microbiome
So how can you help your skin barrier maintain its pH level while keeping out all the bad stuff and encouraging your microbiome to thrive?
It comes down to making sure that the skincare products and routine you choose actively work to protect and repair your skin.
Before we dive into the best products, here’s a few tips to set you on the path to skin health:
- Keep your skin moisturized and soft
- Stay clear of skincare products with harsh chemicals (sulfates, parabens, phthalates, alcohol)
- Avoid over washing and harsh exfoliants
- Select skincare products with ingredients that nourish your skin (tallow, vitamins, oils, lipids, and beeswax)
- Work to maintain an optimal skin pH
Tips for Allowing Your Skin Health to Thrive
If you want to keep your skin barrier healthy, thriving, and encouraged on its way to fighting off (bad) bacteria, viruses, and pollutants, you have to give it a little help along the way.
Here are some of our favorite ways to focus on skin health while following a low-tox lifestyle.
1. Skip Acidic Cleansers
Depending on your skin type, acidic cleansers can be harsh and tough on your skin, especially with overuse, which can cause your skin to experience a pH imbalance. Cleansers that contain high levels of glycolic acid, lactic acid, or salicylic acid are not for everyone and can cause overdrying and irritation, especially with frequent use.
Instead, choose a cleanser with real ingredients such as tallow and natural oils. These ingredients will nourish your skin without clogging your pores, nurturing your skin’s microbiome, allowing it to thrive and create good bacteria to help you ward off free radicals.
Top pick: This Vitamin C Cleanser contains tallow, diatomaceous Earth, grapefruit oil, and cold-pressed Jojoba, all of which enable healthy microbes to thrive on your skin barrier.
2. Your Deodorant Matters
Deodorant has long been known for its harsh alkaline ingredients, such as baking soda, which is used to target sweat. However, while that baking soda is warding off sweat and moisture, it’s also raising your pH and creating an environment for bad bacteria to find their way into your pits.
When choosing a deodorant, find something gentle, with low-tox ingredients (no baking soda, aluminum, phthalates, or parabens) that will help you maintain your pH and reduce underarm moisture.
Top Pick: Our Natural Deodorant contains tallow, virgin shea butter, arrowroot powder, kaolin clay, and non-nano zinc oxide to eliminate odor and reduce moisture, while keeping your underarm pH in balance and free of moisture.
Support Your Skin From the Inside Out
Your skin may be your biggest organ, but it isn’t the only one with its own microbiome. Your gut also has its own thriving, diverse range of flora, and what happens in your gut can influence your skin health, including your skin barrier.
Sometimes, when your body needs to detox, your skin becomes one of the many routes for elimination. When your gut flora is out of balance and experiencing inflammation or “leaky gut” symptoms, it can often show up on your skin.
This imbalance happening internally can cause your skin to act as a pathway for detoxing, leaving you with a flare, breakout, or dull appearance. So yes, your gut microbiome and skin barrier are connected, more than you know. In fact, this connection is called the gut-skin axis.
Try This: We love getting hyped over a good ferment! Ferments are a great food source that help support and maintain a balanced gut microbiome. Alongside your newfound love for ferments, eat the ancestral way. Keep your gut balanced by adding seeds, nuts, fruits, and vegetables to your diet, and of course, drink plenty of water!
Protecting Your Skin Barrier the Ancestral Way
One of the many aspects that allows you to protect your skin barrier while diversifying your microbiome includes the skincare ingredients you choose.
There are a host of traditional skincare products that feature harsh chemicals lurking on the label, such as sulfates, parabens, phthalates, and alcohol.
To learn more about what ingredients to avoid in your skincare products, read our blog about hormone disrupting ingredients.
As licensed health practitioners, we know all too well the effects these toxic ingredients can have on the skin. But what we also know is that there is a better way to feed your skin health, protect your skin barrier, and encourage thriving skin flora.
Farm-to-Skin Ingredients
On your journey to creating a healthy skin microbiome, you’ll be faced with endless options of skincare products, some of which contain toxic ingredients.
But you have a choice, ancestral skincare products support your skin health and a low-tox lifestyle, using time-honored ingredients.
When you’re faced with what products to choose for your skin health, skip the harsh ingredients and instead look for fats, oils, and natural ingredients.
Here are some natural skincare ingredients that are gentle and effective at restoring and protecting your skin barrier:
- Tallow – no, you won’t smell like a French fry, we promise. Tallow, rendered from grass-fed cows, is a gentle, bioavailable ingredient that will nourish & moisturize your skin, without clogging your pores; it also soothes redness, irritation, and eczema, and is gentle for use on the most delicate skin types.
- Emu Oil – contains natural anti-inflammatory properties and deeply penetrates layers of skin to promote cellular regeneration, all while reducing the appearance of scars, fine lines, and sun damage.
- Cold Pressed Jojoba – another amazing bioavailable ingredient that closely mimics your skin’s own sebum, contains high levels of Vitamin E, helps prevent breakouts, and regulates oil production.
- Castor Oil – high in fatty acids, castor oil contains anti-inflammatory and anti-microbial properties, but it’s the moisturizing effect of castor oil that locks in hydration, helping your skin barrier ward off environmental toxins and stressors.
- Beeswax – softens and hydrates the skin, feeding the skin barrier without clogging your pores; this gentle, natural ingredient is safe for use on the most sensitive skin types and has natural antibacterial and antifungal properties.
Taking Control of Your Skin Health
Your skin’s microbiome is a big, beautiful living ecosystem of thriving microbes and (good) bacteria. When you support your skin barrier and nourish your skin from the inside out, you’re allowing a diverse range of skin flora to thrive, which keeps out pollutants, (bad) bacteria, viruses, and allergens.
Ready to protect your skin barrier the ancestral way? Grass Fed Skin’s products contain tallow, natural fats, oils, and real ingredients that embrace time-honored traditions.
Give your microbiome the farm-to-skin treatment with grass-fed tallow-based skincare that nourishes, moisturizes, and supports your natural microbiome.
Explore more in the Grass Fed Skin Shop
References
- Grice EA, Segre JA. The skin microbiome. Nat Rev Microbiol. 2011 Apr;9(4):244-53. doi: 10.1038/nrmicro2537. Erratum in: Nat Rev Microbiol. 2011 Aug;9(8):626. PMID: 21407241; PMCID: PMC3535073. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3535073/
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