Synergie Skin Founder and CEO Terri Vinson gives us the lowdown on the importance of Prebiotics and Probiotics for our skin.

I wish it could be as easy as one single product, but the secret ingredient to life is balance. Whether it’s work, leisure, nutrition, exercise or your social life, all things are better in balance. So, when it comes to our health, balancing the microbiome of the gut has been on-trend for years, and now balancing the skin microbiome is finally just as important.

Our bodies house trillions of teeny tiny bacteria − even more than our skin cells! So, to maintain a healthy, strong skin barrier we really need to nurture and balance these little critters with skin ‘food’, or prebiotics and probiotics.

Both prebiotics and probiotics are great for your skin individually, but teamwork makes the dream work, right? Consider prebiotics as the ‘food’ for the good bacteria, providing a healthy environment, and the probiotics as the seeds that allow the skin to thrive and grow.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, I saw a steep rise in redness, inflammation and sensitivity concerns. The skin’s barrier became compromised with elevated stress levels and wearing face masks. Using a topical prebiotic and probiotic in your skincare routine can significantly reduce symptoms such as dryness, flaking, blemishes, breakouts, and assist with the balancing of the pH to strengthen the skin’s barrier.

So which skincare prebiotics and probiotic are best? As a cosmetic scientist, I recommend avoiding skincare products with whole, live probiotic bacteria. All skincare formulations must contain preservative ingredients that are designed to kill bacteria to prevent them from contaminating your product and harming your skin and eyes. So, if you think about it, preservatives in skincare don’t know how to distinguish between keeping the good probiotic bacteria and killing the harmful bacteria.

At Synergie Skin, we have harnessed both prebiotics and probiotics in an innovative pre-serum elixir, Dermiotic, to boost the skin’s resistance to physical and environmental aggressors. It uses my favourite prebiotic skin food, alpha-glucan oligosaccharide, and probiotic ingredient, bifida ferment lysates. The technology behind lysates means they are small, cut pieces of the whole, live probiotic bacteria that trigger beneficial changes in the skin just like the whole bacteria.

There are also some great ways to boost your prebiotics and probiotics by incorporating them in your diet. To increase your intake of prebiotics, reach for good quality fibre sources. There are many fibrous fruits and vegetables that contain prebiotics – asparagus, leeks, broccoli, garlic and apples. My number one form of prebiotic in food is konjac root. To increase your daily intake of probiotics, some great go-to foods are natural yoghurt, kefir, miso, sauerkraut, kimchi, tempeh and kombucha.

Prebiotics and probiotics in a topical formulation can truly be a skincare game-changer for all skin types and conditions. Together, they provide the optimal environment for healthy cell renewal, microbiome balance, reducing skin inflammation and restoring your natural glow.

Consider prebiotic and probiotic skincare to be an essential part of every daily skincare routine for every skin type. Let’s ditch the old fashioned ‘toner’ as an outdated skin balancer and replace it with a quality prebiotic and probiotic elixir as the ultimate skin balancer!