Skin Microbiome

At Marie Veronique, we talk so often about how to get and keep your skin healthy that we thought it would be helpful to take a step back and share some fundamental information about the skin. After all, if you want to understand how our products work, it’s helpful to understand how the skin works. 

This overview of the structure and function of the skin may take you back to your high school biology days (no passing notes!), but we’ll try to keep it on the interesting side. 

At Marie Veronique, we focus on learning everything we can about the roles the various microbiomes in our body play in keeping us, and in particular our skin, healthy. We’ve become so familiar with microbes like Propionibacterium acnes and Staphylococcus epidermidis that they practically feel like our next door neighbors.

In actuality, these bacteria and millions of others like them are even closer to us than our real next door neighbors because they live in and on us—in our gut, our pores, our eyelashes, you name it. There isn’t a crevice, cranny, or fold on the inside or outside of our body that isn’t inhabited by tiny microorganisms ranging from fairly large mites to microscopic microbes.

The second annual microbiome conference was held in San Francisco recently.  The talks ranged from scientists investigating individual microbial species that call the skin microbiome their home, such as Staphylococcus aureus and Proprionibacterium acnes, to entrepreneurs with biome-based products designed to improve skin health. 

Between Kristina Holey’s practice and my experience with customers, we’ve seen a major surge of inflammatory conditions like acne, rosacea and dermatitis over the last few years. In fact, it’s reached epidemic proportions in Kristina’s female clients in their 30s and 40s.

Suppose some of the approximately one trillion microorganisms that live on your skin are finding their living conditions objectionable, even intolerable. How would they let you, their god-like host, know about it?  If you were a commensal microbe living on the skin, Staphylococcus epidermidis, for example, and you just wanted to go about your business keeping your little part of the world relatively pathogen-free, you might consider sending a message in the form of an acne breakout, a rosacea flush or an undesirable rash.

Consumers have had a considerable impact on the food industry by demanding more organic, natural, sustainable and local options. And since consumers have turned their attention to the cosmetics and skin care industry, demanding better accountability and more stringent safety standards, we’ve seen real progress when it comes to cleaning up our cosmetics and body care products, especially in the last decade.

Warmer days and brilliant bouquets are around the corner. But for allergy sufferers, springtime is no picnic. Those joyful transitions can also translate into an annual ritual of sneezing, sniffling and itchy skin. The first step toward relief is to identify your position on the rash spectrum and to remember that pollen in the air is only one factor in the skin irritation equation.