The new buzz-ingredient family in skincare is one of the oldest families in healthy foods – good bacteria! In a world where one’s health is so precarious, the defensive role of our microbiome, both internally and externally, seems to affirm that beauty can only come from good health.
Prebiotics are fermented sugars and oligosaccharides that feed our own bacteria. Probiotics are the actual bacteria and/or yeasts that can help keep the skin’s microbiome balanced. In skincare, only the ferments and lysates of the bacteria can be used, as living bacteria (even the friendly kinds!) would result in rather unstable end-products.
At Swissline, we have been using pre and probiotics for longer than a decade (!!), it’s just that nobody was calling them “probiotics” back then. Great balancing natural ingredients, such as the ferments of Thermus thermophilus or the lysate of Lactobacillus, are familiar to us, as well as the oligosaccharides and yeast derivatives, which assume the role of prebiotics.