Last month our favourite TV journalist in France, Janane Boudili, picked a topic very close to our hearts: Bacteria are your new best friends. And of course to illustrate this topic, what brand was featured? Gallinée!
The first TV of our little star products, it got us all emotional. Look at them with their little sunglasses to stay cool and discreet. (Brands are banned on French TV, which makes ‘Made In Chelsea’ totally impossible. It’s a shame, I would pay good money to watch Made In Neuilly).
The whole thing was extremely well done, and not only because they were talking about us. You can find the link to the whole thing here, but as it’s in French we just translated for you below. Just read it in your head with a heavy French accent.
Repeat after us: Yes, bacteria are our buddies!
Stéphane Bern: We have been making their life a misery for ages, we hunt them with bleach, disinfectants and antibiotics. Poor bacteria. It’s true that we always tend to think of the diseases. But these little invisible beings could be actually helping us. It even seems that when it comes to beauty, they could be our best friends.
Janane : Stéphane are you mysophobic ? Are you afraid of bacteria, just like Donald Trump is? Well you should know that you are 90% of bacteria, that you have more than 1,000 species living on your body! A kind of bacterial zoo. So of course like everything in life there is good and evil. And for bacteria, you also have bacterial friends. It’s our topic, the bacteria that makes you beautiful.
They are invisible to the naked eye but still exist by thousands on your skin. We are talking about bacteria, micro-organisms that cover us from head to toe and have quite a bad reputation. We wish we could get rid of them but these bacteria are here to protect our skin. Some cosmetic products even put them into their formulas. So how does it work, are bacteria really our friends? We will explain everything.
Dr Gaucher, Dermatologist: On the surface of the skin there is a permanent swarming of micro-organisms, including bacteria. Around 1 billion per face. And in total 100,000 billions per body.
Although so present, we still ignore the precise role of these bacteria on skin.
Dr Gaucher: What we know is that they have a protective effect. This is logical, when a soil is occupied by grass, there is no room for different grass. It’s the same for the skin. If you have enough occupation of the skin surface by beneficial bacterial colonies, you will have less of none of the others. This is effectively a biological barrier.
This protective barrier made by our bacteria guarantees a good balance for our skin, but we tend to damage it. When you wash, you remove dirt but you also destroy this precious flora. Even worse, you leave roaming space for bad bacteria, the ones that can transmit diseases.
Cécile: Everyday you wash with tap water, treated with antibacterial components and chlorine. Water itself tends to be hard. You also use detergents, soaps, you wash your hands with strong antibacterials. All this destroys you skin flora, and leads to early ageing of the skin.
To soothe a skin that suffers from these aggressions, restore its balance and its health, new products have appeared. They look like nothing special, but they contains thousands of bacteria ready to colonize your skin. Like this lotion (us! us!), used on the body.
Cecile: It’s supercharged in probiotics. So it helps replenish the protective bacterial layer. And the skin protects you. So these little microbes protect you.
Probiotics are from the family of Bifidobacteria. These are the same that you can find in yogurt. For our guinea pig Dana, nothing scary at all.
Dana: I think this is going to be great because I tried probiotics for the gut flora and it helped a lot, so I think it should be the same for the skin.
If bacteria are good for the gut, they also are for the skin.
Dr Gaucher: Guts are an internal lining, and skin is an external lining. So it’s more or less the same thing, between interior and exterior.
Lather your skin with bacteria, it could feel like a weird idea, but…
Cécile: If the territory is occupied by good bacteria, there is a nice ecosystem, the territory stays healthy. And healthy means beautiful skin. And it’s especially true when it come to the face, as it is more exposed and prone to aggressions. A perfect playground for probiotics.
Juliette Levy: These probiotics are going to boost the skin natural defences and balance its ecosystem. It will allow the skin to be better at its barrier function. And we know that this barrier is vital to fight aggressions and prevent sensitivity and inflammation.
Several brands are proposing specific products for the face, and they are suited to everyone.
Juliette Levy: This range is suitable to all skin types, but particularly good for skin living in an urban environment. They are especially prone to aggression, loads of little sensitivities and inflammations where these probiotic can help.
Now you know, bacteria are truly your friends!
