Lately, every magazine I read, I see new articles on the microbiome, adverts for products on gut health and now I’ve seen Sanex Biome Protect bodywash on shelves in the shops. Yes, don’t forget our skin has it’s own microbiome, communities made up of millions of micro-organisms, co-existing in balance to keep our skin healthy. These microbiota certainly deserve the attention they are receiving. Finally!
The truth be known this is not such a new idea or concept and here at Wagawhey I have been speaking to people about this for decades. When I first launched our business in South Africa in 1999 and tried to promote our product and explain the importance of gut health I got blank stares and a lot of scepticism about how taking a product internally could help a dog’s external skin. The concept was new and people did not understand the science behind it. Neither was it fully appreciated that the skin, our bodies largest organ, can be healed from within because we did not understand our skin coats not only our external body but also lines the internals of our body.
It was only when I started a conversation with Dr. Christopher Vasey, a Swiss Naturopath and read his book, The Whey Prescription (published in 1998), that I could start to show people the link between gut health and disease and how whey enzymes could be beneficial. There really wasn’t a lot of literature about this in the public domain back then. Slowly people began to comprehend and grasp the link between the gut and the skin (now commonly referred to as the Gut-Skin Axis) leading them to confidently try our product. Funny how sceptical some can be with a purely natural product when there is very little scientific research to back it up! Since then we got Wagawhey registered as a complementary medicine with the MCC in South Africa.
We only need to read about Cleopatra bathing in whey back in 69BC. This is now called a Milk Peptide by cosmetic brands targeting skin microbiome to reduce wrinkles and keep the skin looking young and subtle. I guess Cleopatra was a woman ahead of her times!
Nowadays you can’t avoid the subject of gut health and the microbiome. Scientific studies are being commissioned everywhere to better understand it and the findings are very inspiring and compelling. This could open the gateway to so many new ways to treat many ailments and fight disease. The best part is that the emerging thinking suggests healing can take place naturally with natural products and healthy eating. The below extract from the Journal of Translational Medicine is very encouraging. Our health is truly in our hands and change can start today.
“Recent studies have suggested that the intestinal microbiome plays an important role in modulating risk of several chronic diseases, including inflammatory bowel disease, obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. At the same time, it is now understood that diet plays a significant role in shaping the microbiome, with experiments showing that dietary alterations can induce large, temporary microbial shifts within 24 h. The consumption of particular types of food produces predictable shifts in existing host bacterial genera. Furthermore, the identity of these bacteria affects host immune and metabolic parameters, with broad implications for human health. Familiarity with these associations will be of tremendous use to the practitioner as well as the patient.”
Lucky for me with all the available information out there and with Google (not around when I first started out) enabling customers to do their own research, it has made it so much easier to explain the working of the product and how it naturally supports the rebalancing of the gut microbiome, effectively helping with external skin disorders.
Hope you all enjoyed World Mircobiome Day on 27th June. #WorldMicrobiomeDay #Microbiome4Life