Skin Irritation: What Is It and What Causes It?
Skin irritation is a complex issue, caused by a variety of factors. These factors can be both internal, originating from your body, and external. External factors contributing to skin irritation include air pollution and harmful ingredients in many mainstream skincare products, such as synthetic chemicals, microplastics, parabens, silicones, and synthetic fragrances.
Let's look at the cause of skin irritation properly?
Internal causes are often related to the health of your gut, particularly the state of your gut flora and the lining of your intestines. In many cases, this is the root cause of skin issues, although it’s often overlooked, even by doctors. As a result, you may find that your skin problems get worse instead of better, with no clear solution in sight. The more irritated your skin becomes, the harder it is to manage. In this blog, I’ll share my experience with skin irritation. If you’re interested in discovering potential causes and how you can address them, read on.
Diagnosing Skin Irritation - Our Philosophy
One of the challenges in diagnosing skin irritation is that it can vary from person to person and can have different causes. As you may know, our philosophy is that the skin is a dynamic reflection of what you eat, how you feel, how you breathe, how much you move, the number of thoughts you have, and how balanced you are overall.
In line with this philosophy, we believe that the root cause of skin problems lies in gut health and how well your digestive system processes what you eat.
Whether you’re dealing with oily skin, hormone-disrupted skin, acne, dry skin, eczema, rosacea, or sensitive skin, the underlying issue often lies in your gut, and more specifically, in what you eat. What you consume has a significant, if not the largest, impact on how your skin looks. Have you seen the Netflix documentary “You Are What You Eat”? The impact your diet has on your overall health applies just as much to your skin.
How Healthy Skin Looks Like?
If your gut health is in good shape, likely because you’re eating mostly vegetables, fruits, fresh and dried herbs, a small amount of protein, no dairy, and very little gluten, your skin will probably look clear and healthy. No acne, no blemishes, no oily or overly sensitive skin, just a normal, balanced complexion.
Skin Irritation Due to Allergens
Skin irritation can also be caused by consuming allergenic foods, such as dairy, gluten, histamine-rich foods (which can include fruits and vegetables), coffee, black tea, and shellfish. Yes, those delicious prawns, crab, and other seafood can be problematic if you suffer from sensitive, flare-up-prone skin. This type of irritation often appears in the fall and disappears when you stop consuming the foods you’re sensitive to. This varies from person to person.
In your gut, here’s what happens: when you eat a food that causes an allergic reaction, it triggers inflammation in your body, leading to the release of histamine by mast cells. This results in itching, bumps, and dry, eczema-like patches on your skin.
At such times, your body, already producing elevated histamine levels, can overreact to skincare products, causing further sensitivity. So the cause is not your skin care, that is often only a trigger. The arrow points your gut health, according to our skin phylosophy.
- How can you resolve this?
- Eliminate the foods that are causing the irritation completely and
- support your body with a light detox. Detoxing helps your body remove substances that your liver is currently unable to process. This gives your liver, the body’s main detoxification organ, some breathing room, allowing it to resume normal functioning.
- After detoxing, your skin will likely tolerate regular skincare products again.
- Additionally, you can help your gut by taking a good probiotic supplement, Omega 3, and borage oil.
- What should you avoid? Using aggressive treatments that might be prescribed to you. These tend to suppress symptoms while damaging the natural skin barrier, which makes your skin more sensitive and harder to treat.
Skin Irritation Due to SIBO: Often Rosacea
SIBO, or Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth, refers to the excessive growth of harmful bacteria in the small intestine, often due to poor dietary habits. The small intestine is an important organ that, when functioning well, absorbs nutrients from food into the bloodstream and passes waste products to the large intestine. It separates what is beneficial from what is harmful to your body—a vital process.
The small intestine is responsible for most of the digestion and nutrient absorption, through enzymes produced by the intestinal lining that break down food into smaller components.
However, when bacteria from the large intestine migrate to the small intestine (causing SIBO), they trigger inflammation. This inflammation hinders the small intestine’s ability to break down and digest food, resulting in partially digested substances entering the bloodstream. This can manifest as rosacea.
It’s interesting to note that rosacea typically appears on the cheeks, near the cheekbone—right where acupuncture points for the small intestine (SI18) and stomach (ST3) are located. It’s almost as if the skin is signaling, "Take a look at your stomach and digestion." Western medicine now acknowledges that SIBO is common among rosacea patients, and when SIBO is treated, rosacea often disappears.
How can you treat SIBO naturally to resolve rosacea?
- For one month, take the supplement Flora Correct, which helps restore balance by targeting bacterial overgrowth and reducing inflammation.
- During this month, avoid all dairy, gluten, histamine-rich foods, red wine, spicy foods, coffee, sausages, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, ashwagandha, and soy products.
- After this month, continue using a Quercetin Complex for another three months. Eat plenty of green vegetables, both raw and cooked, and include a daily serving of cooked mung beans (which do not produce gas and help cleanse the intestines) with coriander seeds, salt, and a bit of vinegar. Avoid all forms of sugar, alcohol, white flour, pastries, pizza, pasta, and potatoes.
Summary
Skin irritation can have a variety of causes, but one of the main culprits often lies in your gut and diet. By paying attention to what you eat and identifying potential allergens, you can significantly reduce or even prevent skin irritation. Taking care of your gut health provides your skin with the best chance to remain healthy and glowing.
Questions about skin and skin irritation
If you have any questions about your skin's Health or skin irritation you can send me an e-mail with your questions.
DISCLAIMER: This article is not a diagnosis nor an advice to cure or heal any of the above mentioned complaints. If you suffer from serieus health issues, always contact your fysician.
