Free People Beauty + Wellness Spotlight | Free People’s Beauty + Wellness Shop has become an incredible resource for shopping top wellness and clean beauty brands we love. In addition to their assortment, they offer editorial articles highlighting pro-vetted guides, industry interviews and immersive ‘I tried it’s’, you can discover all the most rave-worthy products and practices around on their website. If you haven’t explored it yet, shop now and find a slew of TCM-approved products, brands and articles for the summer season including our top picks for probiotics below inspired by Free People’s article Are Probiotics The Reason Why My Skin Is Suddenly Perfect?.

The quest for glowing skin usually starts with a skincare spending spree — whether through an online brand, a big beauty retailer or even a dermatologist’s office. While no one’s sense of self-worth should be based upon how skin looks day to day, we know that chronic breakouts can be frustrating, uncomfortable, distracting and painful. People with perfect skin may never realize all the mental and emotional gymnastics that go into managing problem skin — whether it’s trying to look natural at the beach while still covering up breakouts or heading on a trip to a hot location without worrying about the havoc it’s going to wreak on your skin. Managing acne is a battle we’re more than happy to have put behind us.

What we’ve learned after years on the wellness scene is that clear skin is often high on the list of priorities in the pursuit of high-vibe health. And there’s truly nothing wrong with that. Above all, clear skin is connected to balanced gut health — a truth that is usually music to the ears of those who have tried everything in their pursuit of clear skin.

Our Editor-In-Chief first got serious about nutrition after a gut-healing protocol years ago dramatically cleared up her skin, we put one former editor on a test-round of probiotics last year and she wrote, “The benefits became more and more obvious over the course of a month. Without changing any other habits, I noticed that my skin had a new ‘alive’ look to it . . . I even noticed a significant uptick in my mood and stress tolerance.”

We’ve met hundreds of women and men in wellness — from herbalists to nutritionists to holistic health coaches — and one thing nearly all of them have in common is skin that seems to glow from within. The common thread? A pretty major commitment to a lifestyle that supports gut health and a balanced microbiome.

Our favorite example of this is Whitney Tingle. As founder and co-CEO of Sakara Life, Whitney is one of the glowiest girls around. It’s almost impossible to imagine Whitney with problem skin, but according to the healthy exec, she struggled with her skin so much that it’s what first drove her to the wellness space in the first place.

“The biggest revelation to healing my complexion was understanding that I did not have a skin problem; I had a gut problem.”

“Skin issues are most often an inflammatory response,” Tingle says. “When the body is under constant stress—whether it’s physical stress due to a lack of sleep or improper diet, mental stress from work, or emotional stress from relationships — it throws the ecosystem of the microbiome out of balance.” This shift allows for “bad” bacteria or yeast to grow inside your body. It also triggers a natural inflammatory response—your body’s reaction when it’s trying to heal itself.

“This microbial imbalance in the body can show up in many different ways — and it most definitely can show up as acne. In order to actually rebalance the microbiome and decrease inflammation, you must feed the ‘good’ bacteria and recreate that healthy ecosystem.”

The simplest and perhaps most important way to build and bring balance to our microbiomes is with a daily probiotic. Creating gut health is not an overnight miracle, but takes time to allow the body to adjust. We’ve found that thirty days are usually enough to begin to see a difference in skin quality, but everyone is different.

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