Can Drinking Kombucha Help Acne?

I'll be the first to admit it, I'm addicted to Kombucha. Straight up, A-D-D-I-C-T-E-D. I buy it at my local grocery, brew my own, and scavenge for it at the farmers market. So, as you can imagine, when I heard there was a tap room for my favorite local Kombucha, Fab Ferments, I knew I had to make the trip out there. Let me just say the drive was 100% worth it, but now that I've had Kombucha on tap I'm not sure if I can EVER go back to drinking bottles. It was nothing short of a fizzy filled dream. For those of you who are like what heck is a booch; Kombucha is basically a flavored fermented tea drink that carries a range of health benefits and packs a bubbly punch. The taste has been compared to as an effervescent apple cider vinegar like concoction, weirdly delicious.

Does Great Skin Start in the Gut?

There is a harmony of good and bad bacteria that live within your gut and when this balance is disturbed it can wreak absolute havoc on your skin. Who would've thought that an organ so far away from your face has the ability to affect the quality of your skin? This balance is extremely sensitive and can easily get thrown off by the slightest things like stress, lack of sleep, poor diet, and antibiotics.

Kind of ironic that the thing we are most often prescribed for acne, antibiotics, can actually cause acne in the long run- but we will dig deeper into that another time. Overusing antibiotics can throw off the balance in your gut because it tends to kill off all of the good bacteria, leaving you with only bad bacteria which makes your immune system more susceptible to things like disease and inflammation. When bad bacteria begin to takeover it can also cause digestion issues and a buildup of toxins which, of course, eventually find their way out of your body by purging through the skin.

Kombucha and The Gut

Kombucha is packed full of probiotics, lactic acid, and digestive enzymes that help to restore order in your intestinal track by putting good bacteria back into your gut. It also works to protect your gut and prevent harmful bacteria from taking over. According to the Journal of Food Microbiology, the specific strains of probiotics usually found in Kombucha are Acetobacter, Lactobacillus, Saccharomyces, Gluconacetobacter, and Zygozaccharomyces. The amount and type of good bacteria can differ depending on the batch due to variances in the brewing process. So not only does it taste delicious but it's got the total ability to restore the balance of bacteria in your system and reduce inflammation, which is pretty freakin cool if you ask me.

So How Does Kombucha Affect Acne?

Okay, so now that we are aware of the connection between gut health and skin, can drinking kombucha, a probiotic filled beverage, help with the treatment of acne? From personal experience I can tell you that it 100% improves the clarity of my skin, and if I go without it even for a few weeks I start breaking out in spots again. For me, this is regardless of regular probiotic and digestive enzyme consumption. Of course, I'm biased because I am crazy hooked on boocha BUT I really just think there's something special about it. To be honest, I have become so dependent on it that I actually brew my own at home, it's a great deal cheaper and the probiotic count is usually higher than store bought Kombucha (if you're interested in being a crazy kombucha lady like me you can purchase your own kit here.)

The Kombucha-Gut- Acne Link

That's just one (lovely) person's opinion, so what do the facts say? According to one Korean study, patients who drank a lactobacillus fermented beverage experienced inflammatory acne reduction by 40% and total pimple count by 23%. Not to mention, another controlled study found that 54% of acne sufferers suffer from bad bacteria overgrowth in their small intestine. 54%. The reason this number is so important is because having an imbalance of good and bad bacteria in your gut doesn't show itself in noticeable symptoms. You could be a little more tired, achy, have gas, or be breaking out but not know that you have an imbalance and pin these symptoms on something that you ate or other stressful events going on in your life.

So, half of us acne sufferers are ritualistically using creams, lotions, and potions in attempt to treat our acne but we're not targeting the source to prevent it from happening in the first place. Seems crazy but I feel like we've been conditioned in this day and age to put our faith in prescription creams and medicine, and anything that is natural is considered weird or out of the ordinary. Take a minute to soak that in, it's fine to rely on synthetic manmade treatments for clear skin, but taboo to treat them naturally and holistically? If you think about it, that’s pretty backwards.

Why not give Kombucha a try?

If you take anything away from this article have it be that your whole body is connected, think of it as a well-oiled machine, and if one thing is out of whack it can throw your whole system off. You can't just focus on healing externally, you have to heal internally as well for your body to function properly. Kombucha has various health benefits and numerous claims (such as mine) from helping acne all the way to preventing cancer. It boosts your mood, energy, and metabolism, improves digestion, detoxifies the body, and boosts immunity all by increasing the number of good bacteria in your gut. PLUS ITS DELICIOUS, so what do you have to lose? Grab a bottle of booch and start chugging away!

Giveaway: To kick off our new blog relaunch - We'll be hosting giveaways in each of our featured blog posts! Articles that were written by Brigid or Kali will be open for a giveaway to win a Banish Kit! To enter: Just comment below something that you learned from reading this post or what your thoughts were! We'll pick a winner at the end of the day! Spam comments will be disqualified.