Kit Wallen Russell, Director of Pavane Research Centre, the R&D arm behind JooMo brand’s microbiome-friendly skin care technology, recently spoke to CosmeticsOBS. He is preparing to publish his latest research into the skin microbiome: clinical trials conducted with the Medical University of Graz in Austria and asks a crucial question: ”Are modern cosmetics a cause of the skin allergy epidemic?” With another way of considering the microbiome so much discussed today…
Biodiversity
“Biodiversity is the only indicator of skin health” - these are the words of Kit. In an article published in May 2017, Kit made what he calls a ‘great discovery’ in the field of the skin microbiome. Due to the complete lack of conclusive findings linking certain types of microbe to healthy or damaged skin, he discovered that the healthier the skin, the higher the biodiversity; a phenomenon replicated across every ecosystem in nature. From the plains of Yellowstone Park, to a millimeter of tubing in the human gut, the skin is no different.
He also says we need to re-think our attitudes towards the skin microbiome: “Microbes are not inherently ‘bad’ or ‘pathogenic’, but some have a tendency to do so when the skin’s ecosystem is out of balance and the biodiversity is lowered. I use an example of Yellowstone Park to highlight this point in my paper by relating the role of the elk to that of a pathogenic microbe on the skin. The elk were behaving in a ‘pathogenic’ and damaging way to the park, (overgrazing and over breeding, meaning their numbers swelled) but when the biodiversity was increased and the balance restored, their pathogenic behaviour …
