If your skin's been playing up lately, dullness, breakouts, redness, it's tempting to reach for another serum. But more often than not, what's showing up on your skin started in your gut.

Your gut and skin are in constant conversation. When your gut lining is inflamed or your microbiome is out of balance, it shows up on your face before you even realise what's happening underneath.

Here's a simple two-week protocol worth trying:

• Cut added sugar to under 25g a day for 14 days, this is roughly one soft drink's worth, and inflammatory sugar spikes are one of the most consistently linked triggers for breakouts
• Add 1-2 tablespoons of a fermented food daily (kefir, sauerkraut, kimchi), aim for it at the same meal each day so it's easy to track
• Reorder your plate: fibre and protein first, fat and carbs second, this slows the glucose spike that drives inflammatory skin responses
• Get 7+ hours of sleep for at least 10 of the 14 nights, skin repair and gut lining repair both happen overnight
• Keep a simple 1-10 flare-up score each morning alongside a one-line note on sleep, stress, and what you ate the day before

By day 14 you'll have a real pattern to look at, not a guess.

Skin issues rarely start on the surface. They start with what's going on inside.

Lee x