Read the full transcript of entrepreneur and scientist Barbara Paldus’s talk titled “Healthy Skin Starts From Within” at TEDxPrague, April 14, 2025.
Listen to the audio version here:
Ancient Wisdom Meets Modern Science
Barbara Paldus: 2,000 years ago Hippocrates said all diseases start in the gut. Well he was 30% right. Today I’m going to take you on a journey of how to solve skin problems starting in the gut, not forgetting your brain and discovering your microbiome.
From Electrical Engineer to Skin Health Pioneer
Now how did an electrical engineer like me end up solving skin problems from the inside out? Well it started with my son who had a severe allergy to preservative that was triggered by contact dermatitis. The contact dermatitis led to atopic dermatitis which we also call eczema and then ADHD. Now he also has moderate teenage acne.
Being a mom I wanted the best for my child so I searched for alternative preservatives, corticosteroids, isotretinoins, benzoyl peroxide. Well I didn’t find much so necessity being the mother of invention I decided to change fields and develop new technologies that wouldn’t have side effects. Now it’s a mission to fundamentally transform two industries, skincare and dermatology because technologies there have not changed significantly in 50 years.
Understanding the Skin-Gut-Brain-Biome Connection
We’re going to be learning about the skin gut brain biome so I want all of you to imagine that your gut is in two-way communication with your brain, both are in two-way communication with your skin, and all three are in two-way communication with your microbiome.
For those of you to whom the microbiome is new know that we have 30 trillion human cells in our body but we carry around with us a hundred trillion non-human cells. These are bacteria, yeasts, fungi, etc. These are what make up our microbiomes so we’re not as human as we think and yet our lives literally depend on these microorganisms.
The gut for example, it starts in your mouth, the gut microbiome, it runs 10 meters through your digestive tract and ends in your anus. It helps us digest food. It also synthesizes key vitamins. It also affects our immunity, our mental health, our hormonal balance. Amazing isn’t it? And without the gut microbiome we would not last very long because we wouldn’t be able to pull nutrients out of the food we eat.
Our skin too is important and although its microbiome is not as rich as the gut it protects us from infections. So I want all of you to look around and say I am a complex skin gut brain biome system where everything is interconnected.
The Preservative Problem
Now back to the preservative in my son. This preservative is used in over 50 percent of personal care products made in the world today and is considered safe at concentrations below one percent. However, at concentrations of more than one percent it can cause the common allergy called contact dermatitis and in people that are susceptible it can lead to eczema.
This was the case with my son and because the skincare industry is not regulated manufacturers are not required to measure the concentration of this preservative in their final formulation let alone report it. So I will never know what happened. What I do know is that instead of becoming a happy soccer mom I became an unhappy eczema mom.
What that means is I was trying to minimize corticosteroids and I was trying to slow down what’s called the atopic march. This is a progression of allergic diseases that starts with dry skin but then evolves into eczema and food allergies and in some people asthma and a never-ending runny nose called rhinitis.
So I became an expert in using coconut oil instead of diaper cream in making my own vitamin B12 lotion by grinding vitamin B12 tablets and nightly rituals of colloidal oatmeal baths and in this way along with making all of his food, becoming an expert in organic cotton clothing, detergents, keeping diaries, by the time he was six we had minimized his flare-ups and the eczema was limited to just his knees and his elbows and I thought the worst was over.
Well no, when he turned eight he was diagnosed with ADHD and it was only later that I found out that children who have eczema are at much higher risk of developing ADHD. In fact their risk is 50 percent higher. Do we know why? No.
What I did learn though was that the skin gut microbiome is very real. He was prescribed ADHD medication and for the first time I observed that if he ate protein for breakfast, the medication lasted longer and in fact he could focus. If he ate sugar, forget it. It was a disaster. And so this is my first experience and this is how we got going.
The Global Eczema Crisis
Now I want to digress for a second and give you some numbers. Did you know that 20 percent of newborns and children suffer from eczema? That’s one in five and globally speaking that’s 500 million or half a billion little people. And it’s not just the children who suffer, it’s the families and the mothers. And eczema is increasing in the world population as is ADHD. So what are we doing wrong? The more I learned, the more I decided we had to change things.
Innovation Through Nature: The Lactobacillus Solution
So I started with the preservative system and decided to create an alternative. The coconut oil was edible, you know, diaper cream, coconut oil. So I thought maybe I can make a preservative system that is not only edible but safe for newborns. And I didn’t know what to do and one day I opened the fridge and there was yogurt staring me in the face. And that’s when I had the epiphany. Lactobacillus.
Humans have been using lactobacillus to ferment and preserve food for thousands of years.
So why not use lactobacillus in skincare? And this was where my career changed. I assembled a team and we developed the first biotech lactobacillus preservative system in the world that today has five years of shelf life and can compete with any commercial preservative out there. But more importantly, it does not disrupt your skin microbiome. You know, those bacteria that keep us safe from infections. In fact, it mimics nature. So every time you put skincare on, that skin microbiome you can’t hear isn’t going nuclear bombs.
Now, by this time my son was 13 and he had acne. His pediatrician recommended benzoyl peroxide. It’s a very common and effective acne treatment. However, I was paranoid by this point and as a chemist I knew that benzoyl peroxide was effective because it’s very reactive, but it also degrades into benzene, a known carcinogen. And so I didn’t buy it because you see in the United States it’s available everywhere. In Europe it’s refrigerated, but in the United States it’s not and I didn’t trust the supply chain.
And so, guess what? This October, Yale University published a study on 111 benzoyl peroxide products and found that 34% of them had benzene levels that exceeded the FDA safety limit, some of them up to a factor of 12. The conclusion? I think you can make that for yourself. And dermatologists are now reevaluating the use of this topical.
A Safer Approach to Acne Treatment
We have taken a different approach. We went to colloidal sulfur and sulfur basically is elemental. It’s part of our bodies. It’s low risk. And we also called on European partners who could develop microbiome modulating systems because ultimately acne is C. acnes bacteria that overgrow your skin. So if you can shift the microbiome and rebalance it, you can get rid of acne. And we had 40% improvement, which was comparable to topicals that are commercially available, but the acne kept coming back.
And that’s when we realized you have to treat it internally. Oily skin, which is the breeding ground for acne bacteria, is caused by your gut, either inflammation or microbiome imbalance, or by your brain. Cortisol, a stress hormone, that unbalances your sex hormones. So we developed a probiotic herbal for common acne and an Ayurvedic herbal to rebalance hormones in female adult hormonal acne. And the results matched conventional medicine. 60% improvement in eight weeks. So this was the first time we had real success with skin, gut, brain, biome solutions. So we wondered if we could extend them to other things. For example, eczema.
Rethinking Eczema Treatment
Well, the literature certainly seemed to point in that direction. But the pieces were there, but nobody had put them together. Now, eczema, traditionally dermatologists prescribe corticosteroids that have known side effects. Skin thinning, poor breath. In children, they can delay growth rates or cause cushing syndrome. Worse yet, there’s a group of people who get topical steroid withdrawal syndrome. This is a violent immune reaction that happens suddenly where their entire body is on fire and all of their skin peels. Do we know why this happens? No. Do we know who’s susceptible? No. Can we do a lot better for everyone with eczema? Yes.
Now, eczema is an interesting skin gut disease because both the skin barrier and the gut barrier are leaky. That means they let pathogens and toxins into the body. And that actually means that your body has an ongoing allergic reaction, bigger and bigger, which causes more and more inflammation. And today, we still don’t know if the leaky gut causes the leaky skin or the leaky skin causes the leaky gut.
So, we started on the inside this time. Literature pointed us to L-histidine. It’s an amino acid that is known by the body to rebuild a skin barrier and has lessened eczema severity. We added to that a Patagonian antioxidant that was known to reduce gut inflammation. Why? Well, many people with eczema have an inflamed gut.
We also created a probiotic. Why? Because people with eczema have a lower diversity gut microbiome. And in fact, many of them are lacking keystone species like Bifidobacterium or Lactobacillus. And in fact, we found that certain species of Lactobacillus can reduce anxiety and depression. Isn’t that cool? So, we actually had an oral skin gut brain biome solution.
Breakthrough Results
For the topical, we explored many different plants. And with genetic expression on human skin cells, we isolated it to five plants whose cells could essentially repair the skin barrier and reduce itch. When we put it all together, in eight weeks, we were shocked and our dermatologists were even more shocked. 95% eczema reduction in every single test patient with mild to moderate atopic dermatitis. This means we cleared the eczema.
And that also meant that for the first time, there was a plant-based alternative integrative solution available to challenge corticosteroids for the first time in 70 years.
The Future of Medicine
So, what does that mean? Well, while much work remains to be done, I firmly believe that skin gut brain biome will represent and usher in a healthier future for the one billion people suffering from skin conditions like acne, eczema, psoriasis, and rosacea. I also believe that in time, we will clinically prove that these integrative solutions are not only as effective as conventional medicine, but have no side effects.
So, to me, skin gut brain biome is the next revolution in medicine.
Your Power to Transform
And what about all of you? Well, you are the customer. You can choose what you put in and out of your body. You can prevent problems before they happen. And all of us together, by making the right decisions, we can transform industries. We can eliminate the bad things.
But as Seneca said, “It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare. It is because we do not dare, they are difficult.”
So, I challenge all of you. Dare, think, read, learn, question. Knowledge is power, so be informed, not influenced.
Conclusion
To me, this journey started with my son’s allergy, and I’m now developing integrative solutions that I hope will ease unnecessary suffering. For you, the questions will be different, but your journey of discovery, no less transformative.
So, join me in changing the world, one skin gut brain biome at a time, because this is metamorphosis. Thank you.
