This article was written last year and thought it needed some revision with all that has changed in our world today. Your best skin starts in your gut – despite all the products I talk about, what matters more than anything else is the health of your digestive tract and your emotional wellbeing. Today we will talk about the former: gut health, your skin and yummy, yummy coconut yoghurt.

Dairy: The Ugly Truth

Yoghurt is often touted as a portion of great food for your digestion since it naturally contains probiotics. While that’s true, dairy from animals (especially cows) is acidic and creates mucous buildup in the intestinal walls. This creates slower digestion, and in turn a slower elimination. Slower elimination equates to less healthy skin, since your body is detoxing in other ways you can notice things like acne.  Further, dairy causes your skin to produce excess sebum (oil), leading to more clogged pores as well as inflammation from the IGF-1 growth hormone found in milk (good for baby cows, not good for you or acne).

Many people eat yoghurt because they have been told that it’s a good source of “friendly bacteria.” What they don’t mention is the bacteria used to make most yoghurt (L. bulgaricus and S. thermophilus) are not the key “beneficial bacteria” and they pasteurize it, which kills off the good guys anyways! This is before the chance of added hormones and antibiotics that the animals may have been on.

Probiotics and Your Skin

Your gut and your skincare are so closely linked: one of their core main functions is elimination and detoxification.  When our gut flora is not healthy, problems such as chronic inflammation, aka acne and other skin problems can show up. Probiotics help to naturally balance our gut flora (the good guys and the bad guys who live in our GI tract).

So for anyone looking for their loveliest skin, we should start by looking at how our gut is functioning. To boost your levels of good bacteria, you can take a probiotic supplement, and you can also eat foods like miso, tempeh, kimchi, sauerkraut, kefir and, of course, coconut yoghurt!

How to Make Coconut Yogurt: What You’ll Need

1. Large jar
2. 2-3 cans of organic coconut milk (full fat)
3. 2-3 probiotic capsules (that you can easily break apart and dump into the milk)
4. A wooden spoon
5. Cheese Cloth
6. Elastic band

How to Make Coconut Yogurt: Directions

Here’s what you’ll need to do:

1. Pour cans of coconut milk into a clean glass jar (I used 3)
2. Break apart 3 probiotic capsules with more than 20 billion live cultures
3. Stir in with a wooden spoon (this is important, don’t use metal as it reacts with the probiotics)
4. Cover with cheesecloth and a rubber band
5. Let sit on the counter for 24 – 48 hours
6. Taste during the resting time to reach your desired tangy-ness
7. When it has reached it, put it in the fridge overnight, it should thicken
8. Enjoy!

The yoghurt can last up to two weeks in the fridge.

If you want to make another culture, make sure to save some of the previous yoghurts no more than 7 days old to make the new batch.

*If for any reason you see mould or it smells off (aka not like yoghurt), pitch it and try again!

Enjoy this yoghurt as you would any other – I love dipping my berries in it, adding it to smoothies, and using it in certain dishes (such as Indian raita and tzatziki).