Skin diseases like acne and eczema are almost non-existent in hunter-gatherer communities but these conditions have become commonplace across the modern world. Maybe it’s time to end the war on germs and rewild your skin?
IT’S TIME
TO REWILD
IN THE FUTURE WE’LL ALL LOOK AFTER THE MICROBES ON OUR SKIN.
We’ll understand that they are our allies and that they protect our skin from pathogens. We will choose products without synthetic ingredients that pollute our skin microbiome. We’ll feed our microbes and seed our skin with probiotic species to slow the rate of ageing and help ease sensitivity.
THE FUTURE IS PROBIOTIC NOT ANTIBIOTIC… AND THAT FUTURE STARTS NOW.
SEED
AND
FEED
Probiotics are live microbes that are good for you.
They can shift the skin’s ecology to favour a diverse ecosystem that is healthy enough to resist attacks from pathogens and to slow the rate of ageing in skin by reducing inflammation.
Esse seeds the skin with probiotics and feeds the skin with prebiotic nutrients to ensure an intervention in microbes that balances the ecology on the skin. We use mild preservatives and rapidly biodegradable foaming agents. We keep the pH of all our products at 5. We avoid polluting the skin’s ecosystem, so we are certified organic by Ecocert.

IT’S TIME
TO REWILD
Skin diseases like acne and eczema are almost non-existent in hunter-gatherer communities but these conditions have become commonplace across the modern world. Maybe it’s time to end the war on germs and rewild your skin?
IN THE FUTURE WE’LL ALL LOOK AFTER THE MICROBES ON OUR SKIN
We’ll understand that they are our allies and that they protect our skin from pathogens. We will choose products without synthetic ingredients that pollute our skin microbiome. We’ll feed our microbes and seed our skin with probiotic species to slow the rate of ageing and help ease sensitivity.
THE FUTURE IS PROBIOTIC NOT ANTIBIOTIC… AND THAT FUTURE STARTS NOW.

PROBIOTICS ARE LIVE MICROBES THAT ARE GOOD FOR YOU
They can shift the skin’s ecology to favour a diverse ecosystem that is healthy enough to resist attacks from pathogens and to slow the rate of ageing in skin by reducing inflammation.
Esse seeds the skin with probiotics and feeds the skin with prebiotic nutrients to ensure an intervention in microbes that balances the ecology on the skin. We use mild preservatives and rapidly biodegradable foaming agents. We keep the pH of all our products at 5. We avoid polluting the skin’s ecosystem, so we are certified organic by Ecocert.
FAQ
WHO AM I?
Since the completion of the Human Microbiome Project, it has become clear that each of us is a complex mix of microbes and human cells.
There are more microbes in your body than human cells… at least ten times more if you include viruses… and this has fundamentally changed our understanding of what it means to be human.
You aren’t just you… you’re an ecology of thousands of interdependent species and you wouldn’t last long without your microbial friends.
YOUR MICROBES AREN’T JUST IN YOUR GUT
Most people associate probiotics with maintaining a healthy gut but your skin is home to more than 20% of your microbial species. We have discovered that optimal skin condition depends heavily on symbiotic relationships with the microbes living on and in it.
In the coming years, probiotics will become as important in skincare as they are in gut health.
The share of microbial diversity in different body niches
WHY ARE WE ONLY HEARING ABOUT THE SKIN MICROBIOME NOW?
Until the last decade it was prohibitively expensive to identify microbes by their DNA. The price of sequencing DNA has fallen incredibly fast. This allowed scientists to use this technique on skin and it became possible to take a proper roll-call of which microbes naturally exist in the skin structure.
The falling cost of DNA sequencing
WHAT DO MY MICROBES DO FOR ME?
You have distinct microbiomes in your gut, your skin, your oral cavity, your airways and (if you’re female) your vagina. In all these sites, your microbes protect you from invading pathogenic microbes by competitive exclusion. This means that they occupy all the space and consume all the available food so that invaders can’t colonize.
Your microbiome also modulates your immune system and metabolizes toxins so that they can be excreted.
WHAT DO MY MICROBES DO FOR MY SKIN?
- Modern lifestyles have resulted in skin that is often in a state of low-level inflammation.
- Your microbes improve barrier function and modulate skin’s immune response. Calm, healthy skin not only looks better but also ages slower.
- You wear your microbes like living armour that protects you from invading pathogens by competitive exclusion.
- Your resident skin microbiome helps to maintain the skin’s acidic pH, and to shape the microbial ecology by producing anti-microbial peptides.
- Your skin microbes also produce Hyaluronic Acid and other moisturising factors.
ARE MY SKIN MICROBES THE SAME ALL OVER MY BODY?
The skin microbiome varies a lot between body sites
From a microbe’s perspective, the skin can be broadly broken into three habitats … dry, moist and oily. A bit like a coral reef, a rainforest and a savannah.
Different species of microbe flourish in different conditions. The microbes that dominate your dry forearm are different from the ones that occupy your much oilier forehead or nose.
The skin microbiome varies between body sites