Perhaps there was a time in your life when you could bounce out of bed and say, "I woke up like this" — this, being a vision of good health with clear skin, thick hair and nothing jiggling like jelly in unwanted places.

One day, however, you blearily stare at that strange apparition in the mirror – someone who resembles you at the end of your worst day, dull skin, stress lines, eyebags and all. But, oh no, it is you… and your day is actually just about to begin.

It's good to remember, at this point, an Arabian proverb that goes like this: "He who has health has hope, and he who has hope has everything."

Hope is everything you can do at this point, really. Yet while hope springs eternal, of course beauty does not. Because after a few decades on this planet, you begin to see the way life has treated you (or maybe how you have treated your life).

All the signs will point to hell with crow's feet and breakouts, blotchy skin and saggy jowls. It's all on your skin — the habits, the excess, the mental and emotional states. 

How do you muster hope that you can recover the lost glow? The answer, they say, lies in probiotics.

The dermatologist Felip Partarrieu, in an article, says of probiotics: "When applied topically, they restore and maintain the skin microbiota, improving the skin barrier and the appearance of the skin in general. They manage to do so by improving the skin's natural defenses, promoting the production of antimicrobial peptides and by competing with pathogens for nutrients and adhesion in the skin.