Honey: Multi-Purpose Natural Skincare

Did you know that honey can be used for many different uses in your beauty regime? From clearing blemishes to making your skin feel smooth and soft after a bath, honey is the perfect natural beauty treatment for virtually any skin type.

Where does honey come from?

The honey we are all familiar is produced by honey bees. The worker honeybees forage nectar from flowers and store this nectar in their stomachs. The bees then carry the nectar back to the hive where groups of bees work with together to fill the honeycomb in a cycle of regurgitation and digesting the nectar. This partially digested and regurgitated nectar becomes food for the bees and the bee larva (Suarez, Lighton, Joos, Roberts, and Harrison, 1996).

So, what we can all gather from that bit of information is that honey = bee vomit. Nice! I can say that with every bite of my honey-slathered biscuit, I tried hard to erase that mental picture after I found out the first time.

Bees do more than just provide vomit for us humans to consume, they also help pollinate flowering plants by transferring pollen that clings to the little hairs on their legs and bodies from one flower to another flower. I won't get into how flowering plants reproduce, but bees are a big part of the reproduction of flowering plants.

So, with all of this honey being harvested from hives, we can actually use it for more than just eating.
Honey is great for relieving blemishes due to it's antibacterial properties and pore unclogging properties. For blemishes, just take a bit of raw honey and dab it onto the blemish for an overnight spot treatment. A little goes a long way. The honey also seals the blemish better than OTC acne creams and doesn't dry your skin out like OTC acne creams. It also helps reduce inflammation of blemishes. Makes sense when one of the major food sources of honey bees is clover. Clover flower is used in many handmade ointments and salves for its anti-inflammatory properties.

Honey can also be used to help heal minor cuts and burns! I like to use a mixture of honey, apple cider vinegar, and lemon juice to help relieve sore throats and coughs. Works pretty well!

In fact, honey is great in your bath and as a cleanser. For those who use Coconut Oil to cleanse, try adding some honey to Coconut Oil and use the mixture in place of an OTC face cleanser. Your face will feel smoother, cleaner, moisturized, and healthier. The cleanser also helps remove oils and bacteria that have built up as well as unclogging pores. Best thing- no unnecessary harsh, dangerous chemicals to worry about!

You can also add honey and about a cup of baking soda to your bath to help smooth, soften and clean skin. Making a honey scrub for bathing or showering is great too. Use a 2:1 ratio of  2 parts honey to one part of either baking soda, sea salt, or raw, unrefined sugar. These relatively inexpensive ingredients can usually be found at your local supermarket. This can be used as a lip scrub as well. For bath and shower scrubs, you can also use herbs in your honey scrub such as lavender, rose petals, or heather flowers for soothing properties.

You can even apply raw honey straight to your face as a facial mask. Just layer the honey on in an even coat as you would any other face mask and let it set for about 20 minutes. Then, rinse off and enjoy healthy, beautiful skin.


Check out the next post on the difference between handmade and commercial products.

Cheers!
Kristine



References
Suarez RK, Lighton JR, Joos B, Roberts SP, Harrison JF (1996). "Energy metabolism, enzymatic flux capacities, and metabolic flux rates in flying honeybees". Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 93 (22): 12616–20. doi:10.1073/pnas.93.22.12616. PMC 38041.PMID 8901631.