Is Honey Good for Your Skin?

Honey Skin Face Treatments – Recipes and Tips

Honey is a great natural ingredient for our skin. This one product can help our skin in multiple ways by moisturizing and even helping to clear up some types of acne. It is also very easy to buy which makes it a great ingredient for DIY skincare recipes. Keep reading to learn all the different ways honey can help your skin. We also share 3 different recipes for skincare products with honey.

What Exactly Is Honey?

Honey is a 100% natural product made by bees. After the bees collect the nectar from the flowers and also put it in the honeycomb, over time, it breaks down into pure sugars and evaporates, leaving that golden, sticky goodness we know as honey. (So cool, right?) There are no additives, colorings, or flavorings in honey.

Honey contains 180 unique compounds including phenolic acids, flavonoids, ascorbic acid, alpha-tocopherol, carotenoids, the enzymes glucose oxidase and catalase, organic and amino acids, and proteins.

Why Honey is Good for Your Skin?

When you think of honey, the moisturizing benefits might naturally come to mind, but did you know that honey also has antibacterial and antioxidant properties to it as well?

• Antibacterial Properties: Honey might help diminish acne for some people. Used as a bi-weekly face mask, you may see the acne on your skin start to go away. With regular use, it will slow down new acne from forming.
• Antioxidant Properties: Honey is a great all-natural antioxidant that, with regular use, will help fend off free radicals that are responsible for signs of aging on your skin.
• Moisturizing Properties: This is a no-brainer, but honey has wonderful moisturizing benefits to it, which is why it is perfect additive in your bath, foot soak, or mask.

What Skin Types Is Honey Best For?

Honey can be used by all skin types equally. If you struggle with acne, honey’s antibacterial properties will help the acne go away without drying out your skin like typical acne products. While typically if a product is good for acne, it certainly isn’t good for dry skin, but honey helps dry skin as well with its antioxidant and moisturizing properties. It works well for normal and sensitive skin too.

How To Use Honey On Your Face and Body

• Honey for Face: The simplest way to use honey on your face is to apply honey to your skin as a face mask simply. It can be a bit tricky to get the sticky honey the first time, but once you try, you’ll find what works. Let it sit for 5 minutes or more and rinse off with warm water.
• Honey for Body: You have probably heard that Cleopatra bathed in milk and honey. If it’s good enough for her, what’s stopping you?

Honey is a natural humectant and moisturizes your skin. Combine that with the lactic acid in milk that naturally exfoliates – or gets rid of the dead skin cells – the skin on your body will be left smooth and hydrated without you even lifting a finger after bathing in a milk and honey bath.

Honey Skin Care Recipes

Here are 3 easy homemade honey skin care recipes that you can easily make at home. The best honey to purchase for your skin is raw manuka honey because it is medical grade and contains the highest levels of anti-bacterial compounds.

Honeyed Hands

• Raw Honey
• 2 Clean Socks
• Paintbrush

Dip the brush into a jar of raw honey and generously paint a layer of honey, about 1/4 inch thick, onto one hand and then cover with one of the socks.

Then, with your honey-mitten hand, do the same for your other hand.

Leave on for 30-minutes and then rinse off thoroughly. Your hands can reveal your real age, so smooth out and soften your hands and reverse the clock. (more about this recipe)

Honey Sugar Body Scrub

• 1 Cup Sugar
• 1/4 Cup Honey
• 1/4 Cup Oil (I love sweet almond oil, but olive oil is OK, too!)

Simply mix together ingredients and adjust the oil as needed. The great thing about DIY’ing your body scrubs is that if you like an oily scrub, add more! If you like more dry scrubs, add less.

Use on your body up to three times a week for super soft skin.

Honey Face Scrub

• 1 TB Honey
• 1 TB Powdered Milk

Mix equal parts powdered milk and honey and apply to skin, rubbing in circular motions gently with your fingers. Rinse off with warm water. This is typically safe to do every other day, but pay attention to your skin and if it seems too much, drop down to twice a week.

Diy: Honey Facial Mask

Exfoliating is the answer to many skin problems, and most people don’t exfoliate nearly enough. This honey facial mask gives you exfoliating properties and moisturizing properties all in one. Plus, we utilize ingredients right from your pantry.

Try this easy exfoliating, moisturizing mask.

Ingredients:

• 1 tablespoon Honey
• 1 teaspoon Nutmeg powder
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon powder

How to:

Mix ingredients together and then apply the mask to your face with circular motions. Leave it on your skin for 15 minutes. Rinse with lukewarm water to reveal fresh and soft skin after the dead skin cells are removed. This honey face mask can be used every other day or less if your skin is at all irritated from exfoliating.

Why it’s good for your skin:

Honey is a natural moisturizer and cleanser, and nutmeg and cinnamon are natural exfoliating agents.

Buy Skin Care Products With Honey

If you are not the type of person who likes to make their own skincare products, there are plenty of products you can purchase with honey in them.

Wash your face with Manuka Doctor Apiclear Foaming Facial Cleanser which contains manuka honey and bee venom. Fight skin aging with DERMELECT COSMECEUTICALS Get Lifted Instant Face Lift. Moisturize your skin with Honey Skin Organics Organic Moisturizer Cream for Face and Body.

Use Celavi Essence Facial Mask Paper Sheet Korea Skin Care Moisturizing 12 Pack (Honey) weekly for radiant skin.

Honeyed Hands – Provided by Elizabeth TenHouten: Cooking Well: Beautiful Skin

This recipe is provided to us by Elizabeth TenHouten, author of Cooking Well: Beautiful Skin.

What You’ll Need

• Raw Honey
• 2 Clean Socks
• Paintbrush

“Honeyed hands” may sound finger-licking good, but it is finger-smoothing good, too. Find two clean socks that you do not mind discarding after use. Use a paintbrush or a synthetic fiber makeup brush and get ready to become a living work of art.

Dip the brush into a jar of raw honey and generously paint a layer of honey, about 1/4 inch thick, onto one hand and then cover with one of the socks. Then, with your honey-mitten hand, do the same for your other hand.

Leave on for 30-minutes and then rinse off thoroughly. Your hands are another revealer of age, so smooth out and soften your hands and reverse the clock.

You can find out more about Elizabeth TenHouten and her book, Cooking Well: Beautiful Skin at ElizabethTenHouten.com.