Obviously, you’ll probably know coffee best as that thing that gets you all jittery before work and then has you crashing on the couch by the time you get home, but coffee actually holds a firm place in the skincare world.
Usually used in the form of grounds, coffee has tons of different uses – most of them thanks to caffeine. If you’re thrifty enough, you can get all of the benefits of coffee without paying a cent- just put aside some of your coffee grounds after you make your morning cuppa.
Of course, the natural beauty world has already jumped on this, so you can also get coffee grounds in the form of a mask, a scrub or a cream – if you’re shorter on DIY time than funds. Even so, you’re buying pure benefits without hardly any of the side effects, so it’s a pretty good deal.
What benefits? Good question.
5 Coffee Benefits for Skin
1. Get That Puff Down
We’ve all been there, right? You promised yourself you’d go to bed at a reasonable hour, but it’s almost past midnight and you’re up scrolling through Facebook or consistently checking your e-mails. Maybe it was all that coffee you drank earlier.
Regardless, your old coffee grounds are here to solve your problems. The active ingredient here is – of course – caffeine, which reduces the size of blood vessels underneath the eye and takes away some of that extra puff. Caffeine also works by removing the excess water that can sometimes gather around your eyes, letting your dark circles and panda eyes finally take a much-needed nap.
This effect is also somewhat owed to caffeine’s anti-inflammatory properties. They help to calm and clear the skin, reducing redness where you need it most. Of course, that also means that coffee can be helpful for those who are prone to blushing, or who have skin conditions like rosaceae, since it can even out that ruby-red pigment that’s causing you grief.
How to make a coffee mask for your eyes? Mix 2 tsp of coffee grounds with 1 egg white, stir well and apply around under and around your eyes. Don’t want to go the DIY route? 100% Pure has a lovely organic coffee bean eye cream!
2. Grounds For Exfoliation
Okay, so this is hardly new information; coffee-based exfoliating masks are a dime-a-dozen, and you can even learn to make one online with a few clicks. Scrubbing coffee grounds on your face helps those stubborn dead skin flakes to finally take their leave and, more importantly, makes way for new and healthier cells to flourish.
Additionally, you can mix and match with a couple of different other skin-saving ingredients to ramp up the effects. We’d suggest using unsweetened goat’s milk with olive oil if you have noticeably oily skin, but olive oil seems to mix with coffee masks like a best friend, so knock yourself out regardless of what skin type you have.
3. Cellulite Buster
I’m pretty sure every head in the metaphorical room just flew up there.
Cellulite might just be a girl’s – or man’s, we feel your pain too – worst enemy when it comes to skin care. It can knock a glaring hole through your summer plans and just make you feel extremely reluctant to flaunt your stuff in general.
And it’s probably one of the most catered to problem in the beauty industry, but if none of that works, your trusty old coffee grounds might be just what you need.
It’s better to use freshly store-bought grounds for this since used grounds lose the effects a little. The caffeine in coffee is a natural blood vessel restrictor, which means it can shrink blood vessels to size and tighten up skin in the process. Surprisingly, caffeine has a number of different anti-oxidants (it’s cacao all over again :)) and can actually boost collagen production in the body.
If you don’t remember from your high school Biology textbooks, collagen is essentially the thing that keeps our skin locked tight- and, by extension, stops us from turning into weird floppy piles of skin, which is very uncomfortable to think about – so undoubtedly, the more collagen the better. This is, without a doubt, our favorite of all the coffee skin benefits.
4. Keep Safe In The Sun
You have no idea how much it pains me to say this, but when it comes to UV protection, coffee actually beats out green tea thanks to caffeine’s skin-saving antioxidant rich composure. These antioxidants have been proven to fight off free radicals and to repair damage skin cells while they’re at it.
Of course, neither green tea nor coffee are sunscreen. You can’t just expect to walk out in a coffee mask and be beach-ready (I don’t know why you’d want to, but hey, we don’t judge here). But coffee – both drinking and wearing – can work to boost your skin’s own natural sun defense and get your protective layer toughened up so nothing can float through the cracks. This has got to be one of the most unexpected, yet welcome, benefits of coffee on skin 🙂
5. Turn Back the Clock
Coffee has actually been used as an anti-aging product for a while now. Its outstanding ability to turn back the clock comes from a combination of some of the effects that I’ve already mentioned. As free radical fighters, the anti-oxidants in caffeine can protect skin cells against damage caused by the pesky rogue molecules. This means that your skin will stay composed and preserved- it’s not going out of date any time soon!
Coffee’s anti-aging qualities stick out particularly when it’s used in a scrub since it can get to work on dispelling those stubborn, dull skin cells as well as leaving younger, more responsive cells in their place. Add it all together and you get a great little anti-aging product at little to no extra cost.
So, there you have it- coffee isn’t actually the devil. Whilst drinking normal, mass-produced coffee can be bad news for your heart rate and sleep schedule, smothering your face in it might actually be your ticket to great skin health.
I am still deeply concerned about the person who looked at their cup of coffee and decided, “I’m going to rub that all over my face!” But whoever they were – kudos and thanks!
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