Honey, a sweet treat for your skin
Egyptians were already using honey more than 4,000 years ago for its beneficial skin properties. What we today call apitherapy was also practised by the Incas, Chinese and many other ancient civilisations. So why let go of a winning product? It’s simple: our skin won’t be able to do without it.
© Thinkstock
Propolis, royal jelly, pollen... beehive products have become emblematic ingredients in hi-tech cosmetic formulas. The advantages of these products include total bioavailability, simplicity in line with current ecologist norms and nourishment that meets the skin’s wintertime needs. These properties depend of course on production quality and harvesting methods, explains Catherine Flurin, founder of the Ballot Flurin brand and spokeswoman for apiculture in France. Here’s an update on honey’s sweet and very astute benefits.
Honey, an unrivalled skin detoxifier
Amongst its many properties, research has proven honey’s cleansing ability. This living product contains natural enzymes that detoxify the skin and make it a star ingredient in make-up removers and soaps. Their cleansing action is as mild... as honey, as it happens. While white honey is overall champion for sensitive skin cleansing, black honey is recommended for oily skin types.
Honey, a powerful skin moisturiser
Honey’s powerful moisturising properties come from its remarkable percentage of over 10% of natural flower water. These properties do, of course, depend on the place of harvest. Honey collected near rivers contains more moisturising properties and honey from mountainous regions is even more moisturising.
Honey-based body and face lotions protect the skin from dehydration, which is why they are so useful in winter when heating and icy cold winds dry out the skin.
Honey, nourishing protective effects for the skin
The skin can’t get enough of honey and for good reason! Honey contains many water-soluble vitamins and minerals, starting with the B complex, essential to our skin, and folic acid (B9). Thanks to the incessant activity of those little bees, these precious minerals are bio-available (they can be absorbed by the skin). In general, honey makes excellent balms, unguents or creams, which the skin just can’t get enough of.
Honey, remarkable antioxidant properties
Less well known than honey, but just as important, other ingredients such as beeswax, royal jelly and propolis keep the skin looking young and radiant. Propolis, nested in the hive, is the queen bee's nectar and an excellent booster for collagen and elastin production, of which levels reduce significantly with pollution, tobacco and of course, age.
Kind of like a magic potion, royal jelly has shown to contain concentrations of amino acids and water; veritable stimulants of the skin's main metabolisms, and a guarantee of immunity and therefore skin’s freshness. Any anti-radical serum containing one of these elements unfailingly brightens up the skin’s cells.
So don’t hesitate to treat your skin to this sweet and effective rejuvenator; gluttony isn’t a sin for once!
Copyright © 2009 Doctissimo
Posted 02.08.2010
Get more on this subject…
