If you come from a family that holds a strong belief in traditional, homemade recipes for colds and sickness, chances are you’re not completely unaware of the benefits that honey can provide. Particularly in its raw form, meaning it hasn’t been pasteurized or heated until the point where all its beneficial enzymes and compounds have been denatured, honey can soothe a sore throat, fight off bacterial infection both inside your body and out and help aid digestion.
And like many other all-over good-guy health foods, the benefits of raw honey can also be applied to keep your skin looking younger, your hair looking shinier and a myriad of other fantastic things, making raw honey one of the most potent beauty products you can boast in your bathroom cabinet. If you get creative, only stick to unpasteurized honey, and make sure you rinse down after every application to ensure you don’t get the rest of your family riled up from all the sticky surfaces around the house, there’s no telling the things you might achieve with this powerful natural beauty weapon.
Here’s three ways you can use raw honey to replace many of your conventional, toxic beauty products.
- Restore shine to your hair
The active enzymes and nutrients found in raw honey nourish and protect your lovely locks and make it an excellent addition to your collection of haircare products. Due to it’s characteristic stickiness, however, it needs to be handled in a certain way to avoid ending up with clumpy, Winnie the Poo-esque hair.
There’s two options for returning shine to your hair and locking in some sought-after goodness into your follicles. The first involves simply combining a tablespoon of raw honey with a liter of warm water in a large glass jar. The warm water helps to make the honey less viscous and easier to handle, so after you combine the two ingredients, screw on a lid and shake it up until the honey blends with the water. Rinse your hair thoroughly with the mixture either after shampooing or as a standalone wash. Leave the solution in your hair for an hour or so, then rinse it off again in the shower to ensure all the sticky residue is gone.
The second option is to use the same method of combining warm water and honey then mixing it together in a glass jar until combined, only this time you just need to use half a teaspoon of honey. As before, rinse your hair with the concoction but then leave it in overnight, placing a towel on your pillow so your pillowcase doesn’t get slightly sticky.
- Keep your face unlined and wrinkle free
Raw honey was made for your face, and I’m not just talking about the corners of your mouth or your nose after you’ve tucked into a particularly generous helping of bread and honey! It can be used as a gentle cleanser to wash away unwanted grime and dead skin, and it won’t cause flare-ups in those suffering from skin disorders. It can also soothe inflamed, itchy or rash-prone skin, smooth out wrinkles and reduce lines and other signs of aging.
To use honey as a facial cleanser, simple dampen your skin with a warm wet cloth then place some raw honey on your fingers and gently but firmly massage it into your face. Leave it on for 5 minutes, then rinse off with warm water.
To utilize the health benefits of honey for a facial mask, it’s just as simple. This time, make sure your face is clean but dry, and spread a thin uniform layer of raw honey over your face or any area which is dry or in need of attention. Leave the mask on for 20 to 30 minutes, then gently rinse off with warm water.
- Treat your summertime sunburn
It happens every year — it’s the first hot day of the summer, you spend far too much time sitting out in the sun with friends or family and some or all of your body gets burned. Don’t turn to those nasty toxic sunburn treatments sold in supermarkets and drugstores, instead use this guilt-free solution made from ingredients you probably already have at home.
- Mix together 1 tablespoon of raw honey and 2 tablespoons of pure aloe vera gel, either squeezed directly from the plant or from a store-bought brand ONLY containing aloe vera.
- Gently apply the mixture to your sunburned area, and leave on for at least a few hours, or put a few towels down on the bed and leave it on overnight, rinsing in the shower with warm water in the morning.
- The powerful anti-inflammatory and hydrating properties of both these ingredients will soothe the area and hopefully keep your sunburn from peeling.
Want to learn more about the great health benefits of raw honey? You might find this interesting!
—Liivi Hess