New Year, New You: Using Green Tea for Skin Health

In this post of the New Year, New You series we take a look at the powerful benefits of green tea and how it can help your skin’s overall appearance.

Green tea has a great anti-inflammatory element that calms not only your skin, but also calms down the stress that we carry from day to day. Stressful factors like jobs, school, family, our mental health, and even environmental stressors like the sun and pollution affect us everyday. Green tea does a great job of calming the body from the inside out, and it has some amazing benefits for your skin too.

Fight Against Aging

Protect your skin against premature aging with the extremely high amount of antioxidants found in green tea. It will protect against damaging free radicals, reduce inflammation and prevent lipid damage in your body. Each of these things increase the anti-aging properties in your body, and green tea can help you fight against them.

Reduce Rosacea Redness

Reduce redness through a topical cream infused with green tea. This can happen through the calming effects green tea has. In addition to calming properties, the amount of antioxidants can immensely help the skin.

Protect from Sun Damage

Looking for sun protection? Green tea can help with that too! When used as a topical product, the green tea can mitigate damage caused by the sun to skin. Although it aids with sun protection, topical cream should be used alongside sunscreen for optimal results.

You can get the benefits of green tea a variety of ways.

1. Tea Leaves –
   One of the most common ways to consume green tea is simple: drinking it. Heat the water just below boiling point while avoiding overheating the water. Overheating will cause the tea to taste bitter.
2. Supplements –
   Some people simply don’t enjoy the taste of green tea. If you fall into this category, consider taking a green tea supplement. Be careful when choosing this option. According to MedilinePlus, “Green tea extract supplements have been linked to several cases of liver damage. Green tea extract supplements have been linked to several cases of liver damage. Green tea extracts might make liver disease worse.”
3. Topical Products –
   Topical products are another way to absorb green tea and reap its benefits for your body. When choosing a topical product, look and make sure it appears brown. If it does not, that mean it doesn’t contain an effective amount of green tea.

Do you plan on using green tea to help create a new you in 2014? If so, comment below with how you plan to incorporate it into your lifestyle: