Feed Your Skin

I just stumbled across one of my favourite books, Feed Your Face, by Dian Dincin Buchman. Many teenage hours were spent raiding the fridge and hiding out in the bathroom, blanketed in oatmeal mixtures to beautify myself.

This treasure trove of a book, pilfered from my mother's bookshelf, is packed with recipes for homemade natural beauty and health treatments. Natural honey features heavily, but then Cleopatra knew about the beauty benefits of honey over two thousand years ago. She is said to have bathed in milk, honey and almond oil, to have used beeswax in her face creams and treated her hair with olive oil and pure honey. Well, if it's good enough for Cleopatra!

So here's how to use Honey as a Skin Cleanser:

• Simply gently warm 4 tablespoons of pure honey in a bowl over some warm water in a pan, check it's not too hot and then pat it over your face.
• If your skin is particularly blemished at the time, you can add a small amount of wheat germ (widely available in shops) to the honey. This acts to draw the blemishes to the surface of the skin. Naturally occurring proteins and enzymes in honey make it antibacterial and toning for the skin. 
• Keep the honey on your face for 15 minutes while you relax and wash off with tepid water.
• Close your pores with an astringent, something which closes your pores. Witch hazel and cucumber are both brilliant at toning the skin and tightening the pores. 

Enjoy.