Guest Blogger Thursday: Sami's Green Tea Skin Remedies

I love tea — I love drinking it and I love that it has beneficial health effects when added to cosmetics. Today, I'm going to share a few tips on how to — and why you should — work green tea into your beauty routines.

Green tea is high in antioxidants, so it helps protect your skin from the harmful effects of the sun by protecting skin cells from the inside, thus preventing your skin from further tissue damage. I like to think of antioxidants as shields, but they do wear off, so it's important to replenish your skin's supply of antioxidants.

According to Herbs: The Healing Nature, green tea also boosts your body's immune system and aids in the prevention of the flu, hypertension, infections, and reduces cholesterol and triglyceride levels in the blood. Green tea has shown to have positive effects on the liver, womb, breasts, peptic system, lungs, and teeth.

Julie Gabriel, founder of Petite Marie Organics, writes in Green Beauty Recipes, "Green tea [is] a great all-purpose skin toner, face mask and scrub filler, eye soother, and baby skin rinse if your little one suffers from eczema."

So, start drinking green tea! And here are a few very simple ways you can use green tea to improve your skin's health:

Green Tea Toner
This one's pretty easy. Make yourself a cup of green tea, let it cool down, then pour it into a sanitized glass or plastic container. Apply to your face with cotton balls, and let your skin absorb the tea (i.e., don't rinse it off).

Green Tea Eye Mask
Those tea bags you used for your tea? Don't throw them away! After they cool down (I recommend sticking them in the fridge for a bit), place them on your eyes for 10-15 minutes to reduce puffiness.

Green Tea as an Addition to Facials
You can also work green tea into your face masks or cleansers. Cut open a bag of green tea and add the leaves into your daily face cleanser, exfoliating scrub, or facial mask. If you're looking for a mask to make yourself, check out the Avocado Mask post I wrote a few months ago. Green tea would make a great addition to this!

xoxo, Sami

~Sami Jensen is the writer of the culture blog, Poor & Pretty. She also makes cupcake soaps and bath bombs, which can be purchased online at the Poor & Pretty Bath Sweets Shoppe.