We’re in the height of summer, which means it’s about time for some delicious and nutritious iced Green Tea. But what if you could get all of those vitamins onto your skin?
Turns out you can! Let’s learn about how Green Tea can impact your skin and how to incorporate it into your daily skincare routine.
What Is Green Tea?
Green tea comes from the dried and processed leaves of the Camellia Sinensis plant, which grows natively in China and India. The same leaves can also produce black tea, white tea, and matcha, depending on the harvesting season, oxidation levels, and leaf processing.
Green tea is normally enjoyed as an infusion of Green Tea leaves and water, but it can be applied topically for some incredible skin health benefits as well.
Green Tea contains caffeine and l-theanine, an amino acid that promotes feelings of relaxation. This tea also contains many antioxidants like catechins, flavonoids, and polyphenols.
Green Tea also contains a catechin called epigallocatechin gallate, or EGCG. This is a powerful antioxidant that has been studied immensely for its bountiful health benefits.
6 Benefits of Green Tea for Skin
But what can Green Tea actually do for your skin? Here are some of our favorite skin benefits of this delicious drink.
1. High in Antioxidants
Green Tea is incredibly high in antioxidants, which are compounds that contain extra electrons. They help your body out by supporting the health of your surface skin cells, especially during exposure to irritants.
Your surface skin cells can become compromised by pretty much anything: UV radiation, pollution, and even your own bodily processes. Your body makes some antioxidants, but sometimes those antioxidants aren’t enough to combat all of the stressors that you come in contact with.
Compromised surface skin cells can have pretty serious long-term effects on your skin health and even lead to skin conditions – however, it can also lead to premature signs of aging like wrinkles, fine lines, and even dark spots. This is why sun damage is often linked to premature aging.
Antioxidants like the catechins and polyphenols in Green Tea aren’t meant to replace sunscreen. However, because they support healthy-looking skin, they may provide an extra layer of protection against sun damage through topical application.
2. Supports Oily Skin
Sebum is an essential part of your skin’s natural hydration processes. However, sometimes your skin can get over-excited and ramp up sebum production. This might be constant for you if you have an oily skin type.
This excess sebum can clog your pores and even act as food for P. Acnes, one of the most common blemish-causing bacterias. Unsurprisingly, those with oily skin types search for oil-reducing formulations.
Green Tea may be able to help with that. EGCG, an antioxidant in Green Tea, can help maintain a healthy balance in your skin lipid levels, therefore helping to support normal levels of sebum production.
3. Minimize Signs of Aging
One of the big factors behind visible signs of aging is skin elasticity. Elasticity refers to how supple your skin is and how easily it can bounce back after physical stress.
As your skin ages, it can lose some of the important building blocks of elasticity like elastin, Hyaluronic Acid, and collagen. This leaves your skin prone to wrinkles – and it’s what most anti-aging products try to correct.
In recent animal studies, Green Tea was shown to support proper skin elasticity and even protect your skin against premature signs of aging. Before reaching for your used green tea bags, we recommend reaching for a product containing Green Tea like our Moisture Lock Overnight Mask.
Many of the top hydrating masks on the market are either wasteful sheet masks or full of pore-clogging waxes and harsh preservatives. Instead, our lightweight mask works like a night cream to help dramatically boost skin’s hydration levels — all while you sleep.
Simply apply before you go to sleep, and awaken to smooth, buttery skin. Not only is this deeply hydrating overnight mask rich in Mango Butter and Squalane and free of pore-clogging waxes – but it’s also hypoallergenic!
4. Soothes Irritation
Green Tea has soothing properties that help it calm redness and ease irritation. These properties make Green Tea a great ingredient choice for anyone who has sensitive skin or whose skin barrier is compromised.
The soothing effects of Green Tea can also help improve the appearance of swelling, such as with puffy eyes. One of our favorite ways to get these soothing benefits of Green Tea is through our Calm Nutrient Mist.
Your skin soaks up all of your oils and serums best when it’s moist. That’s why you should prep your skin with our ultra-nourishing face mist that helps to hydrate, soothe, calm, and protect your skin.
While other mists are mostly water and fragrance, our Calm Nutrient Mist is packed with Green and White Tea’s potent antioxidants to help protect your skin from irritants like blue light and environmental stressors. Background ingredients like calming Blue Algae also help visibly ease redness and calm skin.
Plus, Green Tea is relatively gentle and has no known side effects when used topically.
5. Soothes Breakouts
Green Tea has cleansing properties, which makes it great for helping to fight breakouts. Many breakouts are actually caused by bacteria that can get into your pores and cause irritation.
Because Green Tea also helps support proper levels of sebum production, the oil-eating bacteria have a harder time causing irritation. And, since Green Tea has soothing properties, it can also help minimize the appearance of red, irritated blemishes.
If you want to break up with your breakouts, we recommend our Clear Repair Nightly Treatment. Our formula features a potent blend of Niacinamide, Black Willow Bark Extract, and Hyaluronic Acid to help reduce the look of blemishes. Our formula also delivers hydration and works to fight key signs of skin aging.
You’ll wake up to smoother, glowy, more youthful-looking skin! Plus, unlike most blemish-fighting products, our potent ingredients don’t disrupt the skin’s barrier.
6. Brighten Undereyes
Green Tea has caffeine and tannins, both of which are antioxidants. While caffeine is responsible for Green Tea’s energy kick, tannins are responsible for some of the taste, and the dry mouth feel you can get after drinking it.
However, when applied topically, these two antioxidants may help minimize the appearance of blood vessels around the eye. This can help ease puffiness and uneven skin tone in the delicate under-eye area.
Our Resurrection Radiance Eye Cream contains Green Tea alongside the Resurrection Plant to offer intense moisturization, Tree Bark Extract to target and brighten the appearance of dark circles, and Turmeric, Coffee, and Licorice Extract to depuff the delicate eye area.
How Should I Use Green Tea for Skin?
Whether you’re looking for a face mask, a cleanser, or a lotion, many different products boast the benefits of Green Tea. All of these options might be a little overwhelming, so we’re here to walk you through a sample step-by-step skincare routine that uses all Green Tea products. Without further ado, here’s the first step.
Cleanser
This first step in any skincare routine is to cleanse your skin from oil, dirt, and impurities in the skin. We recommend our award-winning Renew Nourishing Cleanser.
This formula strikes that delicate balance of effectively helping remove dead surface skin cells, oil, dirt, and other pollutants from the skin while nourishing and supporting the skin barrier with antioxidants and Aloe Vera.
With our Renew Nourishing Cleanser, your skin is left clean, soft, and hydrated — perfectly primed and prepared to absorb all of the skincare products that follow. Unlike most cleansers that have water as the top ingredient, we use a Green and White Tea base full of antioxidant properties.
Serum
Next, you’ll apply a serum to target your skin’s specific needs. This step is optional, but serums like our Chebula Active Serum are full of concentrated ingredients that can work wonders for your skin.
This anti-aging serum will dramatically change how your skin looks today, tomorrow, and years from now with a breakthrough antioxidant in skincare: Chebula. Chebula is a special cascading antioxidant.
Once it’s done fighting a free radical, it reacts by taking on a new form that can fight the next free radical, and the next, and the next without losing the ability to defend and protect against environmental stressors.
This is the last anti-aging serum you’ll ever need because it fights five signs of aging and helps prevent future damage before it happens. And did we mention that it’s clinically proven to outperform two leading anti-aging serums in reducing the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles?*
Moisturizer
Next, you’ll want to lock in your serum and eye cream with a moisturizing cream or face oil. We recommend our best-selling face oil, Renew Pure Radiance Oil.
Our Renew Oil does more than just moisturize – it also helps to prevent and tackle signs of aging. This is because of a revolutionary blend of 14 highly Absorbable Seed Oils, Algae Extract, and Astaxanthin that help to deliver more moisturized, plump, and youthful-looking skin. Meanwhile, Green and White Tea Extract infuse your skin with antioxidants and soothe irritation.
The seed oils we use are known to be more natural-biocompatible than nut oils often found in other face oils because of their smaller molecules. Our formula is also naturally scented with luxurious Jasmine, Neroli, and Rose.
Eye Cream
Since Green Tea can be so rejuvenating for your fragile under-eye areas, we recommend using a nightly eye cream like our Resurrection Radiance Eye Cream.
This high-performance eye cream delivers instant and real, long-term results without silicones, waxes, shimmers, fillers, or toxins that other brands use to fake the effect of smoother, brighter eyes. Instead, we use natural-biocompatible ingredients such as Tree Bark to help reduce dark circles, while Turmeric, Coffee, and Licorice Extracts help depuff and brighten the entire eye area.
Hydration is essential to reducing the appearance of fine lines, wrinkles, and dark circles, so we have added a unique moisture retention complex from nature’s most resilient plant: the Resurrection Plant. Plus, instead of water, we use Green and White Tea as our base to give your skin plenty of nutrient-rich polyphenols.
In Conclusion
Green Tea might be a delicious drink, but it can also work some magic on your skin. Green Tea’s benefits for skin include supporting oily skin, minimizing signs of aging, and brightening up the delicate skin of your under-eyes.
Because of these amazing benefits, many of our products at True Botanicals use Green Tea as a base, whereas other brands use water. If you want to try some of our products for yourself, take our quick skin quiz to get a personalized set of product recommendations.
*Based on a 6-week single-blind comparative clinical study of 30 women aged 35-65 with twice-daily use.
Sources:
Protective Mechanisms of Green Tea Polyphenols in Skin | Oxidative Medicine and Cell Longevity
Anti-wrinkle Effects of Water Extracts of Teas in Hairless Mouse | Toxicology Research
Green Tea and Other Tea Polyphenols: Effects on Sebum Production and Acne Vulgaris | Antioxidants
Skin photoprotection by green tea: antioxidant and immunomodulatory effects | PMC