Face and body scrubs designed to exfoliate, moisturize and rejuvenate skin are an essential element of many skin-care routines. When choosing a scrub, match its ingredients to your skin type and purpose to achieve the best results. If you suffer from sensitive or dry skin, scrubs containing honey are a good choice, according to "Health and Lifestyle Magazine." Adding sugar as an ingredient helps with exfoliation. Honey sugar scrubs are available commercially, or make your own using common ingredients you may already have on hand.
Honey
Honey as an ingredient in skin care has a history that dates back to the days of Cleopatra. One reason for its popularity relates to its properties as a non-irritating, natural humectant, particularly helpful if you have sensitive or dry skin. Humectants are ingredients that attract moisture from the air and prevent it from evaporating back into the atmosphere.
Sugar
Sugar is an abrasive ingredient that helps remove dead cells on the top layer of your skin. Sloughing off dead skin cells reveals new, smoother cells in underlying skin layers and gives your skin a fresh, rejuvenated look. Honey sugar scrubs can include either white or brown sugar as an exfoliating ingredient. Look Great -- Lose Weight recommends brown sugar for sensitive skin, as it is less abrasive or irritating.
Oil
Many honey sugar scrubs contain additional moisturizing ingredients in the form of oil. Jojoba, avocado, sesame, safflower, apricot kernel, grapeseed, olive, vegetable and canola oils are common in scrubs, according to Look Great -- Lose Weight.
Other Ingredients
Additional ingredients you may find in a honey sugar scrub include lemon juice and oatmeal. Lemon juice has a slight bleaching effect on your skin, helpful in brightening skin tone. Oatmeal is soothing to the skin and has mild exfoliating properties.
Member Comments