By: Donald Amodeo
If you are looking for a healthy way to help keep your acne under control without resorting to the typical over-the-counter topical drugs that may cause more harm than good, green tea may be a treatment worth looking into. Green tea has long been a staple of traditional Chinese medicine, taken to treat ailments such as acne as well as to improve general health. It has become popular worldwide both for its taste and the many health benefits it provides.
Green tea is definitely a healthy beverage, but is it really effective at treating acne? The answer seems to be yes, although how effective it is may depend on the severity of your acne (and just how much green tea you are willing to drink). The main reason for green tea’s effectiveness is due to the fact that green tea is extremely rich in antioxidants. Thus, by drinking plenty of green tea you help rid toxins from your body and maintain a healthy cell structure.
Besides fighting off bacteria, research has shown that green tea can help reduce redness and inflammation, and even deter hormonal activity. Thus green tea can both speed healing and help prevent acne, which is often caused by the activity of hormonal shifts.
For acne treatment, green tea may be taken as a drink, a pill (green tea extract), or in a topical cream. Also, simply placing a warm teabag on acne lesions can help draw out toxins and promote faster healing.
By far the most popular method is simply drinking green tea. Green tea with honeysuckle is known as “pimple tea” in many Chinatowns. Drinking a glass of green tea each day will help a little, but if you plan to use green tea as a main factor in your fight against acne, you will need a higher dose. For more dramatic results, many regimens recommend as much as 8 glasses of green tea each day until your skin clears. This is most effective if the tea is freshly brewed and sugar-free. Preservatives and sugar will neutralize many of green tea’s benefits.
Taken as a pill, green tea is similar to vitamins for acne that focus on detoxifying your skin through antioxidants. Unfortunately, this approach does not typically work as well as simply drinking green tea due to the fact that the nutrients are much more easily absorbed as a liquid rather than a pill.
According to a recent study reported to the American Academy of Dermatology, a topical cream with 3% green tea extract produced similar results to a solution containing 4% benzoyl peroxide. Thus, green tea appears to be very effective as a spot treatment as well, without causing the dryness and irritation that generally go along with benzoyl peroxide. However, I would still recommend drinking the tea over using a topical cream, since the benefits of the topical treatment are limited to only the applied area, and do not include hormonal effects that can help you actually avoid, or at least diminish the intensity of, future acne.
