Take this skin quiz to find the best ingredients for your skin and build your skin care routine.
Take The Skin Quiz
Coffee is something we’re all familiar with. It’s a delicious beverage made from roasted and ground seeds obtained from the coffee plant. Consumed orally, it can act as a powerful stimulant and can help you stay awake. But did you know that your craved coffee grounds have a lot of other uses – including uses in skincare?
Topical application of coffee can have a lot of benefits. First, coffee grounds are excellent for exfoliation, as the granular texture can rub off dead skin cells. Additionally, the caffeine of coffee can stimulate blood flow by dilating the vessels. This can actually reduce the appearance of dark circles under eyes and puffy eyes, making it an excellent ingredient in anti-aging products.
Another positive benefit of coffee as an anti-aging product is that it acts as an antioxidant, protecting the skin from the damage of free radicals and UV damage.
Chlorogenic acid within coffee is also known to reduce inflammation, which allows coffee to help reduce the appearance of redness and inflammation from eczema, rosacea, and acne.
Coffee even has skin lightening effects, so it can also be used to treat dark spots and improve the overall consistency of skin tone.
There seem to be no adverse effects of applying coffee topically in the form of a face mask. However, drinking coffee may cause you to have acne breakouts, as caffeine can lead to increased production of stress hormones, and these hormones can increase the amount of oil your sebaceous glands produce.
Melasma is a specific example of hyperpigmentation. Melasma looks like whole patches of brown or darker skin across the parts of the face and neck. Melasma is common among women who are pregnant - it’s even referred to as “the mask of pregnancy.” But melasma can occur in both men and women who are not pregnant, too. Melasma can be caused by UV damage, but there are also genetic, hormonal, and medication-induced causes for melasma, too.
There are a variety of topical ingredients that can be used to lighten the skin from melasma or reduce its appearance. Each ingredient works in different ways, and each has their own benefits and drawbacks. hydroquinone, arbutin, vitamin C (ascorbic acid, and tetrahexyldecyl ascorbate, etc) are some of the most commonly used ingredients for melasma treatment.
Hydroquinone is a skin lightening cream that works by suppressing the production of melanin. There are drawbacks to using hydroquinone, however, including cancer risks demonstrated by recent scientific studies, as well as hydroquinone-induced ochronosis.
Arbutin is a synthesized derivative of hydroquinone. It acts as a powerful skin lightening ointment that works a bit differently than hydroquinone. It blocks the production of melanin instead of “bleaching” the skin.
Vitamin C can be used as a brightening agent to lighten the hyperpigmentation of your sunspots or melasma. It works by inhibiting the enzyme tyrosinase, preventing the formation of melatonin.
Ascorbic Acid is actually the formal scientific name for one form of Vitamin C. It can refer to either a naturally occurring Vitamin C found in foods such as citrus, or a synthetic form of ascorbic acid created to be more shelf-stable for skincare products like discoloration repair lotions and creams.
Tetrahexyldecyl Ascorbate is another form of Vitamin C. By synthesizing this compound from Vitamin C, dermatologists are able to give us all the benefits of Vitamin C in a more shelf-stable form that can also be soluble in oil to make more effective, deeper penetrating skin products. (Herndon 2016)
Ingredients in the vitamin A family (ie. Retinol, tretinoin, etc) and acids (glycolic acid, lactic acid, salicylic acid) help damaged pigmented skin cells shred faster, so they also help with melasma.
Coffee may be effective for melasma, but there are many other factors that may affect whether this ingredient would work on your skin or if there are better ingredients that may work for you. Take this skin quiz to find the best ingredients for your skin and build your skincare routine.
Next: Does glycerin work on bumpy skin ?