Many women suffer from hormone-related skin problems. They can be difficult to treat because, without pharmaceutical intervention, it’s not immediately obvious how you can balance the hormones. Fortunately, the answer may lay closer than you think – in your kitchen cabinets!
photo credit: flickr/vordictung
People in Asia have been drinking green tea for thousands of years, and for a good reason, science is constantly uncovering new health benefits from this humble drink. It turns out that green tea may be helpful for women with hormone-related skin problems.
Hormonal acne is especially responsive to a hormone called insulin. One of the jobs of insulin is to take sugar from bloodstream and into cells. It’s of the hormones that regulate blood sugar level. In a nutshell, when you eat carbohydrates your body breaks them down into simple sugars, which in turn get dumped into bloodstream. It’s the job of insulin to transport the sugars into cells where they can be burned for energy.
High insulin level can make your skin look dull and oily. I won’t bore you with the details, but studies have shown that high insulin level stimulates skin cell growth and oil production, especially for people prone to getting acne. This leads to clogged pores, blackheads and overall dull-looking skin.
What does this have to do with green tea?
Well, several studies have shown that people who regularly drink green tea have lower insulin level than people who don’t drink green tea. People who drink 4 to 5 cups per day have about 50% lower risk of developing diabetes than people who don’t drink green tea.
Green tea may also reduce skin irritation. Redness and irritation in the skin is caused by inflammation. Green tea is extremely high in antioxidants, for example green tea catechins have been shown to be up to 100 times more potent than vitamin C. Drinking green tea floods your body with antioxidants that can reduce skin irritation.
How many cups per day?
Now that you understand why you should drink green tea, let’s talk about the nuts and bolts: how many cups and what kind of tea you should drink.
For best results, drink 3 to 5 cups of freshly-brewed green tea per day. A cup a day helps, but studies show much better results when people drink 3 to 5 cups per day. Freshly brewed is important because the antioxidants in green tea degrade very quickly. You can store the tea for a few hours but more than that and you start losing the skin-saving antioxidants.
With green tea, you get what you pay for. Don’t go for the cheapest brand you can find. Because the quality of the tea leaves has a huge impact on the health benefits of your brewed tea. For example, teas that are made of fresh tea leaves have can have almost 20 times more antioxidants than teas made of older leaves (according to a USDA report).
That’s why I recommend going for either loose leaf or powdered green tea. It’s also better to avoid mass market brands and go for a specialist brand. These should be widely available from most supermarkets or health stores.
For more tips on how to maximize the health benefits of green tea, see my tea hacking article.
In conclusion, green tea may be one of those undiscovered gems hiding in your kitchen cabinets. It’s by no means a miracle treatment, but studies consistently show regularly drinking green tea reduces the hormones make your skin look oily and dull. For that reason alone, it should be a part of your skincare arsenal.
