A Pumpkin Spice Beauty Routine (Uses of Spices for Skincare)

When a certain coffee chain with a green and white logo reintroduces its pumpkin spice latte each year, the whole world seems to go abuzz and deservedly so for all things rich, warm, and spicy. Yet, as tempting as their flavors are to your tastebuds, these spices also can offer tremendous benefits to our beauty regimes.

Cinnamon: Cinnamon has been shown to be especially good for eliminating both the bacteria that causes acne and for toning down the redness left behind in acne scars and from bouts of cracking, inflamed dry skin. It is also a well-known free radical fighter, meaning it helps to fortify the skin and help ward off external environmental stressors and pollutants. Cinnamon is, however, one of the spices that should be used with the most caution if you so happen to be trying your hand at making your own skincare products at home (which is a fun and affordable way to start incorporating spices into your skincare). You never should use no more than a teaspoon of cinnamon per mixture in your homemade apothecary. Keeping this in mind, a good quick treatment to mix up is 1 teaspoon of cinnamon whisked in with about three tablespoons of honey. Apply it to the face and leave it on for about 1-3 mins then rinse generously and towel it off with a wet washcloth, being sure to get through all the sticky goodness of the skin-softening honey. This combination is a really good and fast-acting skin brightener and rehydrator, which can be a cozy treat on a weekend morning.

Cloves: Cloves and clove oil have long been celebrated in holistic healing for their anti-spasmodic and relaxing properties for both medicines and aromatherapy. Like cinnamon, and nearly all of these spices listed here, cloves help stimulate circulation. Because of this and the pain-sedating nature of cloves, clove oil diluted with water,jojoba oil, or another carrier oil s particularly good at soothing the painful throbbing of under-the-skin cystic pimples and alleviating any soreness at or above the brow area, post plucking or waxing.

Cardamom: Cardamom is a great source of Vitamins A, B, and C both when taken internally and when absorbed by the skin. Specifically as a beautifying agent, it has also been shown to be particularly helpful when combined with milk (for a natural source of lactic acid) to help draw out blackheads both from the face and body as well.

Ginger and Turmeric: Scientifically speaking, ginger and turmeric are both roots and are in the same family and share many things in common. Still, they each have their special qualities too. Ginger is an excellent source of trace minerals of copper, zinc, magnesium, and phosphorous all which help to strength and feed the skin through absorption just as (even more so) it nourishes the body with these same key minerals when eaten. In addition to feeding minerals into the skin, ginger is especially useful for haircare as well as it works to balance both oily and dry scalps and also encourages hair growth,

Turmeric, while also containing a lot of the same minerals as ginger, s a powerful dark spot and acne scar lightener and is perhaps the best anti-inflammatory of all in this bunch. It is also a great source of Vitamin C, and products that contain turmeric offer a more gentle way incorporate Vitamin C into a skincare routine without using so many things with citrus extracts pure, synthetically-derived Vitamin C , which can be overly drying and harsh on thin or sensitive skin.

Pumpkin: Though not a spice, a pumpkin spice celebration would not be complete without mentioning the incredible benefits of the pumpkin itself. Pumpkin extract is a wonderful source of gently-acting alpha hydroxy acids which help to shed dead skin cells and help to prepare it readily accept and retain moisture both from the air, moisturizer, and the more emollient properties of the pumpkin fruit itself. It is another viable source of calming zinc and both Vitamin C as well as Vitamin A, both of which help to not only brighten but also boost collagen for a firmer and plumper-looking skin. If making your own mixes, pumpkin puree unsurprisingly plays wonderfully with all these awesome spices for a power-packed and yummy-smelling face mask!

Whether this post has inspired you to search for some new skincare that features these ingredients or to rifle through your cupboards and try your hand at personal potionmaking,may you have fun with it and see wonderful benefits. Just remember (as, really with all skincare products) to do patch tests with all products and mixtures known for their spice content and watch out from prolonged redness or irritation, but temporary flushing is normal and to be expected. That means that the spices are getting the blood flow going and are, thereby, doing their job of delivering their amazing properties to your skin during pumpkin spice season or any other time at all.