Soothing a Sunburn
Posted by EJ | Posted in Natural Remedies, Off Topic, Tea, Tea Health, Uncategorized | Posted on 02-07-2008
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I spent my Canada day yesterday digging in the garden, because with the last few weeks of rain, the weeds had started to take over, and it was quite literally ‘a jungle out there’. After a few hours of baking under the suns intense rays, I found myself a little too hot… Being as fair skinned as I am, I do not get a nice golden glow from the sun… The Irish in me lends to lots of freckles followed by a burn, which is exactly what I got. I wasn’t careful enough with the sunscreen application, and believe me, I paid the price. I’m still paying for it today, however it is feeling MUCH better because I know a handy little secret about soothing burned skin. Green tea.
The polyphenols in green tea help soothe and heal the skin more quickly than allowing a sunbrun to pan out on it’s own. It also helps to reduce skin peeling in the case of a really nasty sunburn like the one I got yesterday.
There are a couple of ways that you can use green tea to help ease a sunburn. The first and easiest way is to to run a bath and hang 3 or 4 green tea bags under the faucet. Let HOT water run over the tea bags so that the water becomes infused. When the water starts to run clear, add cold water to your bath. The last thing you want to do is have a hot bath when you have a sunbrun. Make sure that the bath water is cool and this will also help to relieve the sting of the burn. This is the best method for children with sunburns because it offers immediate all over relief.
A second way, and a good way to target specific areas is to create a green tea compress. To do this, steep a pot of green tea and let it cool. Once cooled, poor the infusion on a washcloth or towel – try to use one that is old – because green tea will stain. Apply the cloth to the sunburned area, and allow it to sit for several minutes to cool your skin and combat the heat and stinging from the sunburn. This is especially good if you have a bad sunburn on your face, or on your shoulders where it is easy to drape a compress.
If you REALLY want to get rid of that redness, and get extra fast relief, check out my own personal tried, tested and true bath blend, followed by the application of aloe vera gel. (Directly from the plant source is best for aloe vera, however, if you can only get your hands on the kind of after sun aloe vera that comes in a bottle, try to make the most natural choice possible)
In your bath water add:
Green Tea: Either use teabags, or pour a pot of cool tea into your bath. This will reduces inflammation and helps with radiation damage and aging.
Peppermint: Either crush and handful of fresh peppermint leaves into your bath, or add one to two drops of peppermint essential oil. This will help ease the heat of the burn because of it’s aromatic properties.
Vinegar: Add one or two cups of white vinegar to your bath water. The acetic acid in vinegar reduces skin inflammation and eases the pain of the burn.
Aloe Vera: The biologically active compounds in aloe vera help to heal the sunburn more quickly.
The vinegar methods actually works quite well. These are all very good tips to help ease or stave off sunburn.
Excellent tips! Being so fair myself, there is no doubt that I will be using them in the near future!
Wow, great tips. I’ll be sure to pass along these remedies!
I’ll have to try this if I ever get a sunburn…I can imagine how soothing it would be. I love bathing in tea!! Bodyblitz spa has a really awesome hot green tea pool (obviously not for sunburned skin) but great for our bodies!
here’s a snippet from http://www.bodyblitzspa.com on their hot green tea pool:
Even though we are accustomed to drinking tea, not soaking in it, herbal baths have been around for centuries. Tea baths are a natural, safe and effective treatment in the areas of skin care, anti-aging and women’s health. Japanese green tea is added to the body blitz tea pool to optimize the benefits of bathing in hot water. Green tea is an excellent antioxidant, it increases energy expenditure and helps stimulate the immune system.
Thank you all for your comments! Thanks for the great link and info Heather!
Green tea is amazing for so many things, and we’re actually not even aware of all the benefits yet. I know people who stopped getting cold sores after drinking green tea regularly, and some studies suggest that it reduces your chances that getting cancer. And now, treating a sunburn – how great is that?
I was reading your blogs backwards and just realized how many other benefits of green tea you had covered!
That’s really awesome that Green Tea can help with all these things!! This is really great information for me, because I actually tan very easily so I never bother with sunscreen. I don’t really burn so I don’t see the point. Everyone warns me about skin cancer, and says I should wear sunscreen to protect myself. If Green Tea really does work to protect against the sun’s radiation, then that would be wonderful for me. Does it work if you drink it? or only in the bath?
Also I’d like to add that I have been to Japan and they do drink a lot of Green Tea there. It’s very good both hot and cold. It’s a very popular beverage in Japan.
Thanks for your comment Vicki! I can’t condone not wearing sunscreen, but there have also been studies about the effects of different sunscreen products that you may want to look into for fun. Try a google search if you are interested in more info about that and you will come up with all sorts of stuff. The antioxidants in green tea are great for your skin, and green tea does in fact improve most skin types when consumed internally. (Some people even drink it as an anti-aging tonic.) When applied to the skin, it has different beneficial effects. In order to treat sunburn, it must be applied directly to the skin. Many skincare products now have green tea and green tea extracts in them and can be easily found at your local pharmacy. The best thing to use of course, is the tea itself. Not only is it less expensive, but it is also ‘the real deal’… nothing added… just the magic of green tea in it’s natural state.