Green tea, made from the unoxidised leaves of Camellia sinensis, has been used as a medicinal beverage in Asia for thousands of years. The plant was named ‘camellia’ by the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in 1753 in honour of Georg Kamel’s botanic work, while ‘sinensis’ is the Latin word for China, from where the shrub originates. When it’s consumed as a beverage its polyphenol antioxidants reportedly reduce inflammation in the body, a known trigger of premature ageing. More recently, green tea is also used in cosmetics. We blend (certified pesticide free) Tasmanian-grown green tea into our guest skin care soap and our one shampoo/conditioner bar. It has the following properties:
- Moisturises: science has proven that skin is significantly more moisturised after 30 days of continued use on skin;
- Smooths skin: the same studies also showed that using green tea extracts for 15-30 days gave microrelief and made skin less rough. This can be attributed to the free radical scavengers from the polyphenols it contains;
- Confers an anti-wrinkle effect: a 2019 review demonstrated that it increases the collagen and elastin fibre content and suppresses the collagen degrading enzyme matrix metalloproteinase-3 (MMP-3) production in the skin, giving an anti-wrinkle effect.
Green Tea, increasingly popular as a drink in the western world, has proven potential for skin care. Now you can soap yourself in it!
