As it begins to get warmer, it's time to keep out of the sun and keep cool. The sun can leave your skin dry, dehydrated, and in need of nourishment and repair. Today we have a fresh lemon mask with aloe and cucumber.
This is a great mask for helping to brighten the skin and protect and replenish after a hot day. Expect refreshing, soothing, and tightening benefits, as the mask calms and cools your skin. Check out the ingredients below.
Cooling Refreshing Lemon Aloe Cucumber Mask
Ingredients
- 2 tbsp. of aloe vera gel (or one skinned stalk of an aloe plant)
- ½ cucumber, chopped, seeds removed. 1 lemon chopped with skin intact.
Directions
Once you have gathered your ingredients, you will mix the aloe, cucumber, and lemon together in either a food processor or a blender.
Once blended, simply apply the mixture evenly all over the face and leave it on for anywhere between 20-30 minutes before you wash it off with cool water.
Aloe Skincare Benefits
Aloe is one of the best ingredients for the skin. It helps to treat many skin conditions associated with aging and damaged skin. Here is a list of the many different benefits of aloe.
SUNBURNS - Aloe Vera helps with sunburn through its powerful healing activity at the epithelial level of the skin, a layer of cells that cover the body. It acts as a protective layer on the skin and helps replenish its moisture. Because of its nutritional qualities and antioxidant properties, the skin heals quicker.
MOISTURIZES - Aloe moisturizes the skin without giving it a greasy feel, so it's perfect for anyone with an oily skin complexion. For women who use mineral-based make-up, aloe vera acts as a moisturizer and is great for the face prior to the application to prevent skin drying. For men: Aloe vera gel can be used as an aftershave treatment as its healing properties can treat small cuts caused by shaving.
ACNE - Aloe is soothing and can reduce skin inflammations, blistering and itchiness while helping the skin to heal more rapidly. Additionally, in Ayurvedic medicine, Aloe is used to effectively heal chronic skin problems, such as psoriasis, acne, and eczema.
AGING - As we age, everyone begins to worry about the appearance of fine lines and the loss of elasticity in their skin. Aloe leaves contain a plethora of antioxidants including, beta carotene, vitamin C, and E that can help improve the skin's natural firmness and keep the skin hydrated.
Benefits of Cucumber
Cucumber does amazing things for your skin no matter how you use them. Let’s look at some of those benefits below.
Benefits for Your Skin
Vitamins
Cucumber contains lots of nutrients and phytochemicals, and rich vitamins and minerals such as vitamin A, E, Magnesium, and potassium. Vitamin E is great for healing and repairing the skin and promoting circulation in the blood.
Minerals
They also contain silica, a powerful nutrient and mineral which strengthens connective tissues, improving skin strength and elasticity, and aids in the fight against wrinkles and fine lines.
Hydration
Cucumber is excellent for hydration and brightening the skin giving it a natural glow. Ascorbic and caffeic acid has anti-inflammatory properties and are great for reducing swelling around the eyes.
Reduces Swelling and Puffiness
Cucumbers can reduce puffiness and swelling of the skin due to their folic acid-rich and Vitamin C content. Your eyes may get puffy because of environmental elements, and folic acid can help fight those off.
You may have even been struggling with dark and puffy circles under your eyes. Folic acid can help with this as well. Applying chilled cucumbers under your eyes can help decrease the puffiness of the eyes while rejuvenating dull and tired-looking skin.
Manages Acne
Skin pores will get clogged with dead skin cells, especially if you have oily skin, which triggers acne. Cucumbers can have a cleansing effect on the skin and help to tighten the pores since they are slightly astringent.
Because cucumbers have such high water content, they can help clear out clogged pores and other pollutants from the environment. This explains why so many people use cucumber in their skin mask recipes.
Helps with Premature Aging
When it comes to premature aging, everyone is trying to find the secret formula. There have been studies that show that cucumbers have antioxidant elements, which is a major anti-wrinkle ingredient in many beauty products.
Cucumber’s high folic acid and Vitamin C content can also help increase new cell growth and help combat environmental toxins that can cause your skin to age prematurely. When you combine these two ingredients, it can help make your skin look healthier and firmer and give it an overall glow.
Soothes Irritating Skin
One of the best things about cucumbers is their anti-inflammatory and cooling effects that can help in soothing dried, irritated, and red skin. These symptoms can occur from rashes, sunburn, and insect bites, for example.
Acts as an Anti-Inflammatory
As mentioned previously, cucumbers are known to have anti-inflammatory properties. Many people create mixtures using cucumbers that treat eye puffiness, wounds, and small cuts because it slowly reduces the skin’s inflammation over time.
Since cucumbers consist of about 96 percent water, you can use the juice and mix it with other moisturizing ingredients like aloe vera to help soothe the skin after a sunburn, for example.
Prevents Free Radicals
Free radicals can be found all around us in the air we breathe and the environment we live in. They are formed by ultraviolet radiation and high levels of pollution, which can easily penetrate our skin. Over time these free radicals can cause damage to your skin cells and even affect the DNA in an unsavory way.
To give you an idea, free radicals are known to cause skin cancer, so if there’s any way you can protect yourself against them, using cucumbers with lots of antioxidants can help to fight them off.
Benefits of Cucumber Juice
Makes Skin Glow
Silica is an important mineral found in cucumbers that can provide you with a spectacular glow. Because cucumbers are so high in vitamins and minerals, cucumbers help with soothing inflammation, redness, itchiness, and acne problems.
Softens Skin
With their high water content, if you use cucumber juice as a base for hydration, you will notice your skin maintaining its softness and suppleness. This is a major benefit, especially as we age as wrinkles start appearing more and more.
Serves as a Base for Hydration
Cucumbers serve as a wonderful base for the hydration of the skin. If you choose, you can use cucumber juice for the base of any type of face mask. If you come across a face mask, for example, that has a few dehydrating elements, you can mix cucumber juice into the mixture to prevent moisture evaporation.
Lemon Skincare Benefits
Lemon and the peel of the lemon are both great for the skin. Lemon can help clear congested skin and acne-prone skin. It helps to brighten dull skin and smooth rough or dry skin in the process.
It contains essential oil limonene, citral, flavonoids, and 44 different plant acids including flavone glycosides and citric. It is also a rich source of pectins, phenols, and hydroxycinnamates. Lemon will help shed dead skin cells and promote new skin production.
Your skin will thank you for adding lemon juice to your face mask ingredients. Citrus fruits have excellent skin-healing properties because they are full of vitamins and minerals such as Vitamin C, citric acid, calcium, and magnesium.
Shrinks Open Pores
We all hate large pores as they can make us more prone to acne due to dirt and oil buildup. Luckily lemon juice can help unclog those pores and visibly tighten the skin. All of this is due to the astringent properties that citrus fruits possess. You can also use it as an exfoliant to help get glowing and smoother skin.
Creates Brighter Skin
Having bright and radiant skin makes you look younger. Citric acid acts like a powerful antioxidant that can boost the production of collagen and reduce damage from free radicals.
Can Be Used for Psoriasis
Psoriasis can be challenging, and many people suffer from this irritating condition that causes itchy, dry, red patches on the skin. There are many remedies on the market that you can buy, but you may not have known that lemon juice can work wonders for psoriasis as well.
Has Antifungal Properties
Lemon can help treat different types of fungal and scalp rashes that come from a condition called seborrheic dermatitis. In addition to this, lemon has antiseptic properties that can help soothe bee stings and sunburns.
Lemon essential oil has also been suggested to help against harmful bacteria like E. Coli. This is why people may choose to use lemon essential oil for treating small wounds and cuts. Lemon oil’s antifungal properties can help to alleviate skin conditions when used topically.
Increases Collagen
There is strong anecdotal evidence that using lemon juice on the skin increases collagen production. Our bodies contain this protein in abundance, but it breaks down as we age. This results in fine lines and wrinkles.
As mentioned previously, lemon juice can help increase collagen production. The lack of collagen in our bodies as we age is what causes wrinkles and fine lines. Using lemon juice as an ingredient in creams, lotions, face masks, and serums can help in creating firmer, smoother skin.