Is Coffee Bad for Your Skin or Good?

Your skin is the body’s largest organ, one that requires plenty of care, but is Coffee bad for your skin or is Coffee good for your skin? That is the question (well, questions).

We plan to find out once and for all in the following article, effectively creating a pros and cons list for your consideration. It’ll then be up to you to decide whether utilising Coffee for skin in your life is the way to go.

Meanwhile, here at The Kent and Sussex Tea and Coffee Company, we boast the best mug of Java around. Our family-run business, which stocks some 70 types of Coffee, takes pride in packing its products fresh to order, ensuring quality and consistency with every cuppa brewed.

Indeed, from Fair Trade Blend to Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee, the possibilities are almost limitless.

Is Coffee Bad for Your Skin?

Coffee is how so many of us get out of bed in the morning. Its beans come from the Coffea plant, which is one of sixty plants to contain caffeine. This stimulating chemical compound is the reason you receive an energy boost upon consumption.

It functions by blocking adenosine, a neurotransmitter that relaxes the mind while making you feel less tired. Caffeine, therefore, has the opposite effect.

But caffeine is also why we need to talk about the disadvantages of Coffee on skin. It is why we’ve posed the question, “Is Coffee bad for your skin?”

The issue is that it has diuretic activity, a trait that essentially means it dehydrates. Mild though its influence might be, caffeine dries out your skin. You might then find that Coffee causes skin ageing and other complaints, acne among them.

Is Coffee Bad for Skin Acne, Specifically?

It’s time to delve into the details of Coffee and skin conditions. Acne is where hair follicles become clogged with oil and dead skin cells, often leading to a breakout in whiteheads, blackheads and pimples.

These blemishes tend to appear on the face, forehead, chest, upper back and shoulders. Despite its association with teenagers, acne can exist in people of all ages.

Caffeine doesn’t cause acne. Instead, what Coffee does to your skin acne, should it already be present, is make it worse. This is because while caffeine creates a feeling of alertness, it likewise heightens the stress response in the body.

Stress hormones, in turn, may increase the amount of oil produced by your sebaceous glands, meaning there is, unfortunately, a better chance of experiencing breakouts.

Is Coffee Good for Your Skin?

We’ve now covered Coffee disadvantages for skin health quite well. But you’ll be pleased to know that it isn’t all bad news. There are, in fact, Coffee Benefits for skin, too, so allow us to explore. Coffee contains a wealth of vitamins, minerals and other antioxidants, which, combined, combat free radicals in the body.

Doing so slows oxidative stress, resulting in the reduced risk of developing numerous chronic conditions.

Research indicates that Coffee promotes weight loss, reduces cognitive decline and improves heart health. Most important, perhaps, is that its topical application - in other words, physically placing it on the skin - can keep your skin looking vibrant and youthful.

The bottom line is that while drinking a cuppa might be detrimental to your outward appearance, using the beans externally could have the opposite ability.

Uses of Coffee for Skin Health

How, exactly, does a Coffee skin care routine work? Coffee grounds for skin are an excellent exfoliant. In addition to their abundance of antioxidants, the grounds do not dissolve in water and, therefore, are good at scrubbing away dead skin cells.

They also have antibacterial and antiviral properties capable of making small yet significant improvements to your skin’s molecular wellbeing.

You can make your own scrub by combining a one-quarter cup of grounds, a one-quarter cup of brown sugar and some lemon juice. Simply scrub the mixture onto your face once every few days after washing.

You can then let the scrub sit on the skin for several minutes before rinsing it off. And if that wasn’t enough, we have 10 Tips to Recycle Used Coffee Grounds if you have extra left over!

Is Coffee Good or Bad for Skin Summary

Is Coffee bad for your skin, or is Coffee good for your skin? We’ve determined that it’s both. The negatives stem from its consumption (i.e. drinking it), whereby its diuretic activity dehydrates you and, in the process, your skin.

The positives, on the other hand, derive from its topical application and how it seemingly works miracles. All that’s left, then, is to buy it online or in-store here.

Author: Richard Smith

Partner at The Kent and Sussex Tea and Coffee Company

Richard Smith is a Tea expert, entrepreneur, and owner of The Kent and Sussex Tea and Coffee Company. Part of a family of renowned Tea planters dating back four generations, he was born in Calcutta (Kolkata), India, where he spent his childhood between Tea Estates in Assam and Darjeeling.

In the late 1970s, having accumulated years of knowledge in the industry, Mr Smith and his mother, Janet Smith, moved to Kent, South East England, to establish a Tea business in the village of Pluckley. Their early days of packing Tea Bags by hand from chests of 10,000 prompted the creation of the company’s flagship infusion known as Pluckley Tea. It remains our most popular product today.

Mr Smith, who studied economics at London Polytechnic, has since specialised in over 1,000 types of Loose Leaf Tea - in addition to around 70 varieties of Roast Coffee - from around the world. These are now available at The Kent and Sussex Tea and Coffee Company, where everything is still packed by hand and fresh to order, not only to honour tradition but to ensure the utmost quality and consistency.