Honey Might Be the Ingredient Your Skin-Care Routine Is Missing
There's something relaxing about stepping into a swarm of bees. I know, I know… but hear me out. The sound — a steady, collective hum — envelops you like a weighted blanket. Like the roar of the ocean, it's an auditory reminder that nature is powerful. Bees are powerful. And so is the stuff they make: honey.
Let's rewind. I am at the tippy-top of a hill on a remote island in the Marlborough Sounds, the northern coastline of the South Island of New Zealand. The area is known for its turquoise waters, its production of dry-yet-fruity sauvignon blanc, and — the reason I am clad in a beekeeping suit and gloves — its abundance of mānuka trees. For about two to six weeks per year, bees pollinate the flowers of these trees, kicking off the production of mānuka honey.
Mānuka Health has invited me here to get up close and personal with the process. The company tends to approximately 21,000 hives across New Zealand, ensuring queen bees (the only type capable of laying eggs) are happy and healthy, worker bees (who gather nectar and pollen to create honey) are thriving, and, eventually, that the mānuka honey within each comb is extracted with precision and care.
So why send an Allure editor (and not one from, say, National Geographic) to witness this natural phenomena? Because there's plenty of evidence that honey can benefit your skin — so much so that Mānuka Health has created a skin-care range in addition to its line of ingestible honey and propolis, a type of resin also produced by bees.
In my decade-plus as a beauty editor, I've observed that there are only a handful of things all dermatologists seem to agree upon — and one of them is that inflammation is the root of all “evil.” It's a contributing factor in the development of, well, practically every skin condition you can think of, including acne and hyperpigmentation. Honey can help reduce inflammation "because it has an osmotic effect on the skin — it can draw out [excess fluid]," Kavita Mariwalla, MD, a board-certified dermatologist based in West Islip, New York, has previously told Allure. "Honey can [also] be a calming agent, so it also helps to reduce redness," she adds.
Studies have also shown that honey has innate antibacterial properties, which is why it's often used in medical settings to help treat wounds. For the same reason, cosmetic chemist Randy Schueller has said that honey could potentially help ward off acne-causing bacteria — though more research is needed.
But just like how not every retinol product has the same degree of potency, "not all honey is created equal," says Shereene Idriss, MD, a board-certified dermatologist based in New York City. The honey you might drizzle over your morning yogurt is probably “polyfloral” honey, which is derived from a variety of (non-mānuka) flowers. When it comes to your skin, "you want to stick to the raw and non-processed forms [of honey] as they contain the most potent enzymes with antioxidant, antibacterial, and healing properties," she says. "Mānuka honey is the go-to for the more serious skin-care issues requiring antibacterial action."
Since my trip to the hives two months ago, I've been using Mānuka Health's Regenerating Face Cream every evening. The teeny bumps I sometimes get along my forehead have smoothed over, and overall, my skin is softer and bouncier than before.
If you, too, are a beeliever (sorry, I couldn't resist), scroll for more honey-infused skin-care products worth adding to your routine.
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