Health Benefits of Chamomile for Skin Care + DIY Face Scrub

Hello folks, welcome back. Excited to have you here as we spend some time together to make some herbal remedies for skincare. Here in Maine we've recently had some weather extremes. It rained for almost the entire month of June and has continued to rain into the first week of July, and on the days when we do see some sun it's been hot, sticky, and humid. I'm outside on a 90 degree evening trying to take advantage of the break from the rain to harvest some chamomile flowers, which will be one of the main ingredients in our remedy today. German chamomile or matricaria chamomile is a delicate daisy-like flower. It's an annual, meaning that it can finish its entire growth cycle from seed to flower in a single season. You can easily purchase chamomile plants at most box stores with garden supply centers, as it's a very popular plant for urban flower gardens. If you live anywhere zone 4 and above, chamomile seeds often survive over winter, and you'll find new chamomile plants growing in all sorts of places in your yard. This year I started three rows of chamomile from seeds, and some of those seeds were carried away by either winds or washed away by heavy rains, so now my entire garden has chamomile in it. Lately chamomile has been a very important teacher for me. Its flowers are a representation of life's small and simple joys. Chamomile teaches us to be patient and to have an abundance mindset. I found myself feeling pressured to take advantage of this small window of time between rains to harvest as much chamomile as I possibly could, and my anxious mindset caused me to not enjoy the process. After meditating on my feelings, I found myself accepting that when harvesting by hand without special tools, I'll never get to every single chamomile flower, and that's okay because there's enough to go around. The chamomile flowers that I miss will expire and fall into the soil to provide next year's abundance, and tomorrow fresh new flowers will await me. We must embrace these small moments and have faith that there will be more of such moments in the future. This lovely little flower has been used historically and in modern day for various uses. Perhaps the most common use it's known for is making a relaxing tea that aids in sleep. It's a plant gentle enough for children, and babies with colic were often given chamomile tea to help them sleep through the night. In fact, one 1993 study claims that the use of chamomile tea eliminated colic in 57% of infants. Chamomile also contains natural bitters which can be used to aid those with digestive problems. By aiding proper digestion, it can be used to reduce symptoms of bloating and flatulence. Chamomile is anti-inflammatory and antiseptic when used both internally and externally, making it a great herb for skin health. Now let's go make a beauty product that you can easily make for yourself at home using chamomile. So I've set up a little workstation here for us today. Normally I do make my herbal preparations either in my kitchen or in my apothecary which is upstairs in our house, but this this area has the best lighting. I really wanted to make sure that the the video quality was right and that the lighting was right. So if you're not already a part of our Facebook group, the Acadian Garden and Apothecary, I definitely recommend that you follow that page. This face mask slash face exfoliating scrub that I'm doing a video on today is by viewer request. So if you ever have any questions or feedback on what I should do videos on, do know that I do pay attention to those recommendations and I am working on a series of videos that cover all of the basics to do with herbalism. Things like making tinctures, making non-alcoholic infusions with oils, vinegar, water, all of the different menstruums, and really trying to show folks that herbalism doesn't have to be complicated. This is something that you can do in your home or kitchen and it can be a really fun and creative activity. You know there are some basic rules around safety and preservation, but for the most part you get to experiment and play with your herbs. So to make this face mask you're going to need a few things. The very first thing you'll need obviously is your chamomile and you'll want dried chamomile, bone dry if you can get it that dry. It's just going to make it easier to process if you're not using a food processor and you're using a mortar and pestle like I am today. And I had to step away because I forgot to bring it over here, but you're also going to want any mint that you have. Dried mint, it doesn't have to be any particular variety of mint. This one here is a mixture of chocolate mint, peppermint, spearmint, mojito mint, basically all the mints that I have growing on the property right now. And you're also going to want some honey. Raw honey is the best. Raw honey is incredibly medicinal. It is when you consume it useful for folks who have allergies, especially if you're using a local honey. Raw honey also contains many of the beneficial constituents that are useful for healing the skin. So this is going to be the thickening agent in our exfoliating face scrub. The next item you're going to want is either a food processor or a mortar and pestle. Food processor is fine. What we're trying to do is take our dried ingredients, our mint and our chamomile, and break it down into a very, very fine powder, as fine as you can make it. I personally like to work with my mortar and pestle. I find that spending time with the plants and working with the herbs with my bare hands, it's a meditative experience. And it just reminds me that it's okay to slow down. Next, you're going to want a bowl of some sort. I have this cute little blue china bowl with this tiny little spoon that goes with it. And this is what I'm going to make my mixture in. Basically, all you need is something to use to mix the ingredients together. So that can be a spoon, it can be a glass stirring wand, it can be a chopstick, whatever you have available is fine. And then finally, you're going to want an airtight container to store your exfoliating face mask in. So let's get started. I'm going to try to keep this video incredibly simple because it's important to me that people find herbalism fun and an opportunity to be creative. And I personally have a hard time with the following instructions when it comes to measurements. If you have a similar Achilles heel, definitely let me know in the comments below. It'd be nice to know that I'm not alone there. But I want to keep this video very simple. So I'm not going to say exactly how much I'm mixing. If you are interested in having exact measurements for making a face mask, do let me know and I will share more specific instructions in the description of the video. But what you're going to do is take your dried chamomile and we're going to add this to our mortar. And you're going to take your pestle and crush the chamomile flowers into a very fine powder. You can see here it's already starting to break down quite a bit. So what are the benefits of chamomile and why do we want this as something to treat the skin? Well, chamomile can be applied topically and it has anti-inflammatory qualities, meaning that it's going to help reduce swelling and redness in the face. It also has antifungal, antimicrobial, and antibacterial. So that's going to help prevent infections. If you have any wounds on your skin that might be caused by acne or sunburn or some kind of injury. And so these active constituents within chamomile are going to help keep the wound clean and infection free. And they're also going to help the body heal itself. Chamomile has been used for skin care for a very long time. So it's been used for things like diaper rash, eczema, sunburn. It's also been used for things like poison ivy. It also has an incredible smell. Some people say it smells a bit like apples and I would tend to agree with that. It's definitely a floral, somewhat apple-y scent. I'm just really trying to break up any of the stems and petals and just try to get it as fine as possible. The finer you get it, the greater the surface area and the more chances of those beneficial constituents like the essential oils helping them to penetrate the skin. And I could get into the science behind why chamomile is so great for the skin and as an anti-inflammatory by looking at the groups of chemical constituents. And I may do so in a later video, but I did want to keep this simple. Just know that there is a great deal of research that has gone into looking at the effectiveness of chamomile for treating different skin conditions and they are very promising and evidence-based. All right, I'm going to just take out that one little stem. Here is our chamomile powder. I did bring a second mortar and pestle over here and we're just going to transfer the ingredients to this bowl just for a moment. All right, so now we're going to take our second ingredient, mint, and we're going to add this to our mortar. Mint is the second ingredient in this face mask because of its cooling properties. Some members of the mint family like peppermint, spearmint, these all contain a compound called menthol. Peppermint has the strongest concentration of menthol, which is why you get that very strong minty flavor and minty aroma, but the other mints have it as well. And this chemical creates that cooling sensation when you drink it or when you apply it to the skin. So mint, like chamomile, is anti-inflammatory. One thing I like about this exfoliating mask is when I put it on my face, the mint sensation, the cooling sensation of the mint isn't always obvious until I actually wash it off. And then it just feels incredible on my skin. It feels like you're, you step outside and it's like there's a nice cool breeze on your face, which can just be amazing when you've just had these long, hot, humid days. And as you can see, this process would probably go a lot faster if I was using a food processor, but it's just nice to spend a bit of time with these plants, take a moment to slow down and just really enjoy the process. Smells so good. All right, so same thing here. We're just going to take out a few stems. We don't want big pieces in this because it just looks funny when you have it on your face. All right, so there's our mint, and I might do a little bit more. We have a powdered form of both our mint and chamomile, and we're ready for the third and final ingredient, which is our raw honey. So what I'm going to do here is open this up. This big jar of honey, I bought this, I want to say, more than a year ago at this point, and it's lasted me quite a while. And I use it for everything from making face masks or making skin products to using it in my teas. It's just great to have around. Sometimes if I don't have any herbs, like I ran out of herbs this winter, I used just honey to just scrub and exfoliate my face. And the great thing about honey is it's incredibly exfoliating, especially if you're using raw honey. It will still have those crystals in it. Honey is also just historically incredibly good for your skin. It has healing properties. It softens the skin. It's anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, antimicrobial. One of the reasons it's antibacterial and antimicrobial is just because of the high sugar content, which is one of the reasons this is such a great mixture to use for beauty products is that that sugar in the honey is going to help preserve your beauty product for longer. So what we're going to do now that I'm done playing with the honey, we're going to add our powder to this bowl and we're going to mix it with the honey. Honey continues to be used for treating different skin conditions, even in modern day. So maybe you've heard of Manuka honey. Manuka honey comes from the Manuka tree or Manuka bush, which is native to New Zealand. And this particular honey is incredibly medicinal. Something about the pollen taken from the Manuka plant just makes the honey that much more effective at treating skin conditions to reduce scarring and people who have had traumatic skin injuries. They continue to use it to this day for burn treatment. So it takes a moment to get it going. You can add a few drops of water to this if you want to get a smoother mixture. However, if you do start adding water to this, that is going to mess with its ability to be preserved. Now, as far as quantities, I would say I use about half of mint and half of chamomile. And you just use however much honey you need to be able to fully mix that dry powder in. You don't want to use fresh ingredients. Dry is going to be best for this. One, because you can break it down into a finer powder and just using dry ingredients means you're not going to have as high likelihood of spoiling. So once you've made your exfoliating face mask, there's a few things you can do with it. You can take this and scoop it up with a spoon and put it into a sealable glass container. I really like these amber colored bottles because it also helps to prevent light from coming in, which can also increase the likelihood of spoiling. And if you store this in your fridge, this will easily last you a month. If you store it in a freezer, I'd say it would almost last you indefinitely. So those are kind of your options for long-term storage. You can also just make what you need as you need it. And, you know, I like to make usually a smaller batch than this and just mix it straight in this bowl and then bring my little bowl into the shower or the tub with me. And then I just apply the face mask evenly to clean skin, let it sit for anywhere between 15 minutes to an hour, and then I just wash it off. And my face always feels so much more cool and soft and the redness and swelling usually goes down a bit as well. Now you can also make it a little bit easier for yourself and pre-mix some of the ingredients. So I like to use these old spice jars and fill them with either herbal tea mixes to give as gifts to folks, or I can also fill this with my chamomile and mint mix. Anytime I'm ready to make up a quick batch of face mask, just add some honey to a bowl, add some of your powder, and you're good to go. Just saves you one extra step. So I would like at some point to start selling some of these very simple beauty formulas in the future. What I love about this is it's natural ingredients, nothing that you can't easily grow or source yourself locally. There's no artificial preservatives, no artificial dyes or fragrances, none of that stuff that we see in skin products today that can cause irritation for people with eczema or allergy problems. I find more and more as time goes on that I can't use a lot of the drugstore beauty products or skin products anymore. Well I hope you enjoyed this video. If you did find it helpful, please show your support by hitting the like button down below and subscribing to the channel. Thank you so much for watching and I will see you in the next video. Bye!