A week after rubbing olive oil on my face, I decided to try another natural beauty hack. This time, it involves milk. Milk is another one of those ingredients that is praised online for its beauty benefits to the skin. YouBeauty.com says it can cleanse, tone and help with acne, and Women’s Health says it can soften the skin. With all these benefits in mind—and the fact that I always have milk handy in my refrigerator—I decided to start using milk on my skin.
I began using the milk* on my face every night before bed. I would pour a little into a cup—no more than a tablespoon—and then use a cotton ball to apply it all over my clean face.
The immediate benefit I found from the milk was that it felt so good on my skin. As I would rub it on, it just felt like a refreshing, cool cleanse, and it was as gentle as water. However, that feeling did not last long. As the milk would absorb into the skin, I would feel very sticky, almost as if I had a thin layer of syrup on my face. Aafter that, my skin would become very dry. It also itched a little bit.
After about half an hour, my skin would return to normal, and I did not feel sticky, dry or itchy anymore. I would head to bed, and when I got up in the morning, I smelled a little bit like sour milk, which was not pleasant. Fortunately, I would head into the shower and rinse off and the smell would go away.
So, what were the results? Was my skin transformed? From my experience, unfortunately, the answer would be a ‘no.’ I did not see any immediate benefits to my skin. This could have to do with timing. I did the milk experiment on my skin for less than a week. That is probably not enough time to see any real benefits. However, when I did the olive oil experiment, the time frame was about the same, and I noticed immediately that the oil made my skin smoother. With the milk, I just did not see an immediate advantage.
On my skin, the milk did not seem to have a cleansing or toning effect, and it did not seem to help with my acne. The good news is that it did not appear to make my acne any worse; I never noticed an increase in my acne while I was using the milk. The bad news is that it did not appear to help with the few bits of acne that I already had; I did not notice any sort of faster healing.
All in all, the one benefit I did notice was that my skin was softer. When I would rinse the milk off in the morning, my skin would, immediately, feel softer. It had that baby-soft feel to it. One time, I decided to also use the milk on my shoulders, and my shoulders also had that soft feeling. I guess the milk would make my whole body feel softer if I chose to use it that way.
Though I was disappointed that I did not see more benefits to using the milk on my skin, I was very pleased in how it made my skin softer. If I had to do this experiment again, I would try to use it for a longer period of time to see if that makes a difference.
*I used cow’s milk. There wasn’t any real reasoning behind this; I just have always used cow’s milk for cooking and drinking, so this is what I had on hand.
Photo Credits:
dairyfoods.com