Cosmetics and beauty enhancement services claim a major share on our monthly expenditure. It is no more true that cosmetic demands are only the preference of women, men are equally interested in taking proper care of their skin and hair and maintaining proper hygiene. Cosmetic creams, scrubs, face packs, conditioners and shampoos are very expensive and contain chemicals that give short-term benefits and have harmful side-effects. On the other hand, your kitchen itself has one solution to all your skin and hair related problems. Rice powder, if used well, can be the best face scrub, skin lightening cream and also hair smoothening conditioner being very cheap at the same time. Let us discuss in detail a few miraculous benefits of rice powder for skin and hair.

• Aging spots & wrinkles: Rice powder is so versatile that when mixed with different powders, fruits, vegetables and products it has different results and all benefit us. Signs of ageing start concerning us from our later youth and the menace of pimples is something we all deal with on a daily basis. There are numerous reasons for such consequences. City life, stressful work, pollution, unhealthy eating habits, irregular sleep cycle and what not. However, when these things have become an inseparable part of our existence, we need to find solutions to them instead of dwelling on the cause. Cucumber juice and lemon juice in respective quantity added to one teaspoon of rice flour makes a paste that helps in dealing with this problem. Apply this rice flour pack on your face. After couple of minutes of drying, wash it. This retains the elasticity of the skin and makes you look energetic and fresh. This can also be tried whenever you have been out in the sun for long for its anti-tanning effect.

• Dark circles: Rice powder also acts effectively as a natural remedy to treat the dark patches below your eyes. Stressful life, sleepless nights, sitting before the screen for hours for you probably is a compulsion but glaring those dark circles surely isn’t. Don’t waste your hard earned money on buying expensive chemical intensive skincare products. Instead just go to your kitchen and create a paste using banana, castor oil and rice flour. Apply it over the affected area and massage it. Rinse it off with water after sometime. You will see the results soon. This is also useful for lightening the delicate skin around the eyes.

• UV Protection: Rice powder is also a very good anti-inflammatory agent and is used for medicating sunburns and preventing skin tans. For its chemical properties high in ferulic acid and allantoin, it acts as a natural sun screen. The paste is made by mixing cold milk and rice powder. After application on face, it is instructed that it be left there for 15 minutes and rinsed off with cold water. This doesn’t show immediate results but if done consistently for one week to two months, your skin starts getting lightened. Similar results can also be achieved by splashing the face with rice soaked water. 

• Glowing skin: Glowing skin always makes you look fresh and ready to take challenges. Rice flour mixed with orange peel has astounding skin glowing properties. Yogurt with its natural acids also exfoliates the skin. A paste made by mixing equal amounts of rice flour and orange peel powder smoothened by adding yogurt is to be applied on cleansed skin and left for 20 minutes. Rinse this with clean water. This process should ideally be repeated twice a week.
• Removal of unwanted facial hair: Facial hair doesn’t make you look good. We all want to get rid of facial hair and undergo cosmetic treatments. Very often these treatments come at high cost, not just monetary but also health-related. The side-effects range from hormonal imbalance to eruptions on skin. Rice powder can considerably cure the problem of facial hair naturally without any side effects. The base of rice powder is versatile and has varying results depending on the texture and areas of hair growth when mixed with turmeric, honey, lemon or papaya.

• Smoothens & straightens hair: Shampoos and conditioners often due to their high chemical composition, harm the health of your hair giving it a lustrous surface but weak scalp. Rice powder serves as a natural remedy available in your kitchen that if strategically used can show miraculous hair smoothening and straightening results without going to the parlour or spending hefty bucks of cash. Rice flour mixed with avocado treats dry and damaged hair. Rice flour and gram flour can be used to cleanse scalp and roots. Rice flour and fuller’s earth can be used for smoother hair, whereas rice flour and fenugreek seeds are used to treat dandruff. 

• Wonderful body scrub: We tend to focus a lot on our facial skin health more often ignoring our body. Our body must be cleansed from time to time and it is not always pocket-friendly to spend so much on cosmetics. Rice powder again comes to rescue in such cases. You can make a paste by adding yogurt to rice powder and apply it on your body before taking a shower thrice a week to achieve the desired results.