Cellulite scrubs with coffee bean grounds: the facts
Coffee scrubs for cellulite do not work: stop wasting your time and messing up your bathroom
Coffee cellulite scrub: good for exfoliation, pointless for cellulite
Caffeine: extremely difficult to penetrate the skin
Comparing espresso coffee, coffee scrubs and caffeine creams for cellulite
Reduce cellulite at home
Frequently asked questions
Does coffee scrub have caffeine?
Coffee grounds for cellulite: marketing, hype, ignorance
Cellulite scrub? They are all pointless.
Cellulite coffee scrub before and after?
Best coffee scrub for cellulite?
Caffeine scrub for cellulite? Still not a good idea…
Coffee scrub results
Caffeine for cellulite
Coffee for cellulite: what about applying a cup of coffee on the skin?
Coffee wrap for cellulite before and after
Does exfoliating help cellulite?
Coffee scrub benefits for cellulite
Have a skin tightening/cellulite treatment with London’s cellulite experts
Advanced, infrared / blue / red light therapy treatments in London at LipoTherapeia
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Coffee scrubs for cellulite do not work: stop wasting your time and messing up your bathroom
One of the biggest beauty fads in the last few years is the scrubbing of ground coffee beans on your skin in the hope that it will smoothen up your cellulite and firm up your legs.
Although it intuitively doesn’t make sense, this hasn’t stopped millions of web pages to be created on the subject and proudly displayed on Google.
Coffee scrubbing: good for exfoliation, pointless for cellulite
Caffeine in coffee beans is tightly bound within the cellulose fibres of the coffee beans and only released into your espresso under high temperature (90º Celsius) and high pressure (9000 millibars - this is nine times the atmospheric pressure and equivalent to the pressure found 240 ft deep into the ocean).
Caffeine just does not just travel out of its own volition through the fibres of the ground coffee beans onto the skin's surface, just because you rub the beans against your skin.
In fact, you can scrub those coffee grounds into your skin until it literally bleeds and still no caffeine will be expressed out of the beans and ONTO your skin.
And even if some of it did, almost none of it would travel through your skin INTO your deep skin layers to “fight cellulite”, as coffee scrub vendors would have you believe.
Coffee scrubs may be great for exfoliation, but that’s it. They do nothing for cellulite.
Sure, performing a coffee scrub exfoliation is a nice self-care “ritual”, to use the language of silly magazine, and leaves the surface of your skin soft. Add a nice oil or cream afterwards and your skin will feel nice and silky. But the cellulite bumps will still be there, under the skin softness.
Caffeine: extremely difficult to penetrate the skin
As caffeine, the purported active ingredient, does not ever leave the coffee grounds, and knowing caffeine’s very difficult skin absorption, it would never reach your fat cells, which are hidden deep in your skin (hypodermis) - not on the surface of your skin (epidermis).
Caffeine is such a lipophobic substance that it is almost impossible to penetrate the skin unless it is enclosed in liposomes or other enhanced absorption vehicle.
Comparing espresso coffee, coffee scrubs and caffeine creams for cellulite
And if caffeine is not highly concentrated, as well as being bioavailable, it won’t have any effect either.
A daily typical application quantity of 10g of a high-purity (99% purity), high-concentration (3%), caffeine-containing cellulite cream would provide a daily dose of 300mg of pure caffeine, i.e. 3 cups of actual strong espresso coffee - not ground coffee beans with the caffeine trapped inside the bean fibres.
And this caffeine should be encapsulated in a liposome cream formulation, not stuck forever within the hard cellulose fibres of coffee grounds.
In contrast, if you get 10mg of caffeine out of those coffee scrubs on the surface of your skin (NOT inside the skin), I would call it a miracle.
Reduce cellulite at home
If you want to fight cellulite at home without spending money on treatments and creams, the answer remains simple: follow a strict healthy diet comprising loads of veg, fruit and lean protein, walk everywhere, exercise a lot and have daily contrast showers specifically on your legs.
And if you want to give your legs some cellulite-busting TLC at home, give them ten minutes of strong massage a day, comprising of alternating kneading and stroking moves, with the aid of a little oil (any oil, not too much). That will boost circulation much more than any type of body brushing or coffee bean scrubbing ever will.
And if you want 100+ real tips on what to do and what not to do to prevent and reduce cellulite, read our extensive guide by clicking the link above.
Coffee scrubs for cellulite: Frequently asked questions
We hope everything is now clear regarding coffee bean scrubs for cellulite.
Below are some straight, quick answers to the most common questions related to this subject, to clarify finer points and add more detail.
Does coffee scrub have caffeine?
The answer to the common question, “Does coffee scrub have caffeine?”, is:
“Sure it does, but caffeine stays in the coffee grounds and does not transfer ONTO your skin. And caffeine definitely does not go INTO your skin, especially the deeper layer of your skin where cellulite is found - ever.”
So there is no benefit from scrubbing coffee grounds onto your thighs other than exfoliation.
Coffee grounds for cellulite: marketing, hype and ignorance
Why every single article about ‘how to get rid of cellulite’ in the last few years mentions coffee scrubs as a solution to cellulite? The answer is summed up in three words: marketing, hype and ignorance.
We have seen it in the past with those impossible ‘anti-cellulite MBT trainers’, ‘detox foot patches’, ‘caffeine infused jeans”, ‘dry brushing’, ‘infrared light emitting cellulite leggings’ and other ridiculous gimmicks, directed to the naive and the gullible and to those with more money than sense.
The list is endless.
Cellulite scrub? They are all pointless.
Anything you use as a scrub for cellulite is pointless, as cellulite is found in the deepest skin layer (hypodermis) and scrubs affect the top skin layer (epidermis). No connection, no relation, just waste of time.
Coffee scrub for cellulite before and after?
A lot of people look for ‘before and after’ cellulite pictures of something that does not have a chance in hell in working: coffee ground scrubbing.
So the end result would be the same as 95% of so-called “before and after” cellulite pictures on the web are: fake so-called coffee scrub before and after pictures.
Don’t fall for fake.
Best coffee scrub for cellulite?
As analysed above, none is “best” because no coffee scrub works for cellulite.
Caffeine scrub for cellulite? Still not a good idea…
Now this superficially seems like a good idea: instead of rubbing coffee beans on skin why not get pure caffeine and scrub it on skin instead?
OK, don’t do it at home because firstly it is not safe and secondly it is not effective.
Pure caffeine itself is a concentrated poison which you should not inhale or put in your mouth. One gram of caffeine is equivalent to 10 cups of coffee and imagine how you will feel if you have 10 cups of coffee all in one - I would go to hospital. And any amount inhaled or going into your eyes could be harmful too. Just don’t do it.
Furthermore, almost no caffeine will absorbed into your skin (caffeine is notoriously difficult to absorb through the skin) and none will reach the hypodermis, the cellulite layer.
This idea sounds smart but it is idiotic on so many levels.
Coffee scrub results
As mentioned above, these are none, as caffeine does not get extracted from the beans by scrubbing the beans on the skin neither it is absorbed into the skin
Caffeine for cellulite
Caffeine is a good active ingredient for anti-cellulite creams but it must be in liposome form to be absorbed and ideally accompanied with other ingredients, such as forskolin, centella triterpenes and more, for best results. BTW, caffeine taken by mouth, i.e. drinking coffee, does not work.
Coffee for cellulite: what about applying a cup of coffee on the skin?
Now this sounds like a far better idea than the silly coffee scrub but it is messy, stains your clothes and your bathroom (hopefully you do not apply it while stepping on the carpet)
However, a cup of double espresso* applied on your thighs is still less concentrated and less absorbable than a cheap, simple caffeine-rich cellulite cream - which still does not do much for cellulite because it only contains one anti-cellulite active out of multiple ones needed to effectively reduce cellulite.
* A double espresso cup would contain 200mg of caffeine in 30ml of espresso, i.e. 200mg in 30,000mg ⇒ 0.67% w/w of poorly absorbed caffeine. This pales in comparison with the 3% of (hopefully) better absorbed caffeine of a simple, cheap, caffeine-based cellulite cream - but still better than the 0.001% of caffeine extracted from a coffee bean scrub by rubbing coffee beans on the skin.
Coffee wrap for cellulite before and after
Now that’s another idea: put actual espresso on the legs and wrap the legs with plastic wrap that ensures clothes and carpets don’t get stained and helps with caffeine absorption.
Sure, this is better than the silly coffee scrubs but still coffee usually finds its way through the wrap and stains stuff. Plus it is still 0.67% caffeine compared to 3% caffeine of a cellulite cream. And its annoying having to be wrapped for an hour. And plastic wraps leach BPA into the skin - not a nice chemical when it comes to cellulite.
Why not buy a cheap, simple caffeine cream instead and avoid all the above hassles and problems? Or buy a real cellulite cream, i.e. one with multiple, high-purity anti-cellulite actives in high concentrations?
But overall this is a better idea than a coffee scrub.
Does exfoliating help cellulite?
As described above, exfoliation only affects the superficial skin layer (epidermis) not the deepest skin layer where cellulite is found (hypodermis).
So no, exfoliation with coffee grounds, dry brushing or any other method does not affect cellulite in the slightest.
Coffee scrub benefits for cellulite
As analysed above, these are none: coffee ground scrubbing does reduce cellulite.
Have a skin tightening/cellulite treatment in London with the experts
At LipoTherapeia we have specialised 100% in skin tightening and cellulite reduction for more than two decades and 20,000+ sessions.
This is all we study and practise every day and have researched and tried hands-on all the important skin tightening equipment and their manufacturers.
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Advanced, infrared / blue / red light therapy treatments in London at LipoTherapeia
At LipoTherapeia we are passionate about phototherapy (also known as photobiomodulation/PBM, red light therapy, infrared light therapy, blue light therapy, LED light therapy etc) and we use the most powerful equipment available today (up to 200mW/cm2), for best results and treatment of large body areas.
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