Bid goodbye to tanning the natural way

New Delhi, March 16 (IANS) This summer, do away with those endless visits to beauty salons for detanning. Instead, use ingredients like lemon, tomatoes and curd to treat tanning, says an expert.

Aakriti Kochar, beauty and make-up expert, Oriflame India, shares some natural ways to beat sun tan:

• Lemon juice: Apply it on affected areas and leave for 15-20 minutes then rinse off with cold water. Doing this over a few weeks helps not only in reducing sun tan, but marks as well. One can also mix a few ingredients like cucumber with lemon juice or curd with lemon water - these will have a cooling effect on skin which will further help removing sun tan quickly.

• Raw tomatoes: Cut slices and gently rub on affected areas, this removes tan and clears skin over a few weeks of routine usage.

• Curd: Applying curd and other milk products on skin helps soften it and also lighten any tan or pigmentation marks. This is cooling and does not cause any irritation on your skin.

For better results, one can prepare a mask at home with curd and besan or curd and multani mitti. Apply these paste on affected areas and leave it on for 20 minutes then rinse off with cold water. This pack also helps reduce darkness on neck, elbows, knees and knuckles which most Indian people suffer with because of pigmentation.

• Aloe vera, rose water and glycerine: A combination of these is extremely good for fresh looking radiant skin, it helps lighten marks and tan making your skin look even tone and radiant.

Along with skin lightening, these ingredients also have moisturising qualities leaving your skin soft and smooth removing over drying of skin caused by sun damage.

• Oatmeal, honey, curd scrub: These are homemade exfoliators for removing dead and damaged skin because of sun tan. Removing dead skin cells and exposing new fresh skin will help reduce sun tan over a period of time which will be lighter and radiant.