A kiss mark or a love bite is called a hickey, which is a type of bruise. When the skin is sucked or kissed too hard, it results in hickey. This causes broken capillaries and blood is pooled in the capillaries, leading to red or purple skin.
Hickey can last for more than seven days and generally heal with time, but it looks quite embarrassing. You can hide a hickey with makeup or clothing. There are numerous home remedies to treat hickey fast. Once hickey is healed, there is rarely any scar left.
Natural Remedies for Hickeys
Some of the following home remedies for hickeys are tried and tested and can give you relief from its appearance:
- Cool compress: Like you get relief from other bruises with ice packs, hickey is also not an exception. You can get quick relief from a hickey with application of ice. Wrap some ice cubes in paper towel and place on hickey. Slowly move the pack around hickey and leave for twenty minutes and then remove. It should be repeated many times on the first day. Ice should not be placed directly on the skin
- Toothbrush application: This is a surprising home remedy for hickey treatment. You have to get a new toothbrush and lightly brush over the hickey and the surrounding area. This helps stimulate blood circulation, but avoid pressing hard as it can worsen a hickey. After gently rubbing the area with a toothbrush for 15 minutes, the redness and swelling will spread, but will be reduced after 15 minutes. Then apply a cold compress for relief from hickey. You can repeat this if required again
- Peppermint: Applying peppermint on skin helps improve blood circulation, thus it is effective against hickey. It also helps in healing blood vessels. Apply peppermint oil on the affected skin. It will cause little tingling, but will go away after a few minutes. This remedy should not be repeated more than twice in a day. You can also apply peppermint based toothpaste on a hickey. Toothpaste remedy works better if applied just after a hickey
- Alcohol application: Alcohol works better when a few hours have passed after you received a hickey. Alcohol acts a disinfectant, cools and soothes the irritated skin. Thus, these properties of alcohol helps relieve a hickey fast. Take some alcohol on a cotton ball and rub on a hickey for a few minutes. This will relieve you, but it can also cause dryness in the skin, so you must apply moisturizer over the affected area. This can be repeated several times in initial two days
- Banana peel: You must be wondering, but this is also effective in getting quick relief from hickey. Take a banana peel and cut the size fit of your hickey and place inside of the peel on a hickey for half an hour. If you repeat this for three times a day, you will observe reduced redness and swelling in hickey
These are some of the remedies for hickeys. In addition to these, you should massage the affected area and apply cool tea bags to get quick relief.
