12 Things Essential Oils Are Good For
Essential oils are incredible tools we can use to help boost our overall health and well-being. Conventional medicine has given us incredible gifts— from curing painful ailments to preventing widespread diseases from affecting thousands of people. Sometimes even the best medical treatment can take a toll on our body and spirit. For those times, we have essential oils to use as supplemental support to use help us feel more comfortable in a natural way.
When used in conjunction with modern medicine, essential oils can greatly enhance our recovery experience. Considered a Complementary Therapy (CT)— a therapy meant to be used with and not instead of professional healthcare —aromatherapy with essential oils can be used to help patients deal with treatment side effects and improve their quality of life. Essential oil aromatherapy has also been shown to be a useful CT for dealing with chronic pain.
Even if you’re not going through serious medical treatment, essential oils are useful in managing all kinds of small day-to-day issues for beauty, well-being and minor first-aid around the house. No matter what results you’re after, there are essential oils that can help you get there. Here are some of our favorite benefits of essential oils.
Fight Bacteria with Essential Oils
Many essential oils contain natural antimicrobial elements that can assist your body in fighting common infections. Some researchers even suggest that essential oils might help fight bacteria that have become resistant to traditional antibacterial medications. Certainly, when used in combination with traditional medicine, essential oils can naturally help your body heal faster and reduce risk of infection. Lavender essential oil is especially good for promoting healing.Tea tree , eucalyptus and rosemary essential oils can all be used on minor cuts and scrapes to fight infection by helping reduce bacteria.
Treat Yourself to a Boost with Essential Oils
We all experience burnout. When our jobs get exceptionally busy and our homelife seems like a never-ending cycle of appointments, it’s normal to start to feel overwhelmed and exhausted. In times like this, turn to essential oils to give yourself a rejuvenated feeling. Many essential oils like peppermint oil are well-known for their refreshing, invigorating aroma. Some other great essential oils to try are pine needle oil to set the mood for alertness and productivity and tangerine essential oil for joy and creativity. If you want a natural way to help boost your energy levels, try a quick aromatherapy break with essential oils.
Support Digestion with Essential Oils
A healthy digestive system can promote healthy skin, increase energy and a whole host of other benefits. If you’re interested in natural aids to help improve digestion, you should give essential oils a try. A simple way to use essential oils when you’re feeling constipated is creating your own massage oil to use on your abdomen. Aromatherapy massage has been shown to be a helpful CT for chronic constipation.
Start with a skin-nourishing carrier oil like jojoba and add a few drops of one of these essential oils: lemon, rosemary, or peppermint. Be sure to always follow proper dilution ratios when mixing your massage oils and gently massage your abdomen to help you feel more comfortable. Anyone who is looking to be proactive about their digestive system in a natural way should try incorporating essential oils in their life.
Use Essential Oils to Manage Stress
When life starts to get overwhelming, we could all use a quick break to help relieve stress. Some people suggest running or meditating, but if you’re on-the-go sometimes you need something that will help quickly. In those cases, a few drops of lavender essential oils can help you start to feel a little less stressed out. Known to have sedative properties, essential oils like lavender have been shown to reduce the effects of stress and depression.
In fact, there are a whole lot of awesome lavender oil benefits and it’s perfect any time you want to use essential oils for relaxation. It’s easy to keep an essential oils diffuser in your room at home or a few essential oils to use at work so that you’re never far from a quick break.
Essential Oils Can Support Brain Function
Some days it just feels like your brain is in a complete fog. You can’t seem to focus or remember the important details of your day. It doesn’t mean that something is wrong, it just means you might need a little help from essential oils. Both the essential oils that have sedative properties and those with stimulating elements can help give you a kick to shake off the fog. Essential oils have even been studied for helping people with dementia manage their symptoms.
Let Essential Oils Help Reduce Pain
Whether it’s simple aches and pains of age or you’ve got a specific injury that keeps bothering you, essential oils can help make you more comfortable. People who aren’t interested in prolonged high doses of traditional painkillers can try using essential oils along with their prescription to find some added relief.
Using aromatherapy for pain management is less expensive and has fewer side-effects than traditional painkillers. Some good essential oils for pain management include lavender, peppermint, eucalyptus, and rosemary essential oil. Any one of these essential oils would be great to use with a diffuser or diluted with a carrier oil and used for massage.
Revive Hair Using Essential Oils
We use so many products and all the styling tools we use on our hair, we need to do all we can to keep it strong and full. One way to aid healthy hair is by using essential oils — especially rosemary. Recent evidence suggests that rosemary oil may help prevent hair loss and even encourage growth. While it’s too soon to tell for sure, researchers think rosemary essential oil holds a lot of promise when it comes to giving your hair a boost. The antifungal properties of rosemary oil helps reduce fungus that can potentially cause dandruff. Mixing rosemary or other essential oils with argan oil (the hair reviving superstar) as a reason to give yourself a quick head massage as well get hair that looks and feels healthier. It’s a win-win.
Essential Oils Help Make Your Skin Healthier
If you’ve tried product after product but can’t seem to find the exact routine you need to get glowing skin, essential oils may be the thing you’ve been missing. A review published in Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine stated, “at least 90 essential oils can be identified as being recommended for dermatological use, with at least 1,500 combinations.” Basically, you can’t go wrong adding essential oils into your skincare routine.
Promote Sleep with Essential Oils
Better sleep is the answer to many of our daily struggles. Aren’t we all constantly hoping for 20 more minutes of sleep? More time might not be the answer. Instead, try using essential oils before you go to bed to promote a higher quality sleep. Lavender oil is the most studied, and most effective, of all essential oils for restful sleep. Try adding lavender to your essential oils diffuser for ten minutes before bed to relax your body and prepare for deep sleep.
Essential Oils Can Aid in Anxiety
More and more often, people are experiencing the debilitating effects of anxiety. It is hard to predict when and where a person will feel anxious, so it’s helpful to have access to as many aids as possible. It turns out that carrying essential oils with you is a good idea if you suffer from anxiety. Research shows that consistent use of essential oils as a proactive measure can help reduce the severity of anxiety in your life. If you’re interested in trying it, add a daily 15-minute break for aromatherapy and notice how your body will start to feel more relaxed.
Detoxify with Essential Oils
Our bodies should detoxify themselves on their own. Of course, when our bodies were evolving, there weren’t nearly as many toxins in the air and in our food as there are now. So it makes sense that some people want to be proactive in helping their body detoxify. Essential oils can be a great help in assisting our bodies’ natural functions. Pine needle essential oil is a great go-to when you want to give the detoxifying systems in your body a hand. You can use essential oils for detoxing in bath soak recipes, massage oils or with an essential oils diffuser for inhalation.
Manage Headaches with Essential Oils
Finally, one of the most popular things essential oils are good for is providing quick (if temporary) relief for headaches and migraines. Using essential oils good for headaches and migraines such peppermint or eucalyptus to get some temporary relief can help you feel more comfortable while your painkillers kick in. If you get a lot of headaches it’s a good idea to always keep some lavender, eucalyptus, or peppermint essential oils in your bag or at your desk in case of an emergency.
We could go on and on about the ways essential oils can benefit your daily life. We probably will in future articles, if we’re being honest. But this list shows you the variety of ways to integrate essential oils into your life to start seeing some really positive changes. No matter if you’re someone who experiences chronic pain and need a new tool to manage your pain, or you’re just looking to add to your beauty routine, there is an essential oil for you to use. If you’re ready to start using essential oils daily, click here to add to your collection.
*Disclaimer
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This information is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. The information on this site is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Please confirm any information obtained from or through this web site with other sources, and review all information regarding any medical condition or treatment with your physician. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay seeking medical treatment because of something you have read on this website.