Essential oils have become very popular in recent years, with many people turning to these natural remedies for their everyday health and wellness needs. They have been used for centuries in aromatherapy and other traditional medicine practices. Essential oils are taken out from different parts of plants, including flowers, leaves, stems, roots, and bark. They are highly aromatic and can be used for various purposes, including medicinal, cosmetic, and household applications.
This article will discuss the benefits of essential oils for everyday use and how to incorporate them into your daily routine.
Aromatherapy
Aromatherapy is the method of using essential oils for their therapeutic benefits. It involves inhaling the aroma of essential oils, which can help to decrease stress and anxiety, improve mood, and promote relaxation. Aromatherapy can also be used to improve sleep quality and promote better overall health.
Some important essential oils for aromatherapy include lavender, peppermint, lemon, eucalyptus, and tea tree. Lavender is popular for its calming properties and is often used to aid relaxation and reduce stress. Peppermint can help improve focus and concentration, while lemon invigorates and uplifts. Eucalyptus is commonly used to relieve respiratory symptoms, and the tea tree is known for its antibacterial and antifungal properties.
Add a few drops to a diffuser or vaporizer to use essential oils for aromatherapy. You can also add two or three drops to a hot bath or shower to create a relaxing and rejuvenating experience.
Massage
Essential oils can also be used for massage therapy. When blended with a carrier oil such as coconut or jojoba oil, essential oils can be applied directly to the skin to provide therapeutic benefits.
Massage with essential oils can help to relieve muscle tension, improve circulation, and reduce inflammation. It can also promote relaxation and improve overall well-being.
Some of the best essential oils for massage include peppermint, lavender, frankincense, and chamomile. Peppermint is invigorating and cooling, making it ideal for use after exercise or physical activity. Lavender is calming and soothing, perfect for promoting relaxation and reducing stress. Frankincense is known for its anti-inflammatory properties and is often used to relieve joint pain and stiffness. Chamomile is also calming and can help to reduce anxiety and promote sleep.
To use essential oils for massage, simply mix a small amount with carrier oil and apply them to the skin. You can also use a massage oil blend that already contains essential oils.
Skincare
Essential oils can also be used for skincare, and they can help improve the skin’s appearance, reduce inflammation, and promote healing.
Some of the best essential oils for skincare include tea tree, lavender, frankincense, and rosehip. Tea tree is known for its antibacterial and antifungal properties. It is ideal for treating acne and other skin conditions. Lavender is soothing and can help to reduce redness and inflammation. Frankincense is known for its anti-aging properties and can help to reduce fine lines and wrinkles. Rosehip is rich in antioxidants and can help improve the skin’s texture and tone.
To use essential oils for skincare. You can also make your skincare products by combining essential oils with carrier oils, such as jojoba or rosehip oil.
Household Cleaning
Essential oils can be a natural and essential way to clean and freshen your home. They can be used in various ways, such as in homemade cleaning solutions, as room sprays, or even added to your laundry. Some known essential oils for cleaning include lemon, tea tree, eucalyptus, and lavender. These oils have antibacterial, antiviral, and antifungal properties, making them great for killing germs and keeping your home clean and fresh. However, it’s essential to use essential oils safely and appropriately, as they are highly concentrated and can be toxic if ingested or applied directly to the skin. Always dilute essential oils properly and follow the recommended usage guidelines.
Boost Your Immune System
Essential oils have powerful antimicrobial and antiviral properties that can support your immune system and protect you from illness. Many essential oils, including tea tree, eucalyptus, and lavender, have been shown to have strong antibacterial and antifungal effects that can help fight off harmful pathogens.
To use essential oils for immune support, add a few drops of your chosen oil to a diffuser or vaporizer, mix it with a carrier oil, and apply it topically to your skin. You can also add essential oils to your cleaning products or use them to freshen up your living spaces.
Improve Your Mood and Reduce Stress
Essential oils are well-known for their ability to promote relaxation and reduce stress and anxiety. Many oils, including lavender, bergamot, and chamomile, have a calming & soothing effect on the mind and can help you feel more centered and balanced.
To use essential oils for mood support, you can diffuse them in your home or office, add them to a bath or shower, or apply them topically to your skin. You can also create your DIY blends to create a personalized aroma that resonates with you.
Soothe Aches and Pains
Essential oils can also help manage physical discomfort and pain. Many oils, including peppermint, ginger, and frankincense, have analgesic and anti-inflammatory properties to help ease sore muscles and joints.
To use essential oils for pain relief, add them to a carrier oil and massage the mixture into the affected area or add them to a warm compress or bath. You can also use essential oils to create homemade pain relief creams or balms.
Improve Sleep Quality
Good sleep is essential for overall health and well-being; essential oils can be a valuable tool for promoting restful sleep. Many oils, including lavender, chamomile, and ylang-ylang, have calming properties that help you relax and fall asleep more easily.
To use essential oils for sleep support, diffuse them in your bedroom or add a few drops to your pillow or sheets. You can also create your DIY sleep spray or use an essential oil-based rollerball to apply the oil directly to your skin.
Enhance Hair Health
Essential oils can also improve the health and appearance of your skin and hair. Add essential skin and hair care oils to your favorite moisturizer, shampoo, or conditioner. You can also create your DIY beauty products using essential oils as the star ingredient.
Whether you’re looking to boost your physical health, soothe your mind and emotions, or simply add some natural fragrance to your home, essential oils can be a valuable tool in your everyday life.
Essential Oils 101
NourishDoc: Hello, everyone, and happy Monday. Well, Essential Oils is the topic for today, a simple 101. How can we use essential oils to our benefit daily? Dr. Chiola is joining me live from Switzerland. He is a naturopathic physician and an aromatherapy expert, and he has his academy in Switzerland. Thank you so much, Dr. Chiola, for joining me.
Dr. Stefve: Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be hosted, and I appreciate your looking for me. Thank you very much.
What Do Essential Oils Mean?
NourishDoc: You’re welcome. Let’s start with the basics definition; what is essential oil means?
Dr. Stefve: Well, an essential oil, it’s an oil. So, it does not mix with water and is essential because it comes from medicinal plants. It’s part of the plant that is produced to protect it, defend it, attract insects, and heal it, and it is an essential part that the plant needs to survive. So, it was defined at the beginning of the 1900s as essential, and then they added oil.
Now, we know essential oils from way back. It goes from Chinese medicine to Greek medicine to Egyptian medicine, and they have been used in many different ways. Today, we know that essential oils have a very strong scientific base on when to use them and how to use them, and that is something that the research has been developing over the last 70 years; that’s very interesting because first, we always use them according to, well, somebody told me or tradition says.
Now, Essential Oils are phytochemicals. In other words, the plant has a phytochemical basis. So, that means we’ve got molecules, and those molecules interact with our body in certain ways in very different ways. They can go from neurological receptors to basic metabolisms. How do we use Essential Oils? Once we get them from the plant, well, they have to be extracted carefully.
There are two basic methods. They have to be extracted according to a certain time, and certain plants, and think only five percent of all the botanical plants in the world, give us essential oils with medicinal importance. So, it’s not that every single plant we have can give me an essential oil that I can use on a therapeutic basis.
Very important in the world of essential oils since it is a very vast world; many groups make essential oils; we have to be sure that they are one hundred percent pure and not adulterated, and if the company can certify the oil for us. They can provide you with certification to ensure I always use the same high-quality oil. I will get therapeutic results every time I use it, and they will have no side effects on my body.
Why won’t they have side effects on our bodies? Because of the way they’re extracted, we only take out certain molecules. We leave the proteins, the vitamins, the minerals, that are the molecules that can give us certain types of reactions, especially the proteins, and in the plants, instead, we take out this very exclusive part of the plant which is what we smell immediately when you open the bottle. It’s like when you pass by a rose garden and pass on the other side of the street and smell the roses. Now, what we’re smelling is part of their essential oils. So, you can imagine how important they are.
Essential Oils That Can Be Used Daily
NourishDoc: That’s amazing, and then like you said, Essential Oils have been used for centuries for therapeutic, right? So, simple oils that you could tell us is a quick 10-minute session that we do, but the oils that we can use daily.
Dr. Stefve: We use essential oils daily following a couple of recommendations. We have to know the oils. We use them in two ways. We can use them topically, putting them on your skin, and there, we suggest dilutions. Maybe we’ll have time in another session to talk about it. We also use it in aromatherapy in a diffuser.
Many people don’t understand that when we smell an essential oil, we smell hundreds of molecules that enter our body and react with our physiological system. They react with our nerves. They react with our brains. They react with the metabolisms. Now, this is why Essential Oils should not be seen as a remedy for a disease. Yes, we can use them that way.
But how would I suggest first using them every single day? To keep ourselves healthy and to help us in a preventive way not to fall sick. For example, we’re all under this problem with this virus and many other influenza viruses. If you diffuse thyme and oregano, you put it in a diffuser. You diffuse it for 2 hours a day, twice a day, and you sanitize the entire environment because it eliminates certain bacteria and certain viruses, which is supported by scientific research.
Does this mean that you will not catch the flu or a cold? No. But it means you’re helping your body because it doesn’t have to react to all these microbes we breathe. After all, in the air, it’s not that the air is just air. In the air, you’ve got bacteria; you have viruses, you’ve got pollens, you’ve got much stuff. So, thyme and oregano help our body defend itself, which is what essential oils do in plants. They defend plants from bacteria, fungi, and viruses.
Another way we could use an essential oil daily is for our foot hygiene. We, especially in the summer, walk, and maybe you have sneakers on. Your foot becomes moister from sweat, and sometimes you get that little fungus in the middle of your finger. Now, we could use Melaleuca alternifolia oil, also known as tea tree oil, because it has a very good anti-fungal principle. It’s a molecule. We also use tea tree oil for minor scratches, cuts, and skin disinfection. We can use it with lavender, tea tree oil, and lavender. Skin irritations due to eczema or psoriasis are very red, irritated, itchy, and maybe slightly cut.
What the Melaleuca will do, is the tea tree oil will defend itself from bacteria and fungi. It will also help the body start its healing process of the skin because essential oils in plants help the plants heal broken leaves and twigs, which they do in our bodies too. Whereas, instead lavender is a very soothing oil. It helps take away irritation and inflammation. It also helps take away, and that’s on a physical basis.
However, it also helps take away inflammation and irritation on an emotional basis, and that’s why it’s called the Queen of Anxiety and Stress. So if we’re going to work and have a very stressful day, we can take our lavender, put a couple of drops on our hand, rub our hand, and breathe in, which will help our limbic system slow down and relax, which is very important. We can also do that to help us regulate our sleep and sleeping habits.
Lavender at night helps us relax quite a bit and reach a deeper depth of sleep; therefore, it helps our body to restore much better. We could also use, for example, in the morning, when we brush our teeth, we’re all pretty worried about oral hygiene, especially now. Well, add two drops of lemon oil, the essential oil of lemon, to your toothpaste. If the toothpaste is natural, it would be better. However, you brush your teeth anyway because lemon oil is a strong antioxidant.
It helps clean away the bacteria in your mouth and helps your gums stay healthy; it will also allow you not to accumulate as much decay in your teeth. Another good idea is when you’re home or at work. It can become stressful; maybe things become a little bit agitated. We want to diffuse an oil that helps us relax but not like lavender relax and not be very attentive, very careful. We want to be careful. We have to have our minds active.
So what we’ll use is Wild Orange, chithra sinensis, and that is a very good oil to diffuse while you’re working or you have to do homework; if we have memory problems, we can use rosemary, which is another very good oil, and then how many times during the day do we come to a point where we’re tired? And we start not; it’s difficult for us to start focusing. We can’t remember things, and we get groggy, and in Europe, especially in Italy, they’ll go for coffee.
Instead, we can use peppermint. Peppermint Essential Oil can be dropped in our mouths or under our tongues. It wakes you up immediately. It’s a very good neuro stimulant but does not make you nervous. At the same time, peppermint oil helps us relieve part of a fever. It slightly lowers the temperature and keeps it under control, or we could use it on our temples when we have a headache.
So there are very many uses for essential oils. You want to sanitize Melaleuca, the tea tree Attica when you’re washing in your washing machine. So, put three drops of Melaleuca, tea tree oil, and three drops of lemon directly in your detergent, and you send your washing machine. Your clothes will be more sanitized, and you’ll have wonderful perfume. These are some simple suggestions, and there are hundreds of these suggestions which how really how to use essential oils. That’s why I have the academy.
Essential Oils For Anxiety & Sleep Issues
NourishDoc: Beautiful. I think these are great suggestions and I’m going to try each one of them, especially we need nowadays with anxiety and sleeping, a lot of us have all these issues, any issues of these essential oils are cheap like not expensive and prevention, all the good things that you talked about for us. Right?
Dr. Stefve: Yep. Well, also one thing. Remember to extract essential oils; it takes a lot of plant raw material. So, if it is too cheap, be careful because that is most likely an adulterated oil. So, on a rule of thumb, a good essential oil costs anywhere from one to 2 dollars per milliliter. So, buying a bottle that says 5 milliliters should be at most six to 7-8 dollars. If they cost one or two dollars, be careful because you have essential oils.
However, you also have a lot of adulterated chemical substances that give the companies a higher income. Now, one important thing is whether essential oils can be used every time in any case. No. There are certain moments when we have to be careful with essential oils, and for example, with children, we have to use them diluted; with elders, we dilute them.
Certain essential oils in pregnancy should not be used. Others should be used to with a little bit of care and diluted. Do you put essential oil directly on a wound? No, because it’ll burn. Except for tea tree oil. So, there are certain things that we should know, and we should learn about how to use them and when to use them.
NourishDoc: Okay. Well, you did this perfect craft course in 10-15 minutes. I think beautiful. Thank you so much. It’s so useful for all of us to start using some of the words for preventive purposes, and that’s what you were saying earlier. Thank you so much.
Dr. Stefve: Thank you, and I wish you all a wonderful day. Get the Essential Oils to use in an essential life.
NourishDoc: Thank you. That’s a great closing line. Bye-bye everyone.
