Archive for the ‘Essential Oils’ Category

The Benefits Of Breathing Essential Oils

Saturday, July 31st, 2010

Did you know that breathing essential oils has an effect on your mind? noseEssential oils alone can make you feel better about yourself? They are able to improve your frame of mind, lessen stress, and stimulate you to become more active. They can also help you relax or fall asleep more easily. The result is that you are a happier person.

Essential oils such as peppermint or eucalyptus strengthen brain waves, sharpen your mind and speed up your reactions. This is comparable to what takes place when you drink coffee, but without caffeine’s negative effect on your adrenal glands. An essential oil like chamomile has the reverse result. It slows down brain wave patterns and relaxes you like taking a sedative drug, but without side effects.

Pleasing fragrances put people into better moods and cause them to be more eager to cooperate and compromise. For instance, aromas channeled into hospital rooms lessen the anxiousness of patients, staff, and friends and families.

The smell of a skincare product is oftentimes as important as any other factor when you are choosing which product to use. It definitely adds to your pleasure as you use it. Observe your first reaction the next time you shop for a skin lotion or hair rinse. The first or second thing you probably will do is open up the lid to find out how it smells.

This is how breathing essential oils works:

Each time you inhale something aromatic – say your best-loved sweet-smelling flower or perfume – thousands of microscopic scent molecules enter your nose. Way up in your nose, odor receptors capture these molecules. These receptors are able to tell the difference between every one of the different scents.

After the odor receptors collect info concerning an aroma, they transmit a report to your brain. This report avoids the central nervous system and the parts of the brain that control reasoning. Instead, the nose sends its fragrance data to a part of your brain called the limbic system.

One of the numerous tasks carried out by the limbic system is to give notice to your body’s warning system of possible danger. The limbic system also directly transmits information to the hypothalamus and pituitary glands. By way of these glands, your sense of smell affects all your different hormones and your immune system. They also regulate your appetite, digestion, sexual arousal, memory, body temperature and heartbeat.

The information for this post is taken from:

Essential Oils And Your Skin

Monday, July 26th, 2010

massage oils esential oilsThe size of a molecule of essential oil is incredibly tiny. These small molecules are able to pass through your skin without much difficulty. Your skin will not absorb every drop of oil, however. A small quantity of essential oil evaporates just from the warmth of your skin, and a little stays on the surface of your skin.

 This assimilation does not take place all at one time. Essential oils are formed from lots of different compounds, and some go through your skin quicker than others. The most absorbable components can appear in your blood 20 minutes after you massage them on your skin.

 Try this out. Cut a clove of garlic in half and rub the cut surface freely on the sole of your foot. Put socks on and wait. It will require your blood system about 20 minutes to transport the essential oil of garlic all through your body. You’ll know because you’ll be able to taste it. Not simply can you taste garlic, but its potent antiseptic activity is operating all over your body.

 Essential oils tend to go right where you need them. Assume that you have a sore muscle and would like to make use of an essential oil like chamomile to relieve the pain. Rub a massage oil that includes chamomile essential oil on the sore area, and you’ll dispatch the absorbable portions of the oil to your aching muscle that lies underneath the skin.

 Not only does the troubled region obtain nearly the entire healing dose when you put aromatherapy products on your skin, but a smaller amount of essential oil goes into your blood stream. Not as much essential oil in your blood means less oil has to be processed by your liver.

 Essential oils must be diluted before they may safely be applied to your skin. This is commonly done by mixing a small amount of essential oil with a large quantity of a vegetable oil. Every aromatherapy product that contains vegetable oil – and that includes skin lotion, facial cream, salve, and massage oil – slows down the assimilation of essential oil by your skin. This means that a little less essential oil is absorbed into your body. What is going on is that large molecules in vegetable oils such as sweet almond oil or olive oil are too large to go through your skin, so they remain on surface of your skin and hold onto some of the essential oil while they’re at it. This is good for your skin since it provides the essential oils a chance to do their work directly to your skin.

The information for this post is taken from:

What Are Essential Oils?

Thursday, July 8th, 2010

Drop of Essential OilA plant’s scent is created by special oils called essential oils. To find plants that possess these oils, just smell the plant. If the plant has an aroma, it contains essential oils. Roses, violets, and even Christmas trees all owe their distinct scent to essential oils.

 Essential oils are removed from a plant by various techniques. After it is extracted, a pure essential oil is somewhat oily to the touch. Even though it is officially an oil, it is much thinner than vegetable oils we use in cooking, such as canola oil or olive oil.

Essential oils are made up of such tiny compounds that the oils not only feel thin, but they seem to vanish when you rub them between your fingers. They also do not stain when you put them on cloth, and they evaporate quickly into the air. Because they disperse so rapidly, a different name for essential oils is volatile oils.

 Special scent glands in a plant create these essential oils. These glands may appear anywhere, but are most likely in the flowers and leaves and least to be expected in the stems. Essential oils perform many important functions for the plant:

  •  They attract bees and other pollinators.
  •  They keep away harmful bugs.
  •  They repel other plants so that they don’t take up all the space.
  •  They kill bacterial, viral, and fungal infections.
  •  They close up the plant’s wounds.
  •  They make the plant water-resistant.
  •  They increase the plant’s resistance to disease.

 The beauty industry welcomes aromatherapy because essential oils improve the health and beauty of skin, hair, and nails. As an extra fringe benefit, they smell terrific when you apply them to your skin. Essential oils assist the human body in many of the same ways they help the plants they come from:

  •  They kill bacterial, viral and fungal infections.
  •  They cure wounds.
  •  They decrease inflammation.
  •  They regulate hormones.
  •  They tone up and moisten your skin.
  •  They stimulate the immune system.
  •  They repel bugs.

 Here are a few additional things they will do for your body:

  •  They heat up your skin when you apply them in a warm massage oil or liniment.
  •  They help blood flow and digestion.
  •  They reduce sinus and lung congestion.

The information for this post was taken from: Kathi Keville. Aromatherapy for Dummies. Foster City, CA: IDG Books Worldwide, Inc, 1999