Lavender Oil: If
You Want to Eliminate Stress, Improve Your Skin & Immune System, Think
Lavender!
Lavender not only smells good, but it can also help you look and feel
great! This fragrant herb has been used to treat skin lesions, calm
anxiety and support your immune system.
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Lavender is as old as humankind. Traced back 2,500 years, this beautifully-scented
herb has been used in the following ways: perfume, disinfectant, deodorant,
aphrodisiac and insect repellant.
Did you know lavender was also used in ancient times to tame lions and tigers?
Perhaps ancient peoples intuitively knew what researchers are finding out
about lavender...it calms anxiety and provides natural stress relief. And
that's not all -- lavender has a long list of medicinal properties, making
it a natural health superstar.
These days, lavender is enjoying renewed popularity as an alternative to
conventional drug treatments.
Lavender and Relaxation
Lavender is known as a calming and relaxing herb and has frequently been
used for insomnia, anxiety, depression, and natural stress relief.
One recent study discovered that the scent of lavender increases the time
you spend in deep (slow wave) sleep, though the effects were stronger for
women than for men. 1 Other findings suggest
that lavender reduces the severity of depression when taken concurrently with
an antidepressant.2
While lavender aromatherapy can help with your sleep and mood, it also has
a wide range of health benefits.
Lavender and Your Health
Throughout history, people have turned to lavender for all kinds of ailments
including acne treatment, skin disorders, digestive complaints, pain relief,
and to prevent and treat infections.
While much of the evidence that supports the medicinal use of lavender is
anecdotal, scientists are starting to research the effects of lavender on
the body and have discovered that lavender has anti-microbial, anti-fungal,
and anti-inflammatory properties.3,4
Lavender has also been shown to reduce the progression of candida albicans
and may be an effective treatment for other infections.5
In combination with other oils, lavender was found to slow the growth
of breast cancer tumors in mice.6
Aromatherapists feel that lavender essential oil is the most versatile because
of its many healing properties and considers it one of the best essential
oils to have on hand.
Lavender has been used for:
- Pain relief
- Headaches and migraines
- Muscle aches and sprains
- Menstrual cramps
- Allergies
- Asthma
- Relaxation
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Inducing sleep
- Digestive distress, gas and colic
- Inflammation
- Burns
- Insect bites
- Chicken Pox
- Acne treatment
- Dermatitis
- Insect repellant
- Dry skin
- Muscle relaxant
Sources of Lavender
Lavender grows naturally in dry, sunny, rocky areas and is native to the
Mediterranean. France is the world leader in lavender trade, but it can be
grown anywhere if you select the right variety and provide ideal growing conditions.
Commercially, lavender is already in many personal care products, although
most of the time, it is in trace amounts and combined with chemicals that
are not ideal for your skin or your health. If you want to experiment with
the many uses of lavender, it is available fresh, dried and powdered, and
as an essential oil.
Essential oils are concentrated extracts from the plant, making them 70 times
more potent than the plant itself!
Using lavender essential oil brings you all of the benefits of lavender in
its most concentrated form. However, not all essential oils are considered
equal. In fact, the labeling laws for essential oils allow companies to say
100% pure, even if they are extended with up to 50% chemicals (some of the
extenders are even cancer-causing).
At Body Ecology, we recommend Forever
Young Essential Oils because they are committed to the highest quality
and standards for their products.
Forever Young essential oils are third-party E.O.B.B.D. (Essential
Oils Botancially and Biochemically Defined) tested
for 100% purity.
We actually like to collect other brands of lavender essential oil just
to compare the scent with Forever Young lavender essential oil. Forever Young's
high quality can be recognized immediately because the scent is deeper, richer
and more natural.
How to Use Lavender Essential Oil
Some options for using lavender essential oil are:
- Mix 5 to 6 drops of Lavender essential oil to your bath water if you have
dry skin.
- Diffuse 10 to 12 drops of Lavender into the air during your workday for
natural stress relief.
- Add 2 drops of Lavender per ounce of your favorite lightly scented, unrefined
organic oil (like almond oil or olive oil) for a body oil with all the benefits
of lavender for improving your skin, relaxing your mind, warding off insects
or helping you sleep.
- The unrefined organic oil you choose acts as a "carrier oil"
for lavender (or any essential oil, for that matter), which dilutes
the oil and carries the beneficial properties into your skin.
- You may want to use this oil to replace your lotion, especially if
it contains chemicals or other additives. When you put something on
your skin, it is absorbed into your body. If you haven't read about
refined oils, learn more in: Why
the Processing of Consumable Oils has Devastated America's Health.
It's just as important to choose healthy oils to put ON your skin as
it is to add them to your foods.
You can also use the fragrant dried flowers of lavender to make wonderful
scented sachets. For a natural alternative to mothballs, add the sachets to
your drawers and closets. Of course, this provides an added benefit of relaxing
lavender aromatherapy to your clothing as well!
If you only have one essential oil, then make sure it is lavender.
Try this 100% pure lavender
essential oil from Forever Young for relaxation, pain relief and
to boost your immunity.
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Lavender as Estrogen
There has been some speculation that lavender and tea tree oils in shampoos
and lotions could create an estrogen-like affect in pre-pubescent boys, causing
them to develop breast tissue. There were 3 reported cases that went away
after the products were discontinued, so while laboratory research is still
inconclusive, it's important to be aware of how any product can affect children.7
Benefit from Versatile Lavender
Before you reach for over the counter drugs for your next headache, skin
eruption or muscle ache, do what ancient Egyptians did and look to nature
first! After all, if lavender could tame tigers, imagine what it could do
for Monday mornings at the office?
Lavender
essential oil has so many benefits that can be a wonderful part of your
natural health lifestyle.
Sources
1 A Pleasant Scent Can Lead to a Good Night's Sleep, Sense of Smell Institute.
http://www.senseofsmell.org/feature/sleep/index.php
2 Ingels, Dr. Darin, "Lavender as Therapy for Depression," BastyrCenter.org.
http://bastyrcenter.org/content/view/683/
3 Sahelian, Dr. Ray, "Lavender Oil," RaySahelian.com. http://www.raysahelian.com/lavender.html
4 Anti-inflammatory activity of linalool and linalyl acetate constituents
of essential oils, Phytomedicine. 2002 Dec;9(8):721-6.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=12587692&dopt=Abstract
5 Sahelian, Dr. Ray, "Lavender Oil," RaySahelian.com. http://www.raysahelian.com/lavender.html
6 The History of Lavender, LavenderFarm.com. http://www.lavenderfarm.com/history.htm
7 Sanghavi, Darshak, "Preschool Puberty, and a search for the causes,"
New York Times, 17 Oct 2006. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/17/science/17puberty.html?ex=1318737600&en=ed072921988bcaee&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
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