Have you ever tried using essential oils to improve your health? If not, this is something you should definitely consider doing since essential oils are proven to help with a variety of health issues and they can do wonders for your wellbeing.
If you’ve been avoiding essential oils, not knowing what to do with them, this guide is for you. Here you will learn exactly how to use them and what to use them for so that you can start enjoying all of their benefits. Continue reading to discover some of the most commonly used essential oils and their amazing properties.
Quick navigation:
What are essential oils?
Essential oils benefits
How to use essential oils
Lavender essential oil
Lavender essential oil properties
Lavender essential oil uses and benefits
Peppermint essential oil
Peppermint essential oil properties
Peppermint essential oil uses and benefits
Eucalyptus essential oil
Eucalyptus essential oil properties
Eucalyptus essential oil uses and benefits
Tea tree essential oil
Tea tree essential oil properties
Tea tree essential oil uses and benefits
Ylang Ylang essential oil
Ylang Ylang essential oil properties
Ylang Ylang essential oil uses
Buying essential oils tips
Organic essential oils from Sacred Soul Holistics – Review
What are essential oils?
Before we dive deeper into the benefits of essential oils, how to use them and what you can use them for, let’s clarify first what essential oils are.
Essential oils are highly concentrated natural oils made from different parts of plants. Essential oils are what gives plants their distinctive smells. They are extracted using various methods such as distillation (using water) and expression (expressed mechanically or cold-pressed).
An oil is “essential” in the sense that it contains the “essence of” the plant’s fragrance—the characteristic fragrance of the plant from which it is derived (1).
Benefits of essential oils
Essential oils have a myriad of benefits for your health and well-being but they are also used in the beauty products due to their benefits when applied topically on the skin or hair.
Do you have a headache? There is an essential oil for that! Itchy skin? Yep, there is an essential oil for that as well! Feeling anxious and cannot sleep? There are quite a few essential oils that could help with that as well.
With essential oils and aromatherapy, you can naturally treat minor health concerns, skin issues and you can even calm the restless mind. The benefits of using essential oils are endless.
How to use essential oils
Before you start using essential oils you need to know that they are highly concentrated and most of them shouldn’t be applied directly to the skin as a skin sensitivity could occur.
It’s advisable to dilute more potent oils and when trying an oil for the first time. Only like that, you can avoid strong reactions, especially if you have sensitive skin.
The recommended dilution ratio is typically one drop of essential oil to three drops of carrier oil (you can use almond, jojoba or olive oil as a carrier oil). You can, of course, use more of carrier oil, it all depends on what the purpose of your application is.
You can use essential oils in many different ways but here are some of the most popular ways of using them:
- in a bath (add a few drops to improve your mood)
- for a massage (to aid relaxation)
- on the skin, diluted (to soothe and calm the skin)
- steam inhalation – for colds and coughs (some oils are better for this than others)
- for cleaning your home naturally (many of essential oils have anti-bacterial and anti-septic properties)
- as a natural air freshener – add a few drops in a diffuser or burner
There are hundreds of essential oils and in this guide, I only list some of the most popular ones and various ways of using them.
Lavender essential oil
Possibly the only essential oil that is safe to apply neat to large areas of the skin, lavender oil is a key first-aid remedy for home use and when travelling (2).
Lavender essential oil properties:
- analgesic (offers relief from pain)
- antidepressant
- antispasmodic (helps relieve muscle spasms and cramps)
- sedative
- antiseptic (antimicrobial)
Lavender essential oil uses and benefits
Lavender essential oil is one of the most commonly used essential oils and it’s well known for its calming qualities soothing nervous overactivity, stress-related headache, and migraine. It’s great for relaxation and anxiety and helps you sleep better.
Here are some of the ways you can use lavender essential oil:
- use a few drops under your pillow for better sleep
- massage a few drops into the temples to bring a headache relief
- massage the oil onto herpes, shingles sores, rheumatic joints
- apply the oil to minor burns, sunburn, sores, itchy skin and insect bites to promote healing and ease discomfort
- use it to deter moths and insects
- use it on acne to soothe the skin and reduce the redness
- add it to your shampoo to soothe the itching scalp
- add it to your laundry as a rinse aid to make clothes smell fresh
To learn more about lavender essential oil check out this page.
Peppermint essential oil
Clinical research confirms the usefulness of peppermint essential oil in irritable bowel syndrome. The essential oil acts on the colon, relieving spasm and irritability, and reducing the sensitivity of nerve endings in the intestinal wall (2).
Peppermint essential oil properties
- antiseptic (antimicrobial)
- antispasmodic (helps relieve muscle spasms and cramps)
- diaphoretic (helps to induce involuntary perspiration that helps to reduce fever, cool the body, and speed the elimination of toxins from the system)
- mild analgesic (offers mild relief from pain)
- mild sedative
- relieves wind
Peppermint essential oil uses and benefits
Peppermint essential oil is known to energise your body and mind while helping you ease aching muscles. As a natural air freshener, it creates an energising ambience and mood. Used together with elderflower it creates an effective combination for fever, colds, catarrh, and gastric infection.
Here are some of the ways you can use peppermint essential oil:
- use on itchy skin: apply 2 drops per teaspoonful of carrier oil
- drink hot peppermint tea to encourage sweating and cool fever
- apply 1-2 drops of peppermint oil to the forehead to relieve a headache and migraine
- add to your shampoo to promote hair growth and reduce dandruff
- apply to achy joints to help relieve pain
Eucalyptus essential oil
A key aboriginal remedy of Australia, eucalyptus can be used to treat everything from colds and chest infection to skin conditions and fever (2).
Eucalyptus essential oil properties
- antiseptic (antimicrobial)
- expectorant (helps loosen mucus)
- anti-inflammatory
- antibacterial
Eucalyptus essential oil uses and benefits
Main uses of eucalyptus essential oil include cold symptoms with or without feverishness, nasal and sinus congestion, sore throat, and phlegmy cough. It can also be used for skin problems such as insect bites and fungal skin conditions.
Here are some of the ways you can use eucalyptus essential oil:
- apply diluted oil to insect bites
- make a steam bath (to use as a decongestant): pour a cup of boiling water into a bowl, and then mix 10 drops of eucalyptus essential oil, place a towel over your head and inhale deeply for five–10 minutes (3)
- use in a diffuser to refresh the air and keep your home mould-free (great in combination with tea tree oil for this purpose)
- use as an effective insect repellent (4)
- apply it diluted to a cold sore to help reduce pain and speed healing
Tea tree essential oil
A must have for any home herbal first aid kit, tea tree oil can help treat many minor fungal and bacterial skin problems.
Tea tree essential oil has been widely used throughout Australia for at least the past 100 years. Several medical studies have shown its effectiveness in killing many strains of bacteria, viruses and fungi.
Tea tree essential oil properties
- antifungal
- antiseptic
Tea tree essential oil uses and benefits
Tea tree essential oil is the oil I personally use the most. I mainly use it to treat spots and acne but also to clean my home naturally. It’s a great disinfectant and successfully kills mould. It’s really effective on fungal skin infections too.
Here are a few suggestions on how to use it:
- diffuse it in the air to kill mould spores
- spray it onto the mould to kill it
- apply it on an affected toenail twice a day (fungal infection)
- for ear infection: put 1-2 drops on cotton wool and plug into the affected ear overnight
- put it directly on spots to dry them out (dilute with water to avoid really dry skin)
- add it to your shampoo to combat against dandruff
Ylang Ylang essential oil
The intensely sweet, enticing aroma of ylang ylang is said by many to have aphrodisiac properties.
Ylang Ylang essential oil is not an essential oil which I use often, I am still learning what to do with it actually. I’ve used it for the massage but that’s about it. However, further research shows that it’s much more useful than that.
Ylang Ylang essential oil properties
- antidepressant
- antiseborrheic (effective in seborrheic dermatitis – dandruff)
- antiseptic
- aphrodisiac
- hypotensive (lowers the blood pressure)
- nervine (calms the nerves)
Ylang Ylang essential oil uses
- add Ylang Ylang to your bath for relaxation
- add to your massage oil for the aphrodisiac effect
- massage a single drop daily over the heart combined with a carrier oil to control blood pressure and prevent heart arrhythmia (9)
- use in a diffuser to help improve your mood (research shows that it can help release negative emotions, including anger) (9)
- to prevent signs of ageing combine one or two drops with jojoba oil and massage it into the face once or twice daily for protection
- check this article for more uses of Ylang Ylang
Buying essential oils tips
If you are going to buy some essential oils, make sure you buy pure essential oils with nothing added to them. Even better is if you can buy organic essential oils as these won’t contain any pesticide residue and tend to be of a higher quality. Don’t go for the cheapest oils as you don’t know what they put in them and how pure they are.
Remember that lower quality essential oils could harm your skin while failing to provide the necessary therapeutic benefits.
Organic essential oils from Sacred Soul Holistics – Review
If you are looking to buy organic essential oils, one company to consider is Sacred Soul Holistics. I’ve tested five of their essential oils over a period of a few weeks (tea tree oil, lavender oil, Ylang Ylang, eucalyptus oil and peppermint oil). Here is a little bit about them…
Although Sacred Soul Holistics is a British company, the essential oils they sell are organically certified by ACO which is an Australian-based certification body. The reason for this Australian organic certification is because the business co-founder emigrated to Australia where he sourced their first essential oil from (tea tree oil).
What I really love about this company is that they are really open and honest about the purity of their essential oils – on their website you can actually find the results of the oil tests showing their 100% purity (on each of the product pages).
All the essential oils that I’ve tested from Sacred Soul Holistics have a really strong aroma and their scent is 100% natural – you can definitely smell their purity. So big thumbs up for that.
The oils come in glass bottles and I really like the little instructions leaflet inside the packaging – it briefly explains basic facts about each oil and some of their uses. I haven’t seen anything like this with other essential oils I bought in the past (I think most companies expect you to know the basics about essential oils and how to use them, that’s why they don’t include it).
All in all, I couldn’t find any faults in essential oils from Sacred Soul Holistics and I am happy to recommend the company to my readers.
I hope this essential oils guide helped you gain a little bit more understanding about essential oils, their benefits and how to use them.
References
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_oil
(2) Chevallier, A. (2007). Herbal Remedies. London: Dorling Kindersley Limited.
(3) https://draxe.com/eucalyptus-oil-uses-benefits/
(4) http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/266580.php
(5) http://www.homepharmacy.com.au/healthcontent/AilmentsandDiseases/cold_sores.htm
(6) https://draxe.com/tea-tree-oil-uses-benefits/
(7) https://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-8017/10-ways-to-use-tea-tree-essential-oil-for-health-beauty-cleaning.html
(8) https://www.organicfacts.net/health-benefits/essential-oils/health-benefits-of-ylang-ylang-essential-oil.html
(9) https://draxe.com/ylang-ylang/