What Essential Oils Are Good For

What Essential Oils Are Good For

We are always looking for new ways to keep ourselves and our kids safe. It’s not an easy job being a parent, but someone has to do it. Since we are already at it, we might as well parent to the best of our abilities. 

That means a lot of different things to different people, but today we want to talk about one of the choices we can make that is a safer, natural alternative. 

We’re talking about essential oils. They are all-natural ingredients that have healing properties and can be used for a variety of issues. They’re safe to use for kids and work to promote natural healing. 

What Are Essential Oils?

We need to start at the beginning and define what essential oils are. No matter how natural a product is, it’s important to know the most you can about it to use it safely and effectively. 

In this next section, we’ll explain the basics of making essential oils and diluting them for safe use. 

How To Make Essential Oils

Essential oils are extracts or compounds from plants. They’re extracted from plants by either mechanical expression or distillation. 

Mechanical expression is the act of pressing plants using machines to retain the beneficial qualities of the plants. This process is popular among companies that extract oils from plants, and it’s very effective at keeping the oils pure. However, with general caution, mechanical expression is also fairly safe.

Distillation entails submerging plants in water, steam, or heated containers and pulling the healing properties out of the plants. This process isn’t really dangerous, but you have to be careful not to breathe in oils during the process, as it can be overwhelming to the senses. 

Either of these methods will pull out the beneficial and healing properties without retaining all the extras. 

How To Dilute Essential Oils

Using expression or stream distillation means that at the end of the extraction process, you have a very strong and powerful ingredient. The strength is, in fact, too powerful to be used on its own. In order to make essential oils that are safe for any sort of use, they need to be diluted. 

If you are getting essential oils for cleaning products, body cleansers, or lotions of any sort, adding a few drops of these compounds will dilute them perfectly. 

Another way to dilute essential oils is to add them to a carrier oil like coconut oil, apricot oil, and olive oil. Carrier agents are generally light or neutral flavored oils that are strong enough to carry the extracts without weakening their beneficial properties. 

That means you’ll get all the beneficial components in a safe-to-use liquid. 

If you’re wondering what the correct ratio of compounds to carriers is, a good rule of thumb for daily use would be one drop of plant extract to two tablespoons of carrier oil.

What Can We Use Essential Oils For?

You want to know what essentials can be good for, and we want to tell you. The best part about this is that essential oils can be good for almost everything! 

Even better, you can use many of these essential oils to help target more than one condition. In addition, an essential oil blend that employs multiple oils with similar benefits can also be used to soothe certain ailments.

Let’s go over some of the top uses for essential oils now. 

Mental Health

These days, everywhere we turn, there is something that is poking at our mental health and trying to tear it apart. Thankfully, you can use essential oils to calm the mind. 

The hustle and bustle of daily life can be exhausting. Anytime there’s a situation that causes worry, that worry festers into stress and anxiety in our brains. Anxiety and stress can cause long-term issues like depression and insomnia, which can lead to other health complications. 

Essential oils like lavender, chamomile, sweet orange, and grapefruit can tap into the nervous system and send signals from the brain to calm the nerves when situations go awry. 

Health Conditions

The number of beneficial qualities of essential oils for physical well-being is too numerous to count.

Many, like jojoba, bergamot, and tea tree oil, can be a part of your skincare regimen if you are prone to chronic acne or certain types of skin irritation. Others, like ylang-ylang, peppermint, and cedarwood oil, can help reduce blood pressure and the symptoms that go along with it. 

If you have arthritis or swelling and joint pain, frankincense, eucalyptus, and lemon essential oil can help promote healthy circulation and alleviate joint pain.

Many people are prone to issues like IBS and other digestive problems. Utilizing sandalwood and other complementary oils can help reduce these symptoms and alleviate the pain associated with them. Just remember that essential oils are supplements to the medicine that you’re prescribed by a healthcare professional, not a form of alternative medicine.

Sinus Health

Every year, we soldier on through seasonal allergies, and relief never seems to come. For some, the biggest healthcare concerns are their pesky allergy symptoms. You can utilize specific essential oils like peppermint and lavender to clear the sinuses and block receptors in the brain that trigger allergy symptoms. 

Home Health

If you’re wondering how to make safe and effective cleaning products at home, essential oils are the answer. Citrus oils are best known for their antimicrobial and antifungal properties and are the best all-natural defense against germs. 

Plus, these oils get bonus points for how amazing the house will smell after cleaning with them.

Outdoor Safety

One of the first noted uses for essential oils is their ability to repel insects. Citronella is the best essential oil to mask your breath from bugs, especially insects like mosquitoes, and keep you off their radar. 

Using products that contain this oil and blends containing citronella is the best strategy for hikes or whenever you plan to spend a considerable amount of time outside. You can have fun with friends and family and not worry that you’ll come home itchy and covered in red bumps.

How Do You Use Essential Oils?

There are quite a few ways to get the health benefits of essential oils, and they each have a few different guidelines you need to follow to use them safely. 

We also want to go over these so you can make the best and most educated choice when you decide how you want to use essential oils in your day-to-day life.

Topical Application

Diluted essential oils can be used directly on the skin. Still, you have to be careful, even if the dilution ratio is correct, as those with sensitive skin can have allergic reactions to the oils. 

If you develop a rash or eczema from using oils directly on the skin, stop using them in this way and find an alternative. 

For those that can use them directly on the skin, essential oils work well in massage oils or roller ball containers and can be applied directly to the site of pain or irritation. You can also utilize essential oils on pressure points for calming effects. 

Essential Oil Diffuser

A diffuser uses the idea of aromatherapy to disperse oils into the air. It can help with specific issues by stimulating the olfactory senses in our bodies. When we breathe in the various scents, those aromas send triggers to receptors in our brain that can release different chemical responses throughout our body. 

This can be beneficial for mental and physical well-being, so if you can’t use oils directly on the skin, you can still use essential oils to alleviate pain and swelling. 

Sprays

You can add essential oils to spray bottles for air fresheners and insect repellents in the home. Due to the antifungal qualities of many oils, you can use various essential oil blends to create an air freshener that will kill bad smells in the air and leave behind fresh scents. 

If you live in a humid climate or near a body of water, you probably always deal with mosquitoes. You can use a citronella-based spray around your house and yard to repel mosquitoes and other pesky insects. Unfortunately, chemical options like DEET aren’t as safe as we’d like them to be, which is why we rely on essential oils.

Creams & Soaps

There are plenty of reasons to use essential oils in hand soaps, creams, and lotions. Aside from their antibacterial properties, which make them excellent at defending your body against germs, they also smell amazing. 

Adding oil options like lemongrass or lavender essential oil to your cream blend will help relieve any stress or anxiety you’re dealing with and leave you feeling calm and centered.

Patches

These are all excellent ways to use essential oils to improve your overall quality of life. However, do you know what they all have in common? They wear off quickly and can’t effectively tend to your symptoms for long periods. 

That’s why we created our all-natural patches. They’re cute and fun designs in sticker form full of all-natural essential oils, and enough oils are in each patch to last up to eight hours at a time. 

You’ll be able to wear them and get all the benefits of the oils for eight hours. That’s about four times as long as the other methods!

The best part? They go on clothes, not on skin, and they’re safe for your kids. This means your little ones can join in on the fun of using an amazingly beneficial product, and you won’t have to worry about them rubbing off the oils. 

Why Do We Choose Essential Oils?

At The Natural Patch Co., we believe in essential oils' power and all-natural healing qualities. We make our patches as naturally as possible, which is why we use these all-natural oils.

Many of the chemical sprays and creams on the market have harmful side effects for both people and the environment. Essential oils, on the other hand, have been used for hundreds of years and have a proven history of being safe to use. That’s why we stick with them instead of hard-to-pronounce synthetic ingredients. 

 

Sources:

Essential Oils as Antimicrobial Agents—Myth or Real Alternative? | PMC

Aromatherapy: Uses, benefits, oils, and risks | Medical News Today

11 Essential Oils: Their Benefits and How To Use Them | Healthline

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