Archive for October, 2009
Ever since childhood, I’ve struggled with chronic insomnia. If I’m lucky, I’ll sleep for a few hours each night. During my teenage years and into my 20s, the problem barely fazed me; I had boundless energy, and a few sleepless nights couldn’t slow me down. If anything, I was more productive because I could spend an evening socializing and come home late at night to do my homework.
Now well into adulthood, the lack of sleep is finally catching up with me. I’ve yet to receive a useful suggestion from my doctor, and I avoid habit-forming prescription drugs like the plague. Last month a friend told me about the relaxing, therapeutic benefits of essential oils. As it turns out, aromatherapy – especially lavender oil – has a calming effect on the body and mind. Now I diffuse a bit of the stuff in my room before turning out the light, and I’m soothed to sleep in no time.
Everyone wants healthy looking skin, and no one wants cellulite. Often unhealthy looking skin and cellulite go hand in hand. There are several skin care treatments that can make your skin look healthier and reduce your cellulite. Dry brushing is one technique that not only improves the look and health of your skin, but can help detoxify your body. Hydration is an important part of keeping skin healthy. A healthy lifestyle including exercise can also improve the health of your skin and reduce cellulite.
Dry brushing is a technique that uses a long handled brush and involves brushing the skin while dry. All brush strokes should be made towards the heart, which helps improve circulation. Improved circulation prevents the build up up cellulite and can help reduce existing cellulite. After dry brushing your entire body, the next step is to take a shower. At the end of the shower, run the water as hot as you can stand it for a few seconds and then as cold as you can stand it. Repeat this process two more times. This also helps promote circulation, further battling cellulite, which leads to healthier looking skin. Lastly, a good moisturizing exfoliation of sugarscrub will also help exfoliate dead skin cells and hydrate the skin.
There are also other essential oils that could help you during child birth. Here are some of them:
Since the safety and effectiveness of Evening Primrose Oil is still undetermined, it is not advisable to take this during your pregnancy. Keep in mind however that, since pregnancy is such a delicate situation, use of essential oils should be monitored and under the supervision of your doctor. As a rule, pregnant women should use half of what they normally would.
Many people relate essential oils and aromatherapy with massages, soothing baths, and oil-based perfumes. Little do people know that, aside from their calming effect, essential oils are now also being used for inducing birth as well as lessening the labor pains.
As with the stages of pregnancy, labor is also divided into three parts with the first part divided into three phases – the early phase, the active phase, and the transitional phase. The early phase is characterized by the start of mild contractions. During this phase, the use of Neroli and Lavender can help you to relax and free yourself from apprehensions. The active phase, on the other hand, is characterized by longer and more frequent contractions. A combination of Lavender oil, Neroli oil and Rose oil can effectively bring you relaxation especially when massaged on the chest and the neck. During the third phase, you will experience intense and fast contractions. In order to ready yourself for childbirth, you can massage your back with a combination of Lavender, Clary Sage and Peppermint. Clary Sage Oil can strengthen your respiratory and muscular systems. It also helps lessen tension as well as pain. A combination of Peppermint and Rosemary can also give you enough strength for that final push.
Catch Part 2 in a few days…
When our bodies and minds are pushed to the limit, stress has a way of sneaking up on us and wreaking havoc on our harmonious existences. People have different ways of combating stress – some go for a jog, lift some weights, vent to a close friend or keep it bottled up inside. Of course the most sensible and pleasurable answer to reducing stress comes in the form of that greatest of indulgences: a spa treatment.
Massages are relaxing by their very definition, and they can work out the little kinks and physical signs of stress that hinder our happiness. In order to complete the experience, many people like to light up a massage oil candle or two. The visual appeal of a flickering flame combined with an invigorating fragrance creates a relaxing experience that just can’t be beat.
It is obvious that essential oils exceed fragrance oils by leaps and bounds when it comes to health and wellness benefits. Sadly though, the high cost of producing essential oils leaves most companies no other choice but to use fragrance oils in their commercial products instead. The good thing is that there are still a number of product manufacturers out there that use natural ingredients with the firm belief that quality products will always find a sizable patronage in the market.
Now that you know the difference between essential oils and fragrance oils, it’s your choice what products to introduce in your lifestyle and your family’s. Knowing the difference between the “aromatherapy essentials” and the “artificially produced fragrance” is an important first step in deciding which products are best suited to you and your family’s needs. Be an intelligent consumer. Read the label carefully before throwing that product into your grocery basket.
While the concept of aromatherapy has been around for about 100 years there are an increasingly large number of people who absolutely swear by essential oils. They claim that they are not only a pleasant addition to the home, but they also can improve a person’s mood and health. In particular, people seem to praise lavender essential oil. This scent has been cited as one of the best for inducing relaxation and alleviating headaches.
If you’ve tried everything else and want to try a somewhat unconventional method, consider looking into essential oils. Add a dab or two of the essential oil to a damp washcloth and apply to your forehead while lying down in the dark. The combination of low lights, soft bed, and soothing essential oils has been a successful combination for many migraine sufferers.
For one, essential oils are not really oils but natural mixtures of organic compounds found in herbs and plants. They are extracted from the petals of the flower, leaves, stems, roots, rind of the fruit, seeds, or even the wood of trees using distillation or expression (squeezing). Fragrance oils, on the other hand, are synthetic and man-made, which are engineered by chemists to yield an attractive scent “inspired” by essential oils.
Unlike essential oils, fragrance oils are not used to nurture one’s well being, although the fragrant smell can give a feeling of satisfaction for smelling good and even let you take a second sniff on that dashing guy or that sassy girl passing by. Essential oils produce specific pharmacological effects through skin absorption and inhalation, which is the very foundation of Aromatherapy practice, a widely used form of natural alternative medicine; fragrance oils are used to scent a wide array of commercial products with the only objective of improving the smell of the product and as such, are oftentimes called “perfume oils.” And while both can cause allergies to some extent to someone, fragrance oils can trigger allergies to people more than essential oils since the former have different chemicals as their component.
What smell excites you? An odd, and maybe a little invasive, question I know. But because scent is the strongest sense tied to memory, everyone has a smell that recalls a certain pleasure to mind. Maybe it’s the smell of fresh cut grass that brings you back to your childhood days of playing in the backyard. Or maybe the smell of the ocean draws you back to memories of family vacations to the beach.
For me, the smell of lavender whisks me away to the summers I spent on my Aunt Hilda’s ranch in Montana. As a young girl I would help tend to the buffalo during my summer vacations. In between runs I would wonder the acres upon acres of fields that were covered in lavender. To this day I enjoy the smell so much; it prompted me to purchase lavender essential oil. I rub a small amount on my arms and legs each day to keep them smooth and my nostrils happy.
Just when you thought humanity is increasingly leaning on the advent of technology and scientific discoveries when it comes to health and wellness advancement, the return to centuries-old medicinal practices to improve one’s physical well-being comes. Meet the noticeable popularity of essential oils and their therapeutic effects on our wellness. From soaps to lotions to foot scrubs and hair moisturizers, the use of these ethereal oils have been widely accepted by a vast majority.
And with the wide selection of products today claiming to have the therapeutic effects of essential oils, we wonder how can we be so sure the consumer products we buy in the market are really “natural” and not “synthetically scented”? How will we know when that body lotion we love buying at those posh boutiques, for example, really contains essential oils and not artificially produced fragrance oils?
Answers to come in part two…