Rosemary Essential Oil: Benefits and Uses

Rosemary Essential Oil: Benefits, Uses & Healing Properties

Found along the windswept shores of the Mediterranean Sea, rosemary oil has a deep history dating back to the Roman days. The Romans used rosemary for a variety of purposes, including healing, incense, cosmetics and religious ceremonies. Even today, people hold rosemary essential oil sacred because of its incredible beauty and healing properties, which include being a memory aid, pain reliever, skin toner, mouthwash, moisturizer, respiratory aid and more. Assuming you are interested in finding out the specifics on how this product can help you, here is a deeper look at rosemary oil.

As mentioned before, rosemary is found in the Mediterranean region, and it grows as an evergreen plant that sometimes reaches 5-6 feet high. Seeing as how rosemary has traditionally grown around the Mediterranean area, it’s no surprise that it appears in both Roman and Greek mythology. In fact, Aphrodite was depicted as wearing rosemary when she was first born. In regards to the actual appearance of the oil, rosemary is basically colorless, while the scent is strong, fresh and citrusy.

Aside from rosemary’s appearance and mythology presence, another noteworthy detail about this oil is that it’s a middle note, which means rosemary can be combined with plenty of other essential oils. Some of the oils that work well with rosemary are cedarwood, juniper, tea tree, basil and geranium.

Skin Care
Rosemary essential oil has several different uses in regards to skin care, including the ability to tone and moisturize your skin. In addition to this, you can also smooth out wrinkles, reduce fine lines, clear up acne, and minimize the ugliness of varicose veins and broken capillaries.

Aromatherapy
Rosemary is one of the top oils when it comes to aromatherapy benefits. Whether it’s congestion, a cold, a sore throat or asthma, rosemary essential oil goes a long way to clearing up these problems. Aside from the healing benefits of rosemary aromatherapy, this oil makes a room smell great when used.

Pain Reliever
Those suffering from headaches and migraines have found that rosemary essential oil works wonders for reducing the pain. Going further, rosemary also extends to aid with other pain-related problems like sore muscles, arthritis and rheumatism. So whether you’re massaging the oil directly into the skin or inhaling it through aromatherapy, rosemary is very effective at relieving pain.

Memory Aid
Some students who have a solid knowledge of rosemary oil use it to improve their mental concentration and potentially boost test scores. It’s also used by doctors, lawyers and people in other strenuous professions to focus and battle fatigue. The reasons why rosemary works so well as a fatigue/memory aid is because it increases brain activity.

Mouthwash
If you’re ever short on toothpaste, rosemary essential oil makes a fine substitute because it kills bad breath and disinfects the mouth. Just make sure that you don’t ingest the rosemary, or any other essential oil for that mater.

Hair Stimulator
As yet another benefit of rosemary oil, it stimulates hair follicles and helps people grow fuller, thicker-looking hair. Other hair-based benefits include preventing gray hair and reducing the appearance of a dry, flakey scalp. The effects of rosemary oil on hair are even better when combined with tea tree or basil oil.

Digestion
One last major benefit of rosemary essential oil is that it can help people out with their digestion problems or stomach aches. To use rosemary for digestion purposes, you can add a few leaves on the side of your supper.

As mentioned before, you should avoid ingesting rosemary in large doses - if not entirely. The reason why is because rosemary essential oil can be potentially toxic, and cause seizures if taken in big amounts. The only time that you should really consider ingesting rosemary oil is if a doctor has advised you to, which isn’t very common.

Moving past the oil, you should also be careful with the amount of rosemary leaves that you consume. As previously stated under "Digestion" in the uses and healing properties section, it’s safe to eat rosemary leaves along with meals. However, too many rosemary leaves can certainly be a bad thing, especially in the case of pregnant women who are pregnant or breastfeeding. In extreme cases where lots of leaves are eaten, rosemary causes vomiting, spasms and even fluid in the lungs.

But as long as you’re responsible when consuming rosemary leaves, and you avoid ingesting the oil altogether, you shouldn’t have any worries in regards to using this product.

In order to ensure that you avoid any of the unpleasantries discussed above, it’s important that you properly use rosemary essential oil. With this being said, the most popular and safest usage of rosemary oil involves putting a few drops into a vaporizer, and letting the aroma fill the air. This use is great for people who want to relieve congestion, reduce headache pains and/or make their house smell better. One thing to remember when doing this is that rosemary is a middle note, so it takes a little longer than top notes to start working.

Moving along, those who want to relieve muscle and/or joint pain with rosemary essential oil should put a few drops in their massage oil; once the solution is mixed, you can rub the oil into your skin. As alluded to in the cautions section, you don’t want to exceed a few drops of the product when mixing it with massage oil.

Much like with the massage oil, you can also add a few drops of rosemary to face and skin creams. Doing this creates an even more powerful, age-defying effect with the skin care products you use. Just remember, the key thing with rosemary oil is that you want to use it in moderation. In most cases, adding a few drops to whatever product or vaporizer you’re using should be enough to get the effects you are looking for.

View the original article here

Read More......

Top Notes, Middle Notes and Base Notes: Essential Oils

Essential Oils: Top Notes, Middle Notes and Base Notes

If you're looking to enhance your skin and overall beauty, there is perhaps no better way to do it than by using essential oils. Of course, essential oils serve a lot more purposes than just beautifying because they are also used as alternative medicines. But no matter if you're using essential oils to make yourself look 10 years younger or cure a common cold, it's important to understand what oils are used for what purposes. This being said, let's take a took at the basics of essential oils, the different notes, and how to use the oils.

Essential oils are concentrated liquids that come from plants, and they have noticeable fragrances. The oils are extracted by either distillation (separating mixtures by boiling them) or the less common method of solvent extraction (separating from one liquid phase to another). Essential oils are usually classified by their notes, which is another word for scent characteristics. In order to enhance the qualities of essential oils, notes are often combined to create useful products.

Now that the boring scientific explanation of essential oils is out of the way, let's move on to discussing the different notes and their uses!

The name "top note" is somewhat misleading in essential oils because they don't last long, and they tend to be relatively inexpensive in stores. Of course, this isn't to say that top notes aren't important because they are used to combat depression, fatigue, and a lack of focus. When top notes are mixed with both middle and high notes, the top note is what people normally smell first because they act so fast. Of course, it is this fast-acting nature that causes top notes to disappear quickly.

Some of the common top notes that you'll find include eucalyptus, bergamot, cajuput, cinnamon, basil, petitgrain, corriander, lime, tangerine, tea tree, cedarwood, lemon, verbena, and rosemary.

Middle notes include the largest number of essential oils, and they offer the most benefits in regards to health and beauty. Many middle notes have the ability to reduce the appearance of wrinkles, cellulite and stretch marks, plus they are useful for healing skin problems like bruises, cuts, and burns. Middle notes have also been known to reduce pain associated with stiff joints and arthritis. In conjunction with other notes, the middle notes are very effective at linking properties between the mental and physical benefits. It's for this reason why middle notes are combined with both top and base notes.

As far as the fragrance for middle notes goes, they aren't always smelled immediately because it takes a while for them to act. Some of the common middle notes include juniper, chamomile, geranium, cardamom, lavender, ylang ylang, cypress, fennel, melissa, ginger, chamomile, cypress, hyssop, jasmine, rose, hyssop, juniper, peppermint, marjoram, black pepper, cardamom, fennel, geranium, ho leaf, lavender, marjoram, melissa, rosemary, spikenard, yarrow, myrtle, nutmeg, palma rosa and pine.

Base notes draw their name from the fact that they are usually extracted from tree and plant roots buried deep in the ground. Like top notes, base notes have a lot of properties for combating various feelings and emotions such as anxiety, anger, frustration, and nervousness. Some people even believe that base notes have the power to alleviate deep-seeded psychological problems when used long-term.

Out of all the notes, base notes take the longest to start acting; however, their fragrance and qualities also stay around the longest, and their scent is very strong and noticeable too. Some base notes are oak moss, frankincense, ginger, jasmine, myrrh, balsam peru, cedarwood, cinnamon, ylang ylang, clove, patchouli, rose, rosewood, sandalwood, vanilla, vetiver.

When it comes to buying essential oils from stores, there are a few things you want to keep in mind. Be careful when buying oils that are marked "perfume oil" or "fragrance oil" because they might not have all (or any) of the useful properties that you're looking for. In some cases, vendors only use chemicals to make their essential oils, so it pays to do a little research before you buy products.

Another term to watch out for when buying essential oils is "aromatherapy grade" because there is no agency that grades oils with this label. Now this isn't to say that you shouldn't ever buy a product with this term; just know that some companies are willing to attach phrases like this to products without any basis.

One other important thing you should do when buying essential oils is email the company asking questions that you want to know. Even if you don't have any specific questions, it's always good to email an online essentials oil store just to see how their customer service department is. The better the customer service is, the better the chance of them having good products!

There are several different ways to use essential oils beginning with inhalation. To inhale an essential oil, put a few drop on a tissue, and breath in; you'll find that the product starts acting almost immediately this way. You can also use essential oils by adding them to a humidifier or vaporizer. In some cases, this way works much better than inhaling the oils.

One more popular way to use essential oils is to combine them with massage oil, and rub the mixture into your skin. If you're going to do this, make sure you are very knowledgeable about essential oils so that you don't cause an allergic reaction or breakouts. The same goes for when you combine essential oils together in a bottle because you don't want to regret your decision to use these oils. Also, make sure that the bottle you combine the oils in is sterilized.

In any case, essential oils can be very beneficial to your over health and beauty, so consider giving them a try!

 

View the original article here

Read More......