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.
1 comments:
I definitely want to use rosemary for my aromatherapy. :) And it's nice to know all about these benefits of the rosemary essential oil. :)
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