Are Essential Oils Really Essential?

Are Essential Oils Really Essential?


Did you know that your sense of smell is your most primal sense? The scents around us are attached to emotion, memories, experiences, etc. We experience scents long before we experience words.

Have you ever noticed how difficult it can be to describe a smell? That’s because when we smell things it’s processed through a separate pathway in our brain. When it comes to sight and touch, these things go through our sensory input and heads straight to our thalamus (brain’s switchboard). But smell is different, before heading to the thalamus; they wind their way through other areas of the brain such as areas controlling memory and emotion.

This is the reason behind scents having such powerful influence over how you think, feel, and behave. This brings us to our topic…essential oils. Essential oils carry biologically active volatile compounds that in a highly concentrated form that can provide therapeutic benefits in small amounts.

Simplistic Uses

Research shows that essential oils can be particularly promising when it comes to relieving stress, stabilizing your mood, improving sleep, aiding pain, nausea, and improving your memory and energy level. By combining different essential oils (aromatherapy) it often creates a more powerful effect than using just one oil by itself. Below is a list of some common different oil combinations and what their uses are:

Stress: lavender, lemon, bergamot, peppermint, vetiver, pine, and ylang ylang

Insomnia: Lavender, chamomile, jasmine, benzoin, neroli, rose, sandalwood, sweet marjoram, and ylang ylang, and lemon

Anxiety: Lavender, bergamot, rose, clary sage, lemon, Roman chamomile, orange, sandalwood, rose-scented geranium, and pine


Memory: Sage, peppermint, and cinnamon

So what are you waiting for? Check out some essential oils this week! My favorite just so happens to be lavender. I often times rub it on my wrists before bed time. It’s quite soothing.

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