Inhaling of Essential Oil
You may have heard about Aromatherapy and Essential Oils, so what is Aromatherapy, and what are Essential Oils?
According to Jade Shutes (past President of NAHA, the guiding industry organization), "Aromatherapy can be defined as the art and science of utilizing naturally extracted aromatic essences from plants to balance, harmonize and promote the health of body, mind and spirit. It is a natural, non-invasive modality designed to affect the whole person not just the symptom or disease and to assist the body’s natural ability to balance, regulate, heal and maintain itself by the correct use of essential oils.”
Essential oil is a concentrated hydrophobic liquid containing volatile aroma compounds from plants. An oil is "essential" in the sense that it contains the "essence of" the plant’s fragrance—the characteristic fragrance of the plant from which it is derived. Essential oils are generally extracted by distillation, often by using steam.
How to apply Essential Oil?
There are three basic ways to use essential oils: inhalation, topical application, and internal consumption.
In this article, we mainly talk about Inhalation, the other two (topical and ingesting) will be discussed in later posts.
(Precaution: Oral ingestion of essential oils is NOT recommended for the general public due to safety reason, unless consulted with qualified aromatherapist and health practitioners.)
Most of the time, inhalation is a preferred way to use your essential oils due to its effectiveness. The reason that Inhalation is so effective is to do with our olfactory system.
The olfactory system includes all physical organs or cells relating to, or contributing to, the sense of smell. When we inhale through the nose, airborne molecules interact with the olfactory organs and, almost immediately, the brain. Molecules inhaled through the nose or mouth are also carried to the lungs and interact with the respiratory system. Thus, inhaled essential oils can affect the body through several systems and pathways.
Interaction with the limbic system (emotional brain)
During inhalation, odor molecules travel through the nose and affect the brain through a variety of receptor sites, one of which is the limbic system, which is commonly referred to as the "emotional brain." The limbic system is directly connected to those parts of the brain that control heart rate, blood pressure, breathing, memory, stress levels, and hormone balance. This relationship helps explain why smells often trigger emotions. Knowing this, we can hypothesize how inhalation of essential oils can have some very profound physiological and psychological effects. (Taking charge of your health & wellbeing by University of Minnesota)
Examples of health issues that can be remedied with the inhalation of Essential Oil
- insomnia
- respiratory congestion
- sinus infection
- emotional health: grief, anxiety, hyperactivity, depression
Different ways to inhale Essential Oils
• Straight from the bottle • Use aromatherapy inhaler
• Use diffusing necklace
• Steam inhalation
• Use aroma diffuser (such as ultrasonic diffuser)
Personally, I like to inhale essential oils from all different ways mentioned above. May be I will write another post soon, to get into more details on these individual methods and share some of my secret recipes.
Nebulizing Diffuser is my most recent add which I really love due to its effectiveness and beautiful craftsmanship. The piece I got is from Organic Aromas Nebulizing Diffusers™ .
Thanks for stick around to finish reading this story. Your patience just earned you a BIG STAR!!
Please stay tuned for more posts in the future, to join me on this wonderful aromatherapy and wellness life journey
- Monna Tang, Registered Aromatherapist (IFA, NAHA, CAOA R.A.® , EOT®)
