Top Lavender essential oil Benefits You Need to Know About

Lavender essential oil is known for its calming, and almost sleep-inducing effects. It’s considered one of the most versatile essential oils. Lavender oil comes from lavender flowers through the process of steam distillation. These flowers are tiny and come in a range of purple shades, from light lilac to deep purple. The oil is extremely popular and is used in aromatherapy.  lavender essential oil benefits impart a calming aroma to your skincare products, but it can also be used to improve your skin health. Here are a few key benefits of using lavender oil for the face and body.

Health Benefits of Lavender Oil

It also acts as a stress buster and refreshes your mood. lavender has a soothing and calming effect on the nervous system, making it a great alternative for alleviating stress, anxiety, depression, and fatigue.

• In foods and beverages, lavender is used as a flavor component.
• lavender oil in a vaporizer overnight, or on a gauze pad left beside the bed, might help some people with mild insomnia sleep better.
• Lavender oil has both antibacterial and antifungal properties, meaning that it can possibly help to fend off fungal infections such as yeast infections, ringworm, or athlete’s foot.
• Applying lavender oil to the abdomen during your menstrual cycle can help alleviate cramping.
• Lavender is an anti-inflammatory, so it can be used to relieve inflamed and itchy skin caused by eczema or insect bites.
• The lavender essential oil also has a ton of other benefits. It has non-carcinogenic properties and can help with reducing the risk of cancer.
• It can boost your body’s immunity and protect you from a host of diseases and infections such as typhoid, tuberculosis, and even diphtheria.

Note – Lavender is used to ease and overcome almost any imbalance and suitable for use on everyone including babies. It can be used in conditions like burns, wounds insect bites, eczema, boils, blisters, fever, herpes, rheumatism, headache, athlete foot, cold, flu and cough, motion sickness, stress, insomnia, mood swings, irritability, dry skin, acne pimples, dandruff & hair loss.  

The lavender essential oil can be used in many ways like aroma diffuser, massage oils, body oils/after shower oils, face creams, laundry – scent, pillow-scent or applied directly on the wrist, etc.

lavender essential oil properties

Note – Not all essential oils found in the market are steam distilled and thereby pure, edible & therapeutic. Hence always do a proper check before buy & use. 

lavender essential oil uses for skin

• Anti Aging – The bioactive compounds found in the essential oil are antioxidants in nature. So they can help protect your skin from environmental stressors like pollution and UV rays that accelerate the skin’s aging process through free radical damage.
• It helps treat acne and soothes irritated skin – Lavender is a potent antimicrobial, antibacterial and anti-inflammatory so it can be used to treat a number of skin problems like eczema, psoriasis and other allergies. It’s also a highly effective and proven treatment when you have an acne flare-up and to help keep blemishes at bay.
• Smoothing out wrinkles – Free radicals, which are unstable molecules, damage your skin and are one of the causes of the visible signs of skin aging, including fine lines and wrinkles. Lavender oil is a rich source of antioxidants that may protect you from free radical damage.

lavender essential oil uses for hair

Lavender essential oil can put hair disorders aside like dandruff, itch, hair fall etc with its super antifungal and antibacterial properties. This can help promote healthy hair growth.  Lavender essential oil is good for treating lice, nits, and can even get rid of lice eggs.

lavender essential oil for babies

Lavender essential oil is much preferred for babies amongst the essential oils because babies love the aroma and find it very soothing and calming to them. Therefore it is used in baby skin care products.  

How to choose the best quality lavender essential oil 

While choosing a bottle of lavender essential oil, just make sure to keep these things in mind

1. Steam distilled – this is the best technique clean and green technique to produce best quality lavender essential oil
2. Edibility – If the herb is edible, the oil produced from it is also edible. However many brands in the market claim their oil to be steam distilled but caution consumers for – External use only. 
3. Pure – Make sure to pick one that is not diluted in other oils. Here, it’s important to go for brands that have their own distillery to avoid middle men and traders. 

How to make essential lavender oil

At SNAANA we focus on using herbs that are growing close to us to avoid long distance logistics and imports, all done in the wake to reduce carbon footprints. Hence we make use of lavender grown in Kashmir in the indian state of Jammu & Kashmir. It is also known as kashmiri lavender. 

The flowers are steam distilled and the essential oil is produced. Watch the making of essential oil below. 

 lavender essential oil side effects

Lavender is generally suitable for use for everyone. However we always suggest you do a patch test before making use of it in routine.