When using essential oils, it is sometimes useful to use a carrier oil to dilute them (this can be done to make it less potent for safety reasons or for practical reasons such as more ease of use). Carrier oils are great for using essential oils on young children or people with sensitive skin, or even simply if you are using an oil on a large area and need to make it easier to apply the essential oil to your skin. There are so very many oil options that can be used as carrier oils, and many reasons to choose one over another, so I have compiled a list of my top five favorite carrier options for you to add to your shopping cart to try out.
Photo By: Nutra Ingredients
Grapeseed oil is, by far, my favorite carrier oil, and the one that I use most commonly. Grapeseeds are packed with tons of beneficial nutrients, so using this oil as a carrier oil will add to the benefits of the essential oil that you are applying. I love this oil as a carrier so much, because it is a very light oil and does not leave your skin at all greasy. Extra Bonus: grapeseed oil is scentless, so it’s even more awesome.
Photo By: Frame Pool
Olive oil? What? To put on your skin? Yep! I know–olive oil is usually used for cooking and baking, but it can also be used as an essential oil carrier! Olive oil has a very slight scent and is very light. It is fairly non-greasy, so it is easy to rub into your skin and leaves minimal residual.
Photo By: Anaphylaxis Campaign
I personally don’t use coconut oil, because I just can’t stand the smell, (which I’ve told you before, but it’s just that important to me) BUT it is incredibly useful as a carrier oil, so I think that it’s important for me to tell you about it. Coconut oil is probably the most popular carrier oil to use with essential oils. It can be purchased in a solid form (which is the ‘normal’ form) and in a liquid form (which you can find as ‘fractionated coconut oil’), so it has a wide array of uses. Coconut oil has tons of incredible properties that will benefit your skin, hair, nails, and all of your insides too!
Over and Out.
-Courtney
Photo by NBC Sports
If you went to the Kent State football game last weekend, chances are you got pretty sunburnt–luckily, I didn’t, because I was working concessions for the game, but all of my friends that were in the stands came out of the stadium looking like a deliciously ripe cherry tomato. If you, like my friends, were feelin’ the pain of a sunburn, I recommend making an essential oil lotion blend and applying liberally. Lotion blends are a great way to use essential oils on larger areas of your body without wasting any of your precious oil. I’ve compiled a list below of my three favorite lotion blends that I use on a regular basis that I highly recommend for everyday use.
Photo by Essential Oil Sanctuary
The first thing that you need to do, before you start making your lotion blends, is find the right lotion! I use Everyone Unscented Lotion because it is a good, unscented, natural product that mixes well with essential oils and is relatively inexpensive. Any unscented lotion will do–I happen to prefer Everyone brand products, but there are lots of great brands out there that will work well for our purpose! Sometimes, people will use coconut oil as a base for their essential oil lotion blends, but personally, the smell and feel of coconut oil bothers me, so I don’t use it. (If it works for you, use it! It’s definitely a great product to use as a solid carrier oil for essential oil use.)
Alright, now we can make our lotion blends!
Calm
This lotion blend is the one I recommended to my friends to use for their sunburns. It has a very calming effect on the mind and body and will soothe skin irritations as well as a groggy mind.
Ingredients:
6 oz unscented lotion (or alternative–e.g. coconut oil)
15-20 drops lavender oil
5-10 drops orange oil
5-10 drops frankincense oil
Circulation
The circulation lotion blend is great for situations when you need to get the blood flowing to a particular area of your body. If you’re feeling tired or swollen, if your hair or nails are becoming brittle, if your extremities are always cold or numb, you might be suffering from poor circulation. Making this lotion blend and using it on a daily basis will help to promote blood flow and increase your body’s circulation capabilities.
Ingredients:
6 oz unscented lotion (or alternative–e.g. coconut oil)
15-20 drops ginger oil
10-15 drops eucalyptus oil
5-10 drops tea tree oil
Muscle Pain
Muscle pain is a very common side-effect of life–especially when we’re walking upwards of ten miles a day to get to classes and meetings and social events and study groups that are taking place all over campus. If you’re experiencing sore muscles, applying this lotion to the affected areas will help a bunch!
Ingredients:
6 oz unscented lotion (or alternative–e.g. coconut oil)
15-20 drops peppermint oil
5-10 drops rosemary oil
5-10 drops clove bud oil
When making these lotion blends, it is usually best to use a bowl and a spatula so that you can make sure that it is mixed thoroughly. I recommend putting the lotion in the bowl first, and then folding in each oil one-at-a-time with a spatula. Once everything is folded in, put the lotion blend into a pump bottle, and use as needed or desired!
Over and Out.
-Courtney
I like to think of myself as a relatively put together person, but this past week was a pretty clumsy week for me. First of all, I was stung by not one but two bees on Tuesday. And both occurrences took place indoors while I was studying–I feel like that’s weird, but that might just be me. Those little bummers of a time were, I guess, not technically my fault, but this next one is the really pathetically clumsy one. So on Monday, I was almost late to CSD 269, so I was not about to be late to that very class on the following Friday. I left Abba Java at about 2:00 PM, giving me enough time to walk to the Kern Grad building by 2:20 PM. So as I was walking, my water bottle–my very favorite Hydroflask that has “Penn State; Schreyer Honors College” engraved into the side (shout out to PhxCustomLasering who made this awesome water bottle for me)–fell out of my purse. Now, generally, this would just be a little bit of a bummer–maybe a dent or two, not too awful. But, since I was determined to be early this time, I was walking too fast to realize what had happened in time, and I stepped on my Hydroflask and slid on top of it a good two or three feet forward. So now, my Hydroflask is just so devastatingly destroyed, my knee still has a big ole’ scab on it, and my ankle still hurts from being so totally twisted. And, you guessed it, I was ten minutes late to class.
This is what my Hydroflask looks like now.
Now you might be thinking to yourself “Okay, that’s great that you’re clumsy; why are you writing about that in an essential oil blog?” But don’t you worry, because soon, you’ll be thinking “Oooohhhhhh–I get it!”
So, I like to think that this clumsiness is okay because I have some tricks up my sleeves to make my boo-boos go bye-bye–and I’d like to share them with you!
Let’s go injury by injury, starting with…
Bee Stings:
Photo by George Gray
So when you get stung by a bee, the little stinger on the end of the bee penetrates the skin and injects venom into the surrounding area. The venom has proteins in it that makes your skin red and puffy, because it is hurting the skin cells near the penetration site, and your body reacts by swelling to try to get it out. If you’re not allergic to bee stings, generally, the invenomed skin will calm down and stop hurting within a few days, but if you are allergic, your symptoms will be much more profound, and you will most likely need to get a physician’s opinion. In our case, I am not allergic, so some great home remedies will work sufficiently.
In my personal opinion, lavender oil works best for skin irritations. If you put a few drops of lavender oil onto the affected area, the anti-inflammatory qualities of the lavender will calm your skin and decrease swelling quickly. I put some lavender oil onto my two bee stings and about an hour later, you wouldn’t have been able to tell that that skin had just been stung by a bee.
Tea tree oil is another good one to use for bee stings due to its antiseptic qualities, but I generally prefer lavender oil for skin treatments, because sometimes tea tree oil makes my skin a little dry–and with this crazy back and forth between hot and cold weather, my skin needs no more confusion.
Alright, on to…
Skin Abrasions:
So when I tripped on my water bottle, my knee got all scraped up, so I used some essential oils to speed up the healing process and ease the stinging pain of a scrape in such an irritating area. Like I mentioned in my last post, lavender oil is great for superficial cuts and scrapes that take place on the skin, but the scrape that I’ve got on my knee is pretty big, so I went with rosemary oil which has stronger antibacterial properties. Since the surface area of the abrasion on my knee was quite large, I felt that rosemary oil would be a better option for this particular injury.
And finally…
Twisted Ankles:
Photo by Family Foot and Ankle Specialists
So when I stepped on my Hydroflask and slid forward ever so gracefully, I also twisted my ankle. This led to some pretty purple bruising and a whole lot of swelling (which was exacerbated by the walking that I do all day to get to and from class!). Luckily, I’ve accumulated some knowledge of home remedies for such an injury. The best oil, in my opinion, for reducing swelling is frankincense oil. It has some amazing anti-inflammatory and pain-relief properties that quickly reduce swelling and make bruises disappear. You could also use lavender or geranium oil to reduce swelling (or a blend of a few different oils), but I chose to just use frankincense oil because the bruising and swelling were both quite gnarly looking.
Well, those were the primary essential oils that I used this week! Comment below if you have any other ideas of fun and effective home remedies or if you have questions about what oil to use for which symptoms!
Over and Out.
-Courtney
