Natural Body Guru

If we were rich, we could do like movie stars do when they see too many wrinkles on their face and neck.  Just jet over to Europe for a non surgical essential oil facelift to make our skin look 10 years younger. The best way to keep skin looking rejuvenated is by staying ahead of the aging process and the key to youthful skin is cellular regeneration.

Essential oils provide a pleasant and inexpensive method for creating cellular rejuvenation. The nutrients and proteins in essential oils help maintain the bounciness of collagen under the skin and encourage the regeneration of new skin cells. Clary-sage, lavender, lemon, carrot, oregano, and rosemary essential oils do this well while others like fennel contain hormonal-like properties  that encourage the firming of the skin. These essential oils can be used with your moisturizing cream or in a bath, as a face oil, or in a massage oil. Whatever method you use, keep it up for at least 30 days and you will see a marked improvement in your skin.

Before washers and driers, our ancestors laid their clothes on lavender or rosemary plants to dry so that the scent would permeate the garments. Today we can use essential oils in the washer, dryer, drawers, and closets to keep our clothes smelling nice and to receive even more benefits.

Add 3-5 drops of lemongrass or lavender to your rinse cycle water for wonderfully fresh smelling clothes. For a more alluring fragrance, add ylang-ylang essential oil to the final rinse. During the cold and flu season rinse your bed linens with eucalyptus, rosemary, or pine essential oil to relieve coughs throughout the night. Use a rinse of peppermint essential oil when your children have whooping cough. If insomnia is a problem, rinse linen and nightwear with marjoram, chamomile, or sweet orange blossom essential oil to aid sleep.

Add 2 drops of essential oil to a 4 inch square piece of material and put it in the dryer with your clothes. To infuse your garments with a fresh scent use lavender, rosemary, or bergamot; for a floral scent use geranium, or palma rosa; for a romantic or exotic scent use ylang-ylang, jasmine, or rose essential oil.

Other uses for essential oils with clothing include:

• Making a natural moth repellent by placing cotton balls with lavender, lemongrass, camphor, or rosemary essential oil on them between clothes in drawers.
• Making fragrant drawer liners with no chemicals by cutting blotting paper to drawer size and dotting it with essential oils. Brush the paper with orris root powder which acts as a fixative and then shake the powder off and place the liner in your drawer.
• Making a synergistic blend of 3 drops lavender, 2 drops sage and 5 drops of rosemary essential oil to add to sneakers and repel odor. Add this blend to a tablespoon of bicarbonate of soda and mix well. Sprinkle the mixture into sneakers and leave overnight for fresh smelling shoes the next morning. Don’t forget to tap the soda out in the morning or you will be walking around with puffs of smoke coming out of your shoes.

Kitchen smells run the gamut from the wonderful aroma of freshly baked cookies to the stinky smell of burnt popcorn. Kitchens have a trash area where garbage is tossed, a spot for wet coats and muddy boots, and a corner for dog bedding and the cat’s litter box. Essential oils are a natural alternative to commercial air sprays because they cleanse the air for you instead of masking odors; they are harmless to food, humans, and the ozone; and many of them are antibiotic and antifungal so they may even help keep you from getting sick.

• To cleanse kitchen surfaces add 4-6 drops of any one of the following essential oils to one pint of water: eucalyptus, lavender, lemon, lime, grapefruit, pine, or lemongrass. For a kitchen synergistic blend combine the following essential oils: 10 drops lavender, 15 drops lemon, and 5 drops eucalyptus. This mixture is disinfectant, antibacterial, and leaves a lovely fragrance when used on kitchen surfaces. You can add 8 drops of this formula to 2 1/2 cups of water in a plant spray bottle to spray the air or surfaces.
• To kill germs on dishtowels soak them in a bowl of boiling water and 1 drop of eucalyptus, thyme, tea tree, or lavender. Let the towels soak  until the water is cool then wash as usual. This will keep your towels germ and bacteria free.
• To lighten the chore of dishwashing and uplift your spirits at the same time, add 5 drops lime, 3 drops bergamot, 2 drops lavender, and 1 drop orange essential oil to your dishwashing liquid. The natural aroma of these essential oils will make a boring task take on a much lighter note. If you use a dishwasher, simply add 2 drops of lemon  essential oil to the detergent you use in your machine and stir it before closing the door.

Essential oils lose their therapeutic properties after about two years but do not toss them out! Put two drops at a time down kitchen drains to create a nice scent when hot water runs down. Also use them in the water you use to wash windows and trashcans both inside and out. Essential oils make kitchen work safer and much more pleasant.

Many rooms in a home or apartment open onto the hallway and the smells from each room mingle to form a unique aroma that is distinct to that home. Most hallways have no windows so smells linger and fill the area with stale air creating a kind of scent smog. Hallways need a fresh pleasant fragrance rather than the spicy herb scented aroma of the kitchen or the heavily scented oils that might be used in other rooms.

A good suggestion for a hallway fragrance is the citrus oils of grapefruit, lemon, lime or bergamot essential oil. Any of these oils can be blended with lavender to give an uplifting aspect or geranium to impart a calming effect. Use the geranium when company is coming because it will make them feel good as soon as they enter your home. If someone has a cold or flu, add 2 to 3 drops of rosemary to the citrus base using a total of 8 drops of essential oil in 2 1/2 cups of water in a plant-spray bottle. Spray the carpet and stairs in your hallway to help freshen up the entire area.

Hallways get a lot of traffic and are likely  to gather dust and scuff marks. Washing down the paintwork and baseboards is much more pleasant when you use the uplifting aroma of citrus essential oils, especially when you know that they are also antiseptic, disinfectant and can play other useful roles.

Many people are now using aromatherapy as their remedy of choice for common health conditions. Aromatherapy is an alternative form of medicine that uses essential oils or volatile liquid from plant materials and certain aromatic compounds. Basically, the essential oils have an effect on an individual’s health or mood.

There are four different modes of application for aromatherapy essential oils:

• Aerial diffusion for aerial disinfection or environmental fragrancing
• Direct inhalation for respiratory decongestion, expectoration, and disinfection
• Topical applications for body compresses, baths, and therapeutic care for the skin or general massage
• Oral applications for congestion and parasites

The third part of this series will include more ways to use essential oils to effect your health or mood.

Are you familiar with natural, oil based air fresheners? I see many air fresheners advertised but most of them have chemicals that may be harmful to the body or the environment. I even read that some of the plug in types can cause house fires. These natural oil based air fresheners have been formulated to be used as a burning oil or  as a spray air freshener. You can use these natural products as a spray in your car, your bathroom or any room in the house. You can also use this same product as a burning oil in a diffuser.

These oils are concentrated and their fragrance lasts a long time. If you are using a diffuser and you find the fragrance too strong, you can add water to the oil burner to dilute the scent. There are several delicious aromas to choose from and you can even mix fragrances to make your own blend. You can choose from cherry-orange, cherry-pineapple, vanilla-pineapple, canteloupe, mango, jasmine, or banana-strawberry.

Many people are interested in using essential oils in their home because they are finding out that essential oils are the powerful medicines nature created to keep us healthy instead of the high priced chemically enhanced products we get from the drug store. If you want to start using natural essential oils in your home medicine cabinet as a natural alternative to chemicals, the ones I suggest for your basic kit are lavender, tea tree, peppermint, chamomile, eucalyptus, geranium, rosemary, thyme, lemon, and clove. These essential oils are chosen for their medical properties first and second for their ability to take care of a broad range of health problems. We will discuss all of these oils eventually but today, let’s look into peppermint essential oil.

Peppermint has been used by many cultures (Egyptians, Chinese, and American Indians) for thousands of years because of its healthful properties. It is a superb digestive, it helps the respiratory system and promotes circulation, it is an anti-inflammatory and it is an antiseptic. These qualities make peppermint oil an excellent choice to use in the treatment of indigestion, flatulence, bad breath, headaches and migraines, skin irritations, toothache, and fatigue. Peppermint oil is very strong so if you’re going to rub it on your skin, always use a carrier oil and do not ingest it. I have put ONE drop of peppermint oil in my green tea when I didn’t have any peppermint tea bags and I liked it just as well as the tea bag but it might be something you have to work up to. I’ve used it many times for upset stomach too but I never take it neat, always mixed in water or tea. Lastly, if you put 5 drops of peppermint oil on a cottonball and put it in strategic places in your home, it can help to keep pests like mice, fleas, and ants away. Talk about a versatile essential oil!

Once we get older, many of us have problems with bad circulation in the hands and feet. To treat poor circulation, add 30 drops of geranium essential oil to two tablespoons of sweet almond or liquid shea butter carrier oil. Rub this combination on yourself from the hand to the elbow to aid circulation in your hands and from the foot to the knee to treat your feet and lower extremities.

Geranium is one of the best revitalizing oils there is so you can rub the above mixture all over your body. When you put it on your face you will improve the texture of your skin and make it firmer and smoother. Besides making you look younger, geranium is a very effective antidepressant so it will also cheer you up and make you feel great. Geranium smells very nice too!