Putting It All Together & the Final Points on Essential Oils and Synergism
Listen to the audio version in 4 minutes here.
For the past month, I’ve been reviewing the three factors to consider when choosing an essential oil for a specific issue or wellness goal. It began with a “simple list” and it blossomed into a bombardment of a rapid succession of articles building on this theme.
General suggestions based on research, experts’ opinions, and clinical experiences are all important to understand, but they have limitations. They don’t always translate to the optimal choice for your body’s unique biochemistry, needs, and health state at the time.
This week will bring to completion the last aspect to the third factor, synergism. Here is the final review of all the factors to keep in mind with selecting essential oils:
1. Essential oils have complex chemical makeups and aromatic properties.
Due to this, they have multiple, simultaneous effects on the body’s physiology, biochemistry, and psychology. I call this the “complicated-mind-memory-body-aroma connection.”
2. Essential oils exert individualized and differing effects based on their surroundings. This could be within the environment of a petri dish, a rodent, or your body! They also have epigenetic actions.
This means that your lifestyle and genetic differences can alter the actions of essential oils within the body. An oil may surprise you and act differently in you than what is expected from the literature or from your friend’s response.
3. Essential oils have synergy. This means that its “sum is greater than its parts.”
Synergy can exist within the essential oils itself based on the hundreds of constituents within it. For this reason, it is not valid to examine in isolation one or two of its compounds and expect the essential oil to behave in the same manner. Rather, the sum of all of them will keep each other “in check,” and will create a harmonizing and balancing effect.
Synergy of essential oils can further be applied when mixing them with a carrier or base product, combining several essential oils together, or when using them with medications and other natural healing modalities. In this way, essential oils can have even greater and enhanced healing properties.
There are several important points if you decide to combine essential oils with anything. First, creating healing essential oil blends takes knowledge of aromatherapy based on complimentary chemical constituents and/or therapeutic effects. (source)
Secondly, you always want to consider safety first with potential interactions of essential oils and medications. This can have effects on their actions and your results with them. You will want to explore more on medication synergy with essential oils in this link.
For your viewing or audio pleasure, you can also review all of the above in 11 minutes on my video here.
Now, the anticipation is over!
Click here to read the conclusion on essential oils’ synergism including:
- essential oils’ synergism based on manufacturing
- essential oils’ synergy within the body
- what to do if you are still confused and feel like you need a bit more guidance with which essential oils to choose for you
Coming up:
- the return of hormonal health and essential oils with rose geranium.
- a few tips on summer lovin’ with essential oils, without the burn!
A Note to Readers
Thank you all for your feedback on my videos and my posts. A lot of you say you love the content, but you’re having a hard time keeping up!
Okay, unlike essential oils, I’m guilty as charged!
Therefore, you’re going to notice that change I discussed awhile back on brevity. I will do my best to focus on one longer topic a week, or two simple concepts. This will be balanced between my two weekly blogs on my homepage and Saratoga.com.
I will also continue with the videos since most of you are finding them helpful.
Please, please, leave a comment and let me know if you like these shorter posts and summaries!
This material is for information purposes only and is not intended to diagnose, treat, or prescribe for any illness. You should check with your doctor regarding implementing any new strategies into your wellness regime. These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. (Affiliation link.)
Disclaimer: This information is applicable ONLY for therapeutic quality essential oils. This information DOES NOT apply to essential oils that have not been tested for purity and standardized constituents. There is no quality control in the United States, and oils labeled as “100% pure” need only to contain 5% of the actual oil. The rest of the bottle can be filled with fillers and sometimes toxic ingredients that can irritate the skin. The studies are not based solely on a specific brand of an essential oil, unless stated. Please read the full study for more information.
Thanks Pixabay and iStock purchases.
