Use The Magic of Essential Oils To Maximize Your Hair Growth | Easy Home Recycling

Use The Magic of Essential Oils To Maximize Your Hair Growth

As the efficacy of natural medicines in general is being more widely recognized, the true value essential oils are also being recognized. The have a broad range of medicinal actions, and many are applicable to therapeutic skin and hair care. Here we’ll look the premier oils for supporting stimulating new hair growth, and building a personal formula for a therapeutic daily oil treatment.

So What Essential Oils Have The Greatest Potential To Stimulate Hair Growth?

Many essential oils have found a place in today’s ultra-high end skin and hair products, often listed as “botanical extracts”. The active essential oils will generally fall into one of these categories: Stimulating, which enhance the “throughput” of the follicles — increasing their metabolic rate, and thus hair growth. Then there’s Nutrient Providing: several essential oils have a deep reddish or orange color, indicating a high concentration of growth promoting vitamins and vitamin-like compounds. Finally, the all-important Balancing oils create the optimum environment for the healthiest skin, follicles and hair, potentially moving out-of-balance conditions (over-oily, over-dry, or even hormone-deficient) to healthier states.

The Stimulating Essential Oils: Sage and Rosemary

We’ll begin by looking at the “stimulating” essential oils. These essential oils are used in skin and hair care to stimulate cellular metabolism (increasing the oxygen and nutrients used by the cell) or stimulate the growth of new cells. The most popular of these are Rosemary and Sage. Sage MAY be the more powerful of the two oils, but it should not be used by children, or by women who are pregnant — or may becoming so. Rosemary is the most popular, and if you do choose Rosemary, be sure you find the type that’s specific to skin and hair care: it’s called “Rosemary Verbenone” — and while a little more expensive than the common Rosemary, it’ll be far more effective for this purpose. Use either or both of these two essential oils at a concentration of no greater than 1% in your base (we’ll talk about calculating this figure at the end).

The Deep Colored Nutritive Oils: Carrot and Sea Buckthorn

The nutritive oils include Sea Buckthorn and Carrot Root essential oils. These are both available as carrier oils as well, and you may choose to use them as a portion of your base, rather than as an “active ingredient”. Up to you. Both these oils have high levels of vitamins that can promote healthy hair growth. Sea Buckthorn may be the mos popular and easy to find. Use at a 1/2% to 2% concentration. These oils are safe to use for everyone.

Getting The Scalp Back In Balance for Maximum Hair Growth

Many folks have certain skin conditions which can exacerbate hair loss. Sometimes it’s inflammation or irritation due to a mild infection. Sometimes it’s an over-production of skin oils that can clog pores and result in thinning hair. Older women may be in need of balancing estrogen on a cellular level. So choose one or more of these “balancing” oils to round out your formula: Lavender is the best all-around balancing oil where no particular skin condition is apparent. Sometimes called “medicine chest in a bottle”, it can really bring an overall synergy to your recipe. For over-oily skin types, Myrtle is an excellent choice. Often used in acne formulas, it is thought to return the scalp’s oil production back to normal. Finally, Clary Sage is THE choice for mature women with thinning hair, as it may reduce the effects of changes in estrogen levels that have affected hair growth.

How Are These Oils Applied? In Come the Carrier Oils!

Carrier oils are also called “fixed” oils, as unlike the essential oils, they do not readily evaporate. These are seed or nut oils with their own therapeutic value that “carry” the essential oils to your scalp and follicles. Using the essential oils themselves would be FAR to strong, and would greatly irritate the scalp, and have the opposite of the desired effect on your hair! Choose one or more of these for your foundation: Jojoba, Coconut, Rosehip Seed, or Evening Primrose. Jojoba is highly regarded for moisturizing and bringing a wonderful luster. Coconut delivers very important nutrients to the scalp, and is called for all by itself by some natural health practitioners to combat hair loss. Rosehip seed has well-known regenerative properties for the skin, and should have these same effects for the hair follicles: returning them to a more youthful state. Finally, Evening Primrose is full of essential fats, known to combat inflammation, a potential cause of hair loss for many. All these can be mixed and matched as you see fit.

Putting Your Blend Together

Sometimes people are a little intimidated by mixing their own essential oil formula, but it’s really much easier than even baking cookies. Let’s describe how to make 1 ounce of hair stimulating blend, and then you can easily multiply the values to make larger amounts. This is best done in a 1 ounce empty dropper bottle, but again, you can start with a larger one if you like. To make the base, fill the bottle most of the way with your carriers. If you’re using using more than one carrier, estimating equal parts of each is fine. Make sure you leave a little room at the top for the essential oils! So, for each 1% of an essential oil, just add 8 drops of that oil to your bottle. Using 1% Rosemary? Add 8 drops. 2% Lavender, 16 drops. 1/2% Sage? 4 drops. To Make 2 ounces of final blend, just double these numbers — to make 4 ounces, multiply them by 4, and so on.

Great Recipes to Get You Started

These are well-rounded, potent recipes that are easily made — both of these are for two ounces of final blend. For women, use a base of 1/4 Evening Primrose, 1/4 Rosehip Seed, and 1/2 Jojoba. To this, add 16 drops Rosemary Verbenone, 8 drops Sage, 32 drops Lavender and 16 drops Clary Sage. For men, use a base of 1/3rd Coconut, Rosehip Seed and Hemp oils. To this, add 16 drops Sage, 16 drops Rosemary, 32 drops Carrot Root, and 16 drops Lavender essential oils.

Now you can lightly swirl or invert your mixture until you feel it’s blended. Don’t shake it if you can avoid it, as it’s not such a good idea to introduce air into your oils too much (it can shorten the shelf life — which, by the way, should be about six months if kept in a cool, dark spot). The most effective oil treatment program is to first shampoo your hair, or at least moisten your scalp with warm water. This opens the pores and increases absorption of the oils. Then using an eye-dropper, distribute 1 to 2 droppers-full around your scalp and massage the oil in. Wrapping your head in a warm moist towel for the next 20 minutes to an hour can maximize absorption, and/or you can sleep with it on your scalp. And there you have it! A simple, effective means of supporting hair growth with the therapeutic potentials of essential oils.

The author the owner of Ananda Aromatherapy online, found at www.anandaapothecary.com. Find more resources are available on aromatherapy and essential oils through the website.


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