Essential Oil Benefits: A Look at Specific Oils (pt. 2)

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Part 3 of this blog series, what’s UP!

I hope this little side-bar exploration into the world of essential oils has been useful for you… I know I truly had no idea there were so many uses, cautions, and effects coming from these things.

 If you missed the first pieces that I covered about essential oils, you’d probably want to start with part 1 about how essential oils are graded.

Part 2 covered three different oils than those covered in today’s blog. Read that here.

And now, we’re moving onto the final 3 oil that Ministry of Oils was kind enough to shoot my way.

Ministry of Oils is a small, family-owned company that is bringing affordable and top-quality essential oils direct to consumer.

If you want to have those Grade-A oils for a much lower price than other places, Ministry of Oils is your stop. Plus, you can use the code FTF20 for an additional 20% off of your purchase. Cool?

For now, let’s get into a few more essential oils & the research behind them.

Vetiver

Vetiver is an interesting essential oil.

When it comes to research on this one, things still seem to be a little more all over the place.

Some of the uses of vetiver essential oil seem to be:

  • Gamma brain wave activation

  • Modification of sleep walking behaviors (1)

  • Insecticidal (2)

  • Improved sleep / reduced exhaustion (3)

  • Blocking the proliferation (spread) of skin tumor cells (4)

To me, the most interesting of these seems to be its effects on brain wave activity.

Not that the blocking of tumor growth or spread isn’t interesting, but we’ve already seen that activity in frankincense and a few other oils I’ve covered in this series.

 Vetiver is the first essential oil I’ve looked into that has sincere, traceable effects on actual brain wave activity. And that’s really damn cool.

 To be clear, the source (1) which talked about gamma brain wave activation is also thr source discussing vetiver’s effects on sleep walking activity. By turning up the gamma wave activity, this essential oil is breaking the sleep walking behavior cycle.

Don’t worry, I’ve also looked up what makes gamma brain waves so special. 

They’re apparently the newest brain waves to be studied and are the highest frequency brain waves from humans to be discovered so far. 

The higher the frequency, the higher the level of cognitive processing that can occur.

So… it could be extrapolated from this research that vetiver helps mitigate sleep walking because it forces our brains into a higher state of processing, snapping us out of the “zombie” mode that sleepwalkers seem to be in while sleep walking.

More research is needed in this area, but for now it’s cool to have the metrics that prove increased gamma-wave activity almost immediately in humans who smell vetiver. 

Besides the brain wave benefits, the large portion of studies dedicated to vetiver are in the insecticidal benefits. They are vast and many. 

This indicates a more natural approach to farming that could be tapped into using vetiver essential oil.

image via: https://www.earthwiseoils.com/pure-essential-oils/ylang-ylang-pure-essential-oil

image via: https://www.earthwiseoils.com/pure-essential-oils/ylang-ylang-pure-essential-oil

Ylang ylang

Ylang ylang essential oil is one of my favorites for daily use. Personally, I’ll use a few dabs of it as a perfume.

This oil is also called Cananga odorata in research, so a lot of papers cite it under that name.

Some of the main areas of research involving ylang ylang essential oil include:

  • As an insect repellant for humans (5)

  • Major anxiety reduction in both social & sleep scenarios (6)(8)

  • Antibacterial & antimicrobial potential (7)

  • Reduction in blood measurements of cortisol

  • Lowering blood pressure (8) 

From personal use, I do notice a calming effect from ylang ylang, whether it was consciously used in that way at first or not. Whenever I put it on as my perfume in the morning, it gives me a pause to enjoy its beautiful smell for just a moment.

Again, that’s my own anecdote. It reminds me of going on a nice, leisurely walk and enjoying the smell of the flowers near me.

As for the other uses of ylang ylang oil, they make sense based on what the other oils have shown thus far.

The lowered blood cortisol is an expected effect. Blood cortisol is a measurement of how much of this major stress hormone is in the body, so lowered blood cortisol would naturally induce that anti-anxiety response.

Bacterial and microbial fighting properties have also trended in a few of the other oils covered in this series, so I’m not super surprised to learn this one either.

However, the softer scent of Cananga odorata when compared to, say, Eucalyptus, is pretty strong. So, it’s interesting to learn that oils less pungent can sometimes have similar properties to the ones we intuitively think of as “cleaning products.”

The insect repellent information is new to me with this oil, too. But it makes sense – I haven’t had a problem with mosquitoes bothering me in over 5 years, but the difference in the last 2 or so is even stronger.

And guess when I started playing with essential oils as perfume?

Mandarin

You probably know what mandarin essential oil smells like already. It’s basically oranges.

Some noted benefits that mandarin essential oil can provide are:

  • Reduced anxiety in women during the early stages of labor (8)

  • Antiviral activity (9)

  • Strong antioxidant activity

  • Antimicrobial properties

  • Possible natural food preservative (10)

Two things about mandarin essential oil extract.

Number one: reduced anxiety in women during labor. I found this study funny at first because of course you’re going to be anxious when you’re birthing a human. 

But that also got me thinking… if they found it useful to use mandarin extract as an aromatherapy during labor and it WORKED, that’s probably a pretty huge testament to its efficacy against all sorts of anxiety.

I can’t think of anything scarier than giving birth. But I’m probably biased.

Number two: there seems to be a lot of research on mandarin oil’s use as an antimicrobial, but much of it was specifically on keeping bacteria & microbes off of produce.

Mandarins seem to contain some really powerful agents to fight disease in plants, promoting them as possible “safe” pesticides. 

The implications on humans when ingesting mandarin essential oil are unclear, but I would be curious about how it would react for us internally if we know that they can kill microbes living on plants.

For myself, I’d be cautious about ingesting mandarin essential oil for this reason.

Otherwise, as aromatherapy, mandarin is a beautiful addition to your diffusing routine. It smells great and the antioxidant activity is likely to be one of the mechanisms helping with the decreased stress response, too.

A final note on essential oils for aromatherapy

While it seems like there’s a ton of research on essential oils (and there IS a ton!) a lot of it is very new.

As with anything, we need to exercise caution when it comes to claiming “healing” or “absolute” uses for these oils. However, I think they’re very worth exploring more and I hope this research continues. 

If nothing else, they smell great and are an excellent addition to making a living space feel more like “home.”

If you’d like to try out some essential oils for yourself, check out Ministry of Oils and use the code FTF20 for 20% off your order. 

Sources

(1)  Cheaha, D. et. al. (2016). Modification of sleep-waking and electroencephalogram induced by vetiver essential oil inhalation. Journal of Intercultural Enthopharmacology. doi: 10.5455/jice.20160208050736

(2)  Jindapunnapat, K. et. al. (2018). Activity of vetiver extracts and essential oil against Meloidogyne incognita. Journal of Nematology. doi: 10.21307/jofnem-2018-008

(3)  Worwood, V.A. (2016, October 15). The complete book of essential oils and aromatherapy. New World Library. Retrieved from: https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=4cdADQAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR4&dq=vetiver+essential+oil+sexual+health&ots=OjZI9LfMl4&sig=IoA3aIm9vLiZfTJDkOsSzCxEBWI#v=onepage&q=vetiver%20essential%20oil%20sexual%20health&f=false

(4)  Xuesheng, H., Parker, T. L. (2017, March 6). Biological activity of vetiver (vetiveria zizanioides) essential oil in human dermal fibroblasts. Journal of Cogent Medicine. Retreived from: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/2331205X.2017.1298176

(5)  Wathoni, N. et. al. (2018). Repellent activity of essential oils from cCnanga odorata lamk. and Cymbopogon nardus L. on corn startch-based thixogel. Journal of Young Pharmacology. doi: 10.5530/jyp.2018.2s.24

(6)  Zhang, N., Yao, L., Feng, L. (n.d.) Effects of inhaling ylang-ylang essential oil on anxiety, social interaction and sleep behaviors in mice. Munich Personal RePEc Archive. Retrieved from: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/cb09/4c71e7682f3d535c8f855519508515d4d347.pdf#page=64

(7)  Chand, R. R. et. al. (2017, September 20). Antibacterial and antifungal activities of essential oils from medicinal plants found in the South Pacific. The South Pacific Journal of Natural and Applied Sciences. doi: https://doi.org/10.1071/SP17002

(8)  Ghiasi, A., Bagheria, L., Haseli, A. (2019, March). A systematic review on the anxiolytic effect of aromatherapy during the first stage of labor. Journal of Caring Sciences. doi: 10.15171/jcs.2019.008

(9)  Nagy, M. M. et. al. (2018, April 2). Chemical composition and antiviral activity of essential oils from Citrus reshni hort. Ex tanaka (Cleopatra mandarin) cultivated in Egypt. Journal of Essential Oil Bearing Plants. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/0972060X.2018.1436986

(10)         Yi, F. et. al. (2018, September). Evaluation of mechanical-pressed essential oil from Nanfend mandarin (Citrus reticulata Blanco cv. Kinokuni) as a food preservative based on antimicrobial and antioxidant activities. Food Science and Technology. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lwt.2018.05.011