Hang on to your hat friend, we’re getting sciency! But really, essential oils are truly fascinating and can be such a huge boost to our overall health.
Essential oils are simply the aromatic compounds naturally found in shrubs, flowers, roots, leaves, stems and other parts of plants.
The power of an essential oil lies in its individual constituents (the individual compounds and pieces of the plant’s innate systems) and the synergy between those constituents.
Some examples of aromatic constituents of essential oils include terpenes, monoterpenes, and phenols. These are just chemistry words to describe the physical structure of each one. What’s important here is that essential oils have a predominantly ring-like structure that is lipid-soluble.
Ok why do we care about this sciency ring-lipid-constituent jargon? Because these properties allow essential oils to penetrate cell membranes and travel easily throughout the blood and tissues.
Each cell in the body is surrounded by a lipid membrane, which is good because we don’t want to allow just anything inside the cell. However, it can be difficult for vitamins, minerals, and herbs to reach problem areas, and a lot of money goes towards creating solutions to this. Oils are the perfect design! Small, ringed structure, and lipid-soluble.
Studies over the last decades found that rosemary may enhance alertness + combat candida, orange + lemon demonstrate tumor-suppressing effects, and thyme can wash bacteria from produce. Studies like this are plentiful on PubMed!
There is also the smell-emotion connection to consider! We’ll talk about this a bit more later, but for now just know that inhaling oils can shift our mood, emotions, and sleep-wake patterns.
That was a lot. But here’s the bottom line:
We can use ALL these things to our advantage and curate a toolbox of natural solutions for all of our needs – including sleep!