Essential Oils

Boost Brain Health with Essential Oils: A New Study

by
Plug in diffuser, candle diffuser, and essential oil

Want an easy, pleasing way to increase your health and longevity in the new year? Something that doesn’t feel like deprivation but is instead adding aesthetically pleasing components to your life? Or maybe you have a parent or loved one who is getting toward the 60+ range, who is starting to take brain health more seriously. This is for them, and YOU.

I heard about this study in the news a few times this year, and I intended to look further at the study but always got distracted when I sat down to do so. I finally looked into it and, wow, it’s a good one. It is rare to have a scientific standard study involving natural ingredients, but one was carried out recently involving ‘odorants’ and aging brains, and the results were statistically significant!

The Study

If you want to read the entire article on the study, here it is. I actually found it by way of another article which I will link to here also because it is a good one as well. I will try to give you the biggest takeaways here in a short summary:

There was a study involving adults ages 60-85 who were instructed to put essential oils into a diffuser for two hours at night when they went to bed. There was a control group that did the same actions, but the ‘essential oils’ were just a highly diluted, scant scent. The adults were given cognitive tests before and after the six month trial period, and the adults who used the essential oils had a significantly significant better outcome than the control group.

This study was undertaken because there has already been a recognized correlation between the sense of smell and brain health. The decline of the former foretells a decline in the latter. This has been shown not only related to dementia, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other age-related decline, it has also been recognized in COVID patients who have lost their sense of smell. The article on this study says that even those with chronic sinus infections show declines in certain regions of the brain.

How to Use these Findings

If you want to emulate the study’s participants, you need a diffuser and seven unique essential oils. The diffuser needs to be the kind that can stay on for two hours, and then automatically shut off, such as this one from Mountain Rose Herbs. It is a plug in model that allows for 120 minutes of diffusing time, exactly what is needed. They used one essential oil per night, no blends, just one pure scent per evening. The novelty of a different scent each night was deemed important, as well as the fact that these were not blends. The essential oils used in the study were: eucalyptus, lavender, lemon, orange, peppermint, rose, and rosemary. The essential oils that they picked don’t seem to matter so please use whatever seven essential oils best suit you. Theirs were obtained from The Essential Oil Company, Portland, OR, but you can get essential oils from any natural foods store such as Whole Foods, or online at Mountain Rose Herbs, or Aura Cacia.

Recap

Each night, before you or your loved one goes to bed, put a few drops (the amount varies depending on the diffuser) of an essential oil in a diffuser. Turn it on its two hour setting, so it will automatically turn off after you are asleep. Then go to bed. That is it! Remember to use a different essential oil each night, and rest assured you are building up your brain while you sleep.

Other Takeaways

The original research article discusses other studies showing how using essential oils throughout the day benefits the brain. The larger truth found in that article is that we would all benefit from using more essential oils in our lives, whether it is at night, in the morning, or sometime in-between. Preferably multiple times in-between AND morning and night! There are so many factors that cause ill health, poor aging, diseases, and declines in all areas of our lives now, so it makes sense to counter some of those factors with what we know works. Essential oils have been proven to work.

If you need other ideas on how to incorporate more essential oils into your daily life, please use the search function on my website for ‘essential oils’, and take a look at my book, All Natural Perfume Making.

Personal Note

This post was written with my lovely, late friend, Lisa Garvey, in mind. This is exactly the kind of finding we would have excitedly talked about over drinks after a long day of working (and goofing off) together at Rainbow Blossom back in the late 90s. I miss you girl.

Happy New Year!

May 2025 be a year of exceptional health, growth, and peace.

Summer Hack for Repelling Bugs

by
Sunny day along Juanita Bay

*This post includes affiliate links to Mountain Rose Herbs. I highly recommend their essential oils, herbs, and crafting materials, but use whatever you have on hand first!

A couple of weeks ago my niece mentioned that her sunscreen, which she loves, attracts bugs, which she does not love. I recommended putting essential oils into the sunscreen container because bugs do not like essential oils. I realized later that it’d be more useful to actually add the essential oils right before you put sunscreen on, and an easy hack for anyone who would like some insect protection along with their sun damage protection. I’ll explain how to do just that in a moment, but also want to remind you how easy it is to make your own bug repelling sprays and body oils for when you are heading outside and maybe do not need sunscreen, such as enjoying summer nights out, or you just want to be able to spray yourself repeatedly throughout the day. I have all the details on making your own bug repellent here.

Instructions:

To make your sunscreen into a bug repelling screen as well, all you need to do is squeeze about a tablespoon of sunscreen into your palm. Add 5 to 10 drops of essential oils into the sunscreen, mix it together, and then lather it on your body. This hack is for your neck down, not your face. Start on the lower end of that 5-10 range, so 5 or less drops of essential oils per tablespoon, to make sure your skin isn’t sensitive and then you can add more drops next time if you wish.

Which Essential Oils?

Almost any essential oil can be used and will be effective, but do not use citrus oils because they can cause hyperpigmentation. Citrus oils are mostly obvious, such as sweet orange, lemon, and lime, with one exception, bergamot. Please avoid these and any other citrus essential oils in your sunscreen. Particularly effective essential oils are citronella (of course!), lemon eucalyptus (not a citrus oil despite the name), thyme, and all the mints but especially peppermint. Be a little cautious with peppermint because it is a cooling essential oil but just as dry ice can burn, so can peppermint at certain levels and everyone’s skin sensitivity level is different. Mixing essential oils is recommended because some bugs are repelled more or less by certain scents, so your end result will be more effective with two, three, or more essential oils.

Let me know if you try this and how it works out for you!

Happy Bug Repelling 🐜🚫 and remember, it’s good for the bugs too because if they aren’t bothering you, you aren’t bothering them! ☮

Time to Start DIYing for Valentine’s Day

by

This site contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission or other incentive for purchases made through these links.

There are a lot of options for making your own one-of-a-kind, deeply personal Valentine’s gifts, but I’m partial to perfume body oil. It gets my vote for best DIY Valentine gift because it can also be used as a massage oil for some loving partner time, or bath oil for individual (or shared) self-care tub time. Even if your gift recipient is prickly about baths, massages, and perfumes, they can still rub their feet with the oil before putting on socks and this is a highly effective way for the essential oils to get into the body, and whose feet don’t need some extra love? They could also soak their hands in warm water with the oil which again is another way for the whole body to experience the essential oils and afterwards they can rub their hands with more oil for deep moisturizing after pandemic quality washing and sanitizing for a couple of years now.

Making a body/bath/massage oil is incredibly easy with just base oil(s) and one or more essential oils. It can be made even more healing and complex with first creating an herbal oil, then adding essential oils. Making an herbal oil using the quick method only takes a few hours and is guaranteed to make your house smell divine. I have several tutorials on how to do this, here, and here.

Base oils are fairly interchangeable but there are some I’d recommend over others depending on how the final product will be used. If you think it will be used as a pulse-point perfume, then jojoba or fractionated coconut oil are the best choices. If you don’t have either of those, use sweet almond oil or grapeseed oil. For a full body perfume oil, combining two or more of the oils mentioned above is a great idea. Just using one of those oils will work too, but sweet almond oil and grapeseed oil are going to provide more slip so those two make it easier to cover larger areas than merely pulse points. That makes those two oils ideal for massage oil, and any of the base oils I’ve mentioned will work for a bath oil.

For herbal oils great choices would be lavender, rose, or vanilla, or a combination of two or more of those herbs. As noted above, I have several tutorials on making herbal oils here and here.

So, which essential oils to choose? That’s the easiest part in one way, and also the most daunting in another. It’s easy because any essential oil or combination of essential oils is going to most likely reduce feelings of stress and tension, and help boost feelings of wellness and calm confidence. The only time this might backfire is if the person has a bad experience associated with a certain scent and therefore the scent can trigger feelings of unease. For example, lavender is traditionally known to be calming and relaxing, but if someone went to a lavender farm when they were young and got lost in the fields, separated from their family for long scary minutes, then lavender could easily trigger feelings of distress and alarm on some level for that person for the rest of his/her life. This is fairly rare though and we often know what scents our friends and family gravitate towards. If they are big flower people, pick florals, if they love citrus fruits, pick a citrus, if their favorite thing to do is to hike in the woods, pick pine or cedar, etc. The daunting part can be when trying to decide which essential oils blend together nicely, and for that I’d recommend starting small and starting early, which is why I am posting this a couple of weeks before Valentine’s Day. Use a small container to test the essential oil blend before adding it to the oil, so that way you can see how the blend develops over a few days or weeks’ time, and what adjustments need to be made, such as more top note for more of a lighter initial hit or more base note for grounding, or perhaps more middle note to weave it all together better. I have a few recipe suggestions below but follow your intuition, your nose, and what you know about your gift recipient. Think of this as a truly customized, personal, gift that only you would make for only that one special person. That way what you create will be unique to you and your giftee and both of you will think of the other each time that scent is in the air. Which reminds me, don’t forget to write down your recipe so you can recreate it!

If you are looking for an aphrodisiac combination since this is the holiday that celebrates all aspects of love after all, keep in mind the general effect of any essential oil is to support a calm, confident, and relaxed yet alert state, so any essential oil is truly going to be a good place to start. That being said, some essential oils have traditionally been used for aphrodisiac affects, including the spices such as cinnamon*(see caution), cardamom**, and nutmeg**(see note). Vanilla which is not a true essential oil but can be used in the form of an herbal oil or an absolute. Rose, jasmine, and ylang ylang have sensual reputations as well.

*Cinnamon essential oil can be irritating to the skin. Cinnamon leaf is less so than cinnamon bark, but use either essential oil sparingly in blends and test for sensitivity. ** Cardamom and nutmeg are very potent and easily take over blends, so although they aren’t known to cause the same skin irritation that cinnamon and clove e.o. can, use one drop in a blend at the end of blending, mix, and then test to see if you want to add more. If so, only add one drop at a time, mix, then test.

If you prefer to just buy a ready made oil or body mist with aphrodisiac essential oils already considered in the blend, you might like to check out these two items from Mountain Rose Herbs: a body oil and a body mist. They also have an essential oil Love kit that makes picking out ‘love inducing’ scents easy too.

Here are a couple of recipe ideas to get you started. There are many more recipes in my book, All-Natural Perfume Making, with proposed amounts of each ingredient, so check it out if you like playing with herbs and essential oils. I didn’t suggest amounts for the recipes below so you can truly experience blending with your nose and intuition. Feel free to contact me though with your ideas if you want a second set of eyes.

For a traditionally masculine scent:

Cedarwood, vanilla absolute, bay, and lime in a base of lavender, rose, or vanilla herbal oil

Or

Sandalwood, vanilla absolute, bergamot, and nutmeg in a base of lavender, rose, or vanilla herbal oil

For traditionally feminine scents:

Vanilla absolute, ylang ylang, rose absolute, and cardamom in rose herbal oil

Or

Sandalwood, jasmine absolute, ylang ylang, lavender in vanilla herbal oil or rose herbal oil

Here are more Valentine’s Day DIY projects to consider and here is a post with more information on herbs that support reproductive health, including healthy sexuality.

Wishing everyone rich, deep and layered love this upcoming Valentine’s Day and always ❤.

Anti-Germ Room Spray

by

This past week has been one of adjustment as one of my sons and I both returned to our schools in-person. My youngest son opted to finish out the year remotely so he’s holding down the fort with our dog while my older son and I are navigating the new routines of our old worlds. It’s been draining, to be honest, and the adjustment had us both in bed early on Friday night from sheer exhaustion. Between the new rules and norms due to covid and the anxiety that just seems inevitable now in larger groups, and trying to figure out all the little things that the pdfs of new protocols somehow haven’t covered much less remembering all that is covered on those pdfs…it’s a lot. I realized by the end of the week that I hadn’t made a room spray yet for my main classroom where I spend most days which is something I used daily last year to keep the germs down and spirits up. This weekend I’m making two versions of an anti-germ room spray and thought I’d share the recipes here.

I have a blog post/YouTube video on making room sprays which I made before I realized that adding a bit of an alcohol to the distilled water really helps the essential oils mix into the spray. Essential oils tend to sit on top of water, which you will notice if you put essential oils directly into your bath without using an oil carrier, so shaking before spraying helps but not as much as adding an alcohol, such as vodka which has very little to no scent, into the bottle along with the distilled water. Follow the same guidelines in my book, All Natural Perfume Making, when deciding which essential oils to include and in what proportion. For my classroom, I’m going to include thyme which is a strong scent that tends to overpower all other scents it combines with, but I’m using it because it is powerfully antibacterial and antiviral. Aim for about 30 drops of essential oils per ounce of liquid, and for the liquid aim for half of it being alcohol and 1/2 distilled water.

This is the view from my classroom window

Anti-germ Room Spray:

2 oz bottle

1 oz distilled water

1 oz vodka

10 drops thyme

20 drops lavender + 10 more drops in one bottle

20 drops rosemary + 10 more drops in the other bottle

The reason I’m making two versions is that the one with more lavender will be for calming anxiety, either mine or the students’ in the room. (Trust me I can tell when the room is tense with anxiety!) The one with more rosemary will be for when fatigue is a problem and the brains in the room need to wake up and focus.

Always shake the bottle before spraying and keep it away from your face and especially your eyes. Don’t forget to label it too and write down what you put into yours so you can track what works well for you and what you’d like to change for next time.

Good luck to all of you who are also navigating changing routines right now!

How-to Posts and Recipes Related to Perfume Making Book

by

Here are some of the former posts and videos I’ve made that relate to my book, All-Natural Perfume Making. If you are looking for a step by step process from the book that isn’t here, let me know by contacting me!

How to Make Vanilla Extract
How to Make an Herbal Oil Part 1
How to Make an Herbal Oil Part 2
DIY Herbal Oil Quick Method
How to Make an Herbal Tincture Part 1
How to Make an Herbal Tincture Part 2
Rose Water DIY
Spray Perfume DIY
Body Spray for Guys
Herbal Perfume Base DIY
Herbal Perfume Base DIY Part 2
Vanilla Oil DIY
The Art and Craft of Herbalism
Bay Rum Aftershave and Toner
Fragrance vs. Essential Oils

Publication and Release Day

by

Thank you so much to all of you who preordered my book! If you did so, it will likely arrive today if it hasn’t already, or in the next couple of days. I really appreciate all the support, enthusiasm, and also your patience while I have been hyper-focused on it. My dad nailed it when he said it’s been like a multi-year pregnancy. It really has been a long process, delayed several times, so today feels long awaited. This book represents a lot to me, beyond the pages and words, as you certainly know if you have been following along for a while. I am eternally grateful for you being here, no matter how long it’s been. Thank you🙏

All-natural perfume making, or the new sourdough bread — The Healthy Epicurean

by

One of my blogging friends in the US, Kristen Schuhmann, whose blog, Blossom Herbs, is a go-to for all things herb-related, has written a beautiful book: All-Natural Perfume Making, fragrances to lift your mind, body and spirit. Banana bread, sourdough starters, supermarket toilet-roll brawls begone! Natural scents are order of the day. The title is […]

All-natural perfume making, or the new sourdough bread — The Healthy Epicurean

Excerpt from My Book on MindBodyGreen on How to Make All-Natural Solid Perfumes

by

Solids are a great way to carry a perfume around with you in your bag, especially when traveling, since there aren’t spillage concerns with solids. The excerpt from my book explains how to make an all-natural solid perfume, including vegan options because most solid perfumes use beeswax. Click on the link below or here to see it.

Excerpt of My Book on MindBodyGreen

Happy Crafting! 🌸🌿

The Better Normal Article

by

I wrote an article for the website, The Better Normal, and wanted to share it here as it has two recipes from my All-Natural Perfume Making book. (The recipes were modified in that they use straight oil or alcohol for the bases, instead of the herbal oils and extracts in the book, in order to provide less complex recipes.)

Here’s the first paragraph:

Nature gifts us many ingredients and tools to help us rest, relax, and rejuvenate. Just being in nature is grounding and soothing which is what led Japanese doctors to start writing prescriptions for ‘forest bathing’ (or spending time in nature). Doctors around the world have taken note, and the idea that being out in nature releases stress and promotes health is no longer fringe. Along with “forest bathing,” things like caring for plants, gardening, hiking, and outdoor yoga have plenty of nature-based health benefits. And from these experiences, we know that herbalism (use of things like herbs and essential oils for healing) is also an incredible gift from nature that can be grounding, relaxing, and promote better health physically, emotionally, and mentally.

To continue reading, please click this link.

Thank you for reading!

Multi-Layered Natural Perfume Making

by

It’s March, my birthday, and my book will be released this month! I’m in the mood to celebrate! 🎉! March has become heavy with significance the last few years, and I am so happy that this March I can turn it around into a lighter, brighter month heralding spring and good things to come once again. In March of 2019, my (now ex)husband left after a tumultuous few years and right after promising we could start over and everything would be fine. In March of 2020 my divorce was complete on the same day we moved from the only house my kids had known, and it was the first day that schools here went remote and we embarked on a “two week” quarantine, which of course is still more or less going on a year later. To say that I’m happy that this March is the month my book is officially releasing is an understatement, and to celebrate all month I’ll be giving glimpses inside it.

One piece of perfume creation that the book covers is how to balance top, middle, and bottom notes. In the book you’ll find examples of where the essential oils fall in terms of top, middle, or base notes, but in general the top notes are the lightest scents, so citruses and some florals, middle notes are herbs and other florals, and base notes are generally the woods and resins. In order to make the most well-rounded perfume that lasts the longest, it’s best to have essential oils from each category. Top notes refer to the first notes of a perfume that you smell, while the middle notes come in next and are often referred to as the main component of the perfume, and the base notes are the last to come through and also linger the longest. If, for example, you are drawn to top heavy perfumes, it can help balance out a perfume to add scents from the other note categories. Personally, I tend to like base-y perfumes, and usually have to add a top note towards the end and that is always when the perfume comes together and smells complete.

Below is a recipe from the book for a mood balancing perfume, where the note categories are clearly shown. This perfume still works with just two of the essential oils, but when all three are together, it’s a more balanced, complete scent that just resonates better. As the word ‘note’ suggests, it is indeed like music. If you can imagine just a drum playing, then a drum and guitar, then a drum, guitar, and a bass guitar, that can help you visualize the difference between a perfume that’s just thrown together with one or two scents, as opposed to one where the different note categories are considered.

Once you mix your essential oils, add them to oil or an alcohol like vodka to actually put on your body. Don’t put essential oils directly on your skin because they are extremely potent and need a carrier. (There are a couple of exceptions to this rule, but in terms of perfume, always use a base oil or alcohol unless it is a solid perfume in which case the carrier is already oil and/or wax.)

Enjoy the change of seasons, wherever you are! It feels like spring here today🌷🌻🌷.