Tag: Grapefruit

How to Make Your Own Essential Oils

Essential oils are useful for a variety of purposes. They can be used for medicinal reasons or healing of the mind, for example. Most people buy their oils in small bottles ready to be used. However, you can sometimes make your own essential oils.

Sweet almond oil can be used as a base for essential oils. It is best if combined with vitamin E, because this is a natural preservative. To make a small amount of essential oil, use one half cup of the sweet almond oil with vitamin E.

Choose the type of essential oil you want to make. This will usually depend upon what plant materials you have at hand. If you have a rose garden, you might want to make rose oil. With an herb garden, you could make oil of thyme or oil of oregano. If you are making essential oils in winter, you could use citrus peels, such as lemon or grapefruit. To get started making essential oils, take your plant material and put it in plastic bag. Start with a cup of tightly packed flowers. Or, use a quarter cup of packed herbs or chopped fruit peel. Close the bag.

Tap the bag with a hammer or a kitchen mallet to slightly bruise the material. Do this gently so as not to turn your plant matter into mush. You want the oils of the plant substance to be brought out ever so slightly. This is the basis for your essential oils.

Next, it’s time to put the contents of the bag in a wide mouthed jar with the sweet almond oil. Put a top on the jar and shake it gently until all the ingredients are mixed thoroughly. Make sure the plant matter is saturated. The essential oil will start to form. It takes some time for the essential oils to be extracted from the plant material in this manner. So, leave your jar in a warm place for the rest of the day. This will give the natural oils time to permeate the sweet almond oil.

On the second day, put some cheesecloth over the mouth of a second wide mouthed jar and pour the mixture from the first jar through it and into the second jar. At this point, you don’t need the first batch of plant matter you gathered. Throw it away along with the cheesecloth.

For the next three days, repeat the same procedure, using another cup of flowers or a quarter cup of fresh herbs or chopped fruit. Always strain the mixture from the previous day through cheesecloth into a clean jar. This will assure that your essential oils are pure.

When all these steps are completed, you have made your essential oil. You only need to bottle it and it will be good for six to twelve months whenever you need it. To bottle it, strain it through cheesecloth a final time. Then pour it through a funnel into small, dark bottles. Close the tops with stoppers.

If you do any flower or herb gardening at all, you might be surprised at how many different essential oils you can make. You can put them together from ingredients in your own back yard.

Put Yourself in a Better Mood

Your mood can determine how you deal with stress, complicate your health, and help you deal with the daily pressures of the work week. Using essential oils is a great way to uplift your mood and put you in good spirits throughout the day. Not only will your mood become increasingly better, but your energy levels will increase as well. The natural fragrances given off by essential oils helps your body use its natural defenses against loss of energy and bad health. Overall, enhancing your mood through essential oils is a healthy way to increase your mood while bettering your health.

Essential oils used in aromatherapy techniques can also be a preventive against the stress and low energy that ultimately harms your health. Even if you dont expect to have a bad day, using essential oils will help you maintain and uplifted mood when the day starts to go sour. This is especially useful in the office when the day can start out good and slowly become stressful and demanding. A better mood can make you more productive and customer service oriented within the office when your mood starts to drop. Essential oils can help pull you out of a controversial situation by helping you think more clearly while in the office.

Essential oils are also useful in the home for stay at home moms or dads. Using the essential oils in your home is safe for the kids, and it can help you cope with a hectic schedule. If you find yourself losing your emotional control, use essential oils in aromatherapy to help uplift your mood and stay calm while watching your children. The aromatic scents help you control your mood, keep yourself positive, and it can even improve your concentration.

Whether you are at work or at home, using the following essential oils will greatly increase your mood and help you sustain a positive attitude even during the bad days. A positive attitude can increase your health and allow you to eliminate stress from your body. Using essential oils such as grapefruit, bergamot, and geranium can greatly enhance your mood and internal energy levels. The following essential oils can be used individually, but used in combination they provide a powerful way to enhance your mood and keep your spirits high.

Grapefruit

Everyone is familiar with that freshly peeled smell of a ripe grapefruit. The citrus scent immediately makes you feel refreshed and it feels that energy levels instantly rise. The aroma is tangy and brings back an invigorating feeling that happens when your mood quickly becomes better and your spirit is uplifted.

Bergamot

Bergamot is an exotic plant extract that is energizing and has an antiseptic for your mind quality. It stimulates your senses and it even helps balance your emotions while increasing your mood. The bergamot aroma is taken from the fruits peeled layer, and it used to be used in colognes. The bergamot aroma can be used separately, but it blends well with most other essential oils.

Geranium

Geranium is a balancing plant that helps stabilize your mood and makes you feel spiritually healthier. When you allow stress to enter your life, you can start to have a roller coaster of emotions that can affect your health and it affects the people around you. Geranium essential oils can help stabilize these emotional up and down issues with its flowery sent.

You can use each of these scents, grapefruit, bergamot, and geranium, individually for their unique emotionally uplifting qualities. Individually, they are powerful essential oils that should be a part of your day whether you stay at home or if you have a busy day at the office. Essential oils in aromatherapy should be a common use especially if you feel your mood is emotionally unstable. Using essential oils can help you handle the daily stress at work or at home.

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How Essential Oils are Made

Essential oils are actually extracts from certain plants, trees, and fruits using a technique called distillation. Since plants contain such a small amount of extract, several pounds of plants are needed to provide a small bottle to consumers. The essential oils are then refined and distilled and packaged in containers that help maintain the scent and fragrance for a good amount of time. The following is a list of treatments and extract procedures that produce the essential oils for our use in aromatherapy or creams.

Steam Distillation

Steam distillation is the most popular and the oldest distillation process available. Old time, traditional aromatherapy professionals believe this method is the best way to produce the most quality extracts. This system takes dried or fresh plants and places them into a steam chamber. The steam is put under pressure and then circulated in and out of the plant material. The heat from the pressurized steam causes the plants cellular structure to open and the essential oils pour into a holding container. This is a delicate method since the heat must be well balanced to open the plant but not too hot causing destruction of the delicate oil.

After the steam and oil are distilled into a container, the steam returns to a liquid while the oil creates a film at the top of the solution. Both the liquid and the oil are both therapeutic by-products of the process. The oils can be packaged as pure essential oil extract. The water still holds a lot of the oil properties, so it is used by cosmetic companies in toners or skin creams.

Cold Pressing

Extracts from fruits such as bergamot, grapefruit, lemon or limes use different forms of processing. The essential oils are mainly in the fruits peel, so they need to be penetrated. The fruits peel is rolled over a large array of sharp objects that cause the peel to burst and the oils extracted. Then the fruit is squeezed and the juice contained. Like steam distillation, the essential oils rise to the top of the juices as a film. They are separated by centrifugations into containers that are packaged to consumers.

Enfleurage

This method of extraction is used for flowers or plants that are very delicate. Some plants are too delicate to withstand the heat from steam distillation. Enfleurage uses animal fat to absorb the essential oils from the delicate flowers. As the petals are depleted from their oils, more are placed on the animal fats until it is completely saturated with the extract. After the fat is saturated, the fat is treated with alcohol which solvates the essential oils. Once the mixture is contained, the alcohol will evaporate leaving behind the essential oil product.

Solvent Extraction

Solvent extraction is the most efficient and affordable way to separate the extract from the plant. In this method, a solvent is used to saturate the plant and absorb the oils. After saturation, it is then treated with alcohol. Like enfleurage, the alcohol eventually evaporates and it leaves only the essential oils for packaging. This method is especially useful for more expensive extracts where each plant needs to be squeezed for its extract as much as possible. Although this method is the most cost efficient, it can leave solvent in the product which can cause side effects.

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