Aromatherapy Blending For Anti-Aging Skin Care
Essential oils are found as ingredients in many of the world’s top skin care preparations. You’ll see them listed on labels as “botanical extracts” — somehow that’s a little fancier — but essential oils are in there. Why? because their therapeutic activities are just what your skin needs, and the oils are readily absorbed by the skin cells themselves. Yet these high end formulas can be costly. So why not make your own anti-aging skin care blend? It’s truly easy to do, and you can choose the finest ingredients and still have an amazing product at a fraction of the cost.
Aging is really a degradation of the structures within each cell, so that each structure becomes less able to do its job over time. There’s two main biological actions going on all the time in our skin cells that contribute to their aging: inflammation and oxidation. The external factors creating these actions are just what you’d expect: over-exposure to UV radiation (sunlight), exposure to environmental pollution, and exposure to less-than-healthy things you eat and drink.
We’re all fairly familiar with oxidative radicals — they’ve been big news in health for a long time. Briefly, when our skin is exposed to UV light, the light breaks oxygen molecules apart — these “oxidative free radicals” start destroying our skin cells by capturing electrons. An anti-oxidant donates an electron instead, and the process is stopped, and essential oils are some of the most potent known natural anti-oxidants. The essential oil distilled from the resin of the myrrh tree has one of the highest “Oxidative Radical Absorbance Capacities” — for this reason its commonly found in blends for “mature skin”, and will be in our formula for really “prevention of mature skin”.
At the same time oxidative radicals are formed, inflammatory processes are set underway. Inflammation is our body’s way of dealing with injury, and can be temporarily healthy. But in the long run, chronic inflammation has been indicated as one of the major contributors to aging. Thankfully, there are some essential oils that are highly potent anti-inflammatory agents. Sea buckthorn, again, is among the best, along with German chamomile, lavender, frankincense and myrrh.
And it’s not just the essential oils that have anti-aging therapeutic effects. The carrier oils in which the essential oils will be based contain antioxidants (argon oil is rich in vitamin E, for example) — and omega-3 essential fatty acids in hempseed and evening primrose are highly regarded for their anti-inflammatory properties. Because the essential oils and carrier oils offer these actions while having completely different molecular structures, the actions will synergize — work together with multiplied effects.
Ready to start blending? To make the process go most smoothly, first collect all your “equipment”: bottles, a dropper, and a small funnel. The best bottles to mix and store in are dark glass. For mixing, you’ll need bottles that you know the volume of: one, two or four ounces, for example. For using the formula, a bottle with a pump top, or at least a dropper cap will be very useful.
You’ll start by filling each bottle up most of the way with carrier oils, then adding your essential oils drop by drop. Always be sure to leave enough space at the top to add your essential oils. All these measurements are for making one ounce of formula — you can simply multiply the numbers if you’re making two, four, or more ounces.
We’ll use three types of carrier oil for the base. Each of these oils has unique therapeutic qualities, that when used together create and incredibly beneficial synergy for the skin. So fill your bottle one third of the way with each of these: virgin coconut, evening primrose and argan nut oils. If any of these oils is difficult to find, you can leave one out if need be — or you can substitute another high omega-3 oil for the evening primrose (like hemp, borage or flax) and either rosehip seed or tamanu nut for the argan.
Then add the following essential oils: Seven drops each of lavender, myrrh, German chamomile and twenty-four drops of sea buckthorn (be sure to find the essential oil or “CO2″, not the cold-pressed oil). Gently mix the oils so that the color appears uniform (it’s better not to shake or mix vigorously, as the oils don’t do so well being oxygenated this way). And there you have it — what seems like a simple blend is actually a truly fine, therapeutic quality creation. Use it regularly and you’ll probably notice a healthy difference in your skin fairly quickly, and with long term use, you’ll be doing your skin a wonderful favor by protecting it from the most troublesome factors of aging.
More on the healing effects of essential oils can be found at http://www.anandaapothecary.com.
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