Pure Essential Oils You Can Blend To Help Grow Your Hair!
Therapeutic grade essential oils hold the promise for a great many people of stimulating the growth of bountiful healthy hair. Whether one is regrowing hair after hair loss, preventing the loss of hair, or just looking to make their hair more beautiful and lustrous than ever, essential oils and the carrier oils that comprise therapeutic aromatherapy formulas are very much worth investigating. We’ll first look at how and why you “build” your recipe, and conclude with a couple excellent formulations.
What Goes Into A Hair Growth Stimulating Formula?
Many essential oils have found a place in today’s ultra-high end skin and hair products, often listed as “botanical extracts”. The active essential oils will generally fall into one of these categories: Stimulating, which enhance the “throughput” of the follicles — increasing their metabolic rate, and thus hair growth. Then there’s Nutrient Providing: several essential oils have a deep reddish or orange color, indicating a high concentration of growth promoting vitamins and vitamin-like compounds. Finally, the all-important Balancing oils create the optimum environment for the healthiest skin, follicles and hair, potentially moving out-of-balance conditions (over-oily, over-dry, or even hormone-deficient) to healthier states.
Revving Up Those Follicles
We’ll begin by looking at the “stimulating” essential oils. These essential oils are used in skin and hair care to stimulate cellular metabolism (increasing the oxygen and nutrients used by the cell) or stimulate the growth of new cells. The most popular of these are Rosemary and Sage. Sage MAY be the more powerful of the two oils, but it should not be used by children, or by women who are pregnant — or may becoming so. Rosemary is the most popular, and if you do choose Rosemary, be sure you find the type that’s specific to skin and hair care: it’s called “Rosemary Verbenone” — and while a little more expensive than the common Rosemary, it’ll be far more effective for this purpose. Use either or both of these two essential oils at a concentration of no greater than 1% in your base (we’ll talk about calculating this figure at the end).
The Deep Colored Nutritive Oils: Carrot and Sea Buckthorn
The nutritive oils include Sea Buckthorn and Carrot Root essential oils. These are both available as carrier oils as well, and you may choose to use them as a portion of your base, rather than as an “active ingredient”. Up to you. Both these oils have high levels of vitamins that can promote healthy hair growth. Sea Buckthorn may be the mos popular and easy to find. Use at a 1/2% to 2% concentration. These oils are safe to use for everyone.
A Few Oils for Maximum Overall Health
Many, many people have either over-dry or over-oily scalp conditions which wreak havoc on hair growth. Balance is what’s needed here, and here’s the oils to do it. Lavender is the most widely used “balancing” oil, that has a wealth of therapeutic effects. If you do not have an outstanding skin condition that really needs clearing up, add a little Lavender to your blend — it is thought to really tie all the components together to help them work most effectively. If you’ve got an over-oily condition, a little Myrtle essential oil is thought to do the trick. It’s cleansing and balancing at the same time, restoring sebaceous output to proper levels. Finally, for mature women, be sure to use a little Clary Sage, thought to restore cellular estrogen levels to their optimum for the most beautiful skin and hair.
Your Formulation’s Foundation: The “Carrier” Oils
One would imagine for an “oil treatment”, there must be some oil involved somewhere. The essential oils, interestingly, are really not “oils” — they are very complex natural mixtures made up of readily-evaporated compounds. “Oils” on the other hand, are made up of larger, longer chain molecules that don’t evaporate so easily. Olive oil is an example — though in aroma-therapy, generally seed and nut oils are used due to their diverse array of therapeutic activity. In these blends, the oils of choice are Coconut — very therapeutic, and may stimulate hair growth all by itself. Rosehip Seed — highly regarded for its regenerative properties. Jojoba — important for those with dry, brittle, thin hair. And Evening Primrose, who’s essential fats are excellent for inflamed scalp conditions, and can offer important nutrients which may be missing from the diet (Hemp seed is also an appropriate choice for the same reasons). Each carrier can be used alone, or in combination with others. Use all four if you like, you’re hair won’t be sorry!
Putting Your Blend Together
Sometimes people are a little intimidated by mixing their own essential oil formula, but it’s really much easier than even baking cookies. Let’s describe how to make 1 ounce of hair stimulating blend, and then you can easily multiply the values to make larger amounts. This is best done in a 1 ounce empty dropper bottle, but again, you can start with a larger one if you like. To make the base, fill the bottle most of the way with your carriers. If you’re using using more than one carrier, estimating equal parts of each is fine. Make sure you leave a little room at the top for the essential oils! So, for each 1% of an essential oil, just add 8 drops of that oil to your bottle. Using 1% Rosemary? Add 8 drops. 2% Lavender, 16 drops. 1/2% Sage? 4 drops. To Make 2 ounces of final blend, just double these numbers — to make 4 ounces, multiply them by 4, and so on.
Practical, Effective Recipes for Men and Women
Each recipe will make four (4) ounces total formula, which should last 2-4 months with regular use. For women, use equal parts of all four carriers — that’s 1 ounce each Coconut, Rosehip, Evening Primrose and Jojoba (of course you’re free to modify this !). Add the following essential oils: 16 drops Sage, 16 drops Rosemary, 64 drops Sea Buckthorn, 32 drops Lavender and 16 drops Clary Sage. This will be an absolutely amazing formula. For men, use 2 ounces each Coconut and Rosehip Seed (if you are prone to acne, use Hemp instead of Rosehip). Add the following essential oils: 32 drops Rosemary, 16 drops Sage, 64 drops Carrot Root, 32 drops Lavender. Again, a truly excellent formula!
Now you can lightly swirl or invert your mixture until you feel it’s blended. Don’t shake it if you can avoid it, as it’s not such a good idea to introduce air into your oils too much (it can shorten the shelf life — which, by the way, should be about six months if kept in a cool, dark spot). The most effective oil treatment program is to first shampoo your hair, or at least moisten your scalp with warm water. This opens the pores and increases absorption of the oils. Then using an eye-dropper, distribute 1 to 2 droppers-full around your scalp and massage the oil in. Wrapping your head in a warm moist towel for the next 20 minutes to an hour can maximize absorption, and/or you can sleep with it on your scalp. And there you have it! A simple, effective means of supporting hair growth with the therapeutic potentials of essential oils.
The author is the co-owner of www.anandaapothecary.com Essential Oils and Aromatherapy – More aromatherapy resources are available on this site.
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