One of the most hyped about essential oils on the internet, and of course, one of human kind’s most recognized fragrances. Lemon essential oil has natural antibiotic constituents which make it a brilliant tool for aromatherapists to use against coughs, colds and infections. Naturally uplifting it seems to free the imagination. Let’s get to know it a little better. Today we ask: what is lemon essential oil good for?
According to The Complete Guide to Aromatherapy, (Volume 1 – Foundations and Materia Medica) by Salvatori Battaglia, the most common cited actions of lemon essential oil in aromatherapy are:
- Antidepressant
- Antifungal
- Antimicrobial
- Antirheumatic
- Antiseptic
- Antispasmodic
- Astringent
- Bactericidal
- Carminative (calms the digestive system)
- Depurative (purging and able to detoxify)
- Diaphoretic (makes you sweat)
- Digestive
- Diuretic
- Febrifuge (brings down high temperature)
- Haemostatic (stops bleeding)
- Hypotensive
- Immunostimulant
- Rubefacient (brings the blood closer to the skin surface - Good for circulation. Useful for taking blood tests)
- Tonic.
Of these actions, only antifungal, antiseptic, bactericidal, chemo protective, and hepatic are supported by clinical studies.
What Is Lemon Essential Oil Good For In The Physical Body?
Lemon Oil Thins The Blood
Perhaps most important of lemon essential oils actions is how it responds to blood. It makes it less sticky and helps to break up plaque deposits from the arteries. It’s reputed to reduce cholesterol.
This thinning action makes it wonderful for using in compresses for hemorrhoids.
Add it to moisturizing creams with geranium and black pepper for varicose veins. Massaging over these veins would be contraindicated, so simply smooth it into the legs and allow the essential oils to do their work.
Stuffy Noses
We probably all associate lemon with coughs and colds, and indeed, lemon essential oil may stimulate white blood cells and help to fight off infections.
My mom used to make a tremendous moisturizer for sinus infections with lemon, myrrh and tea tree. Lemon has a strong antiviral action, so it not only helps to disinfect the sinuses but it may also halt any spread of viruses through the system.
Myrrh essential oil is very good for breaking down the rubbish in the sinuses, however lemon is great if the snot has turned yellowy green and we can see there is an infection.
One of the ways I use lemon essential oil most is for warts and verrucas. I use undiluted essential oil to do that. Since lemon can be a dermal irritant, we need to carefully place the oil directly onto the wart with a cotton bud, being careful not to put it onto healthy skin.
In skin care, lemon essential oil is both astringent and clarifying. It cuts through grease and grime and brings the bloom back to the complexion. Again, it is a very strong essential oil so we would only use tiny dilutions. 1% would be plenty for skin care.
What Is Lemon Essential Oil Good For Emotionally?
I find lemon essential oil helpful for walking the line between the left and right brains. What do I mean by that?
Left brain thinking is all about analysis and logic and order. Right brain thinking is imaginative, intuitive & creative.
So sometimes it can be easy to get stuck in one of those worlds. Lemon essential oil is both inspirational but simultaneously analytical. It helps us to look at details and be methodical, but to do it with color, brightness and sparkle.
Valerie Ann Worwood speaks of how the lemon personality is so nice to be around because it’s all imagination, inspiration and innovation. It’s incredibly positive and looks on the bright side of life.
However, it really likes change. Lemon likes things to be different and never wants to be stuck in the same pattern. It thrives on things emerging and evolving.
What Is Lemon Essential Oil Good For Mentally?
This is probably the most exciting use of lemon.
Certainly, it affects the emotional body making you feel happier and freer, but when that happens to the mental body, it liberates our thought processes. The fragrance of lemon makes us more imaginative and creative.
It allows us to paint colorful pictures with words and it manifests interesting picture scapes for us to use in our work.
It’s very good at helping us to separate out different threads of work. Sometimes it can be overwhelming to look at a project and see there are so many different things to do. Lemon essential oil allows us to get really excited about one particular pathway, to unpick facts and to make it right, to make it work really well, and to make it shine. There’s something about lemon essential oil that is radiant and exciting and positive.
Then, of course, we go back to the beginning and find a new thread to recreate.
I use lemon essential oil when I am editing my books.
I have a rule to write fast then edit slow when I’m writing for myself.
I do one whole edit where I simply look at the adjectives I have used through the text.
I look through and go “how can you make that more exciting, have that more scintillating, how can I make that more descriptive, how can I make that more sumptuous…” simply by changing the words. Lemon essential oil helps me feel my way into the depths of the picture that I am trying to achieve.
I originally got the idea to do that from something that Peter Holmes wrote:
“Lemon oil can also go a long way to dig us out of the rut of routine, habit bound, unimaginative patterns of thinking. By creating light and clarity in the psyche, it can help shrink gloomy negative depressive thoughts-which can be considered mental kind of congested damp.”
I love it. It speaks to how lemon essential oil deals with muddy thickness through the body, right down to our thoughts.
Vitamins?
We should state that despite what many internet pages describe lemon essential oil as being full of vitamins, this is unlikely to be true. For the most part vitamins are water-based entities and as such do not pass through distillation into essential oils. Vitamin C degrades at 70 degrees C, so it could not survive, it even if it did.
However, Lemon essential oil is not a steam distilled oil. The essential oil is created by placing tiny pin pricks into the rind and then pressing the oil out. In theory then, there may be teensy amounts of vitamins in there, but only infinitesimal, and certainly not enough to do you any therapeutic good from that point of view. Far better to eat a strawberry!
Safety
I’ll disclose a story.
Once upon a time there was an aromatherapist who thought it would be a great plan to use lemon essential oil in her bath as a means of making her feel a bit more positive about showing off some rather beautiful underwear to her husband.
She got in the bath, realized what a terrible plan that was, got out of the bath after about 15 seconds all covered in a rash.
The underwear was ditched for a week.
Here ended the lesson.
Not good in the bath. If you are using in creams and lotions Tisserand and Young suggest a maximum dilution of 2%. I concur.
In addition to this, be aware that lemon essential oil is made up of roughly a third of limonene. Limonene degrades fast so the International Fragrance Regulations Association suggest adding 0.5% preservative to any products that you might make but are not intending to use right away.
This protects the skin against any increased issues around skin sensitization.
Conclusion
So there we have it. My answer to what is lemon essential oil good for creativity. But for others it may be for conditioning the blood, acting as an antiseptic, antifungal or antiviral agent.
