Essential Oils for Stress

Did you know that stress lies at that root of almost every health challenge?

Stress contributes to systemic inflammation which can impact our gut and our mood, down regulates our immune system which can contribute to auto immunity and cancer, throws our blood sugar levels out of balance and even impedes our detoxification. Read on to learn how Essential Oils support stress relief.

How Essential Oils Can Support the Body in Stress

Understanding what actually triggers a stress response gives me the tools to help reduce it.

For example, nipping the thoughts that stir a stress response in the bud can help avoid it altogether.  Essential oils are uniquely suited to help us address, transform and clear negative emotions and thought patterns.

Our sense of smell, which is part of our olfactory system, is one of the most powerful channels into the body.   In fact, our sense of smell is estimated to be 10,000 times more acute than our other senses.  Research has shown that scents can travel faster to the brain than other senses like sight or sound.  Perhaps for that reason, inhalation can be the most direct and effective method for using essential oils. The entire process from the initial inhalation of an essential oil to a corresponding response in the body can happen in a matter of seconds.

When we inhale essential oils through the nose, the odor molecules trigger receptor sites in our mucous membrane, which then sends the odor information on to the olfactory bulb at the base of the brain. I find it interesting that it is not actually the essential oil itself that is sent to the brain, but a neural translation of the oils.  These fragrance messages are interpreted and transmitted to the limbic system of the brain, known as the “emotional brain” because it deals with emotional and psychological responses.

As you may know, the limbic system serves as the control center in the brain for emotions and feelings, along with hunger, thirst and sex drive.  This helps explain how scent can influence appetite and sexual attraction. It also impacts long-term memory through our hippocampus which stores our memories.  The hippocampus is the area of the brain at play during those powerful experiences of smell triggering emotions or memories.  For me, the mere smell of honeysuckle transports me back to my childhood and exploring in nature.

This powerful emotional reaction in the limbic system is triggered by nerve impulses which in turn trigger other areas of the brain that are responsible for secreting hormones, neurotransmitters and regulating body functions.  For example, the pituitary gland releases endorphins, which can help alleviate pain and promote a sense of well-being.

The theory of how this works centers on the idea that essential oils can stimulate or sedate the brain to promote or inhibit the production and release of various neurotransmitters which then impact the nervous system.

Because smells can bypass the thought center of the thalamus and connect directly to the emotional center of the brain, known as the amygdala in the limbic system, they can trigger us to react first and think later. All other physical senses are routed through the thalamus, which acts as the switchboard for the brain, passing stimuli onto the cerebral cortex (the conscious thought center) and other parts of the brain.

The amygdala plays a major role in storing and releasing emotional trauma. The easiest way to stimulate this gland is through the sense of smell. In other words – the emotional brain responds better to smell than it does to words that are read, spoken or heard. Our sense of smell links directly to emotional states and behaviors often stored since childhood.

This makes essential oils especially powerful tools for enabling us to access stored or forgotten memories and suppressed emotions, like anxiety, depression, fear, worry, grief, trauma, anger and self-abuse.  Once accessed, we can acknowledge and release them.  The word “emotion” includes the word motion, implying that are supposed to move through us and be released.  Negative emotions can that we hold onto can contribute to health problems.

Emotions and thought patterns can trigger an ongoing stress response in the body (since our stress response cannot differentiate between physical or emotional and thought driven stressors) which impedes our ability to heal. Smelling essential oils can be a powerful tool for moving through and releasing these thought patterns.

The Stress Support Kit from Vibrant Blue Oils is a great, simple way to get started with essential oils to support stress relief.