Aromatherapy Treatments for Fibrocystic Breast Discomfort

Healing Breast Massage and Herbal Compresses

Hot and cold compresses and gentle breast massage improve circula­tion in breast tissue and are a wonderful way of caring for your breasts. Many women avoid touching their breasts because they are fearful of finding disease. Use your daily breast massage as an oppor­tunity to affirm that your breasts are healthy.

To ease pain, make com­presses from anti-inflammatory herbs such as chamomile, calendula, and yarrow. Essential oils with anti-inflammatory properties such as lavender and chamomile are also helpful for easing breast pain, and essential oils such as grapefruit and lemon stimulate lymphatic flow. As a preventive measure, avoid wearing underwire bras because they restrict the normal healthy circulation of blood and lymphatic fluid.

Aromatherapy Treatments for Fibroids

Essential oils increase circulation to the pelvic organs, relax tense uterine muscles, ease cramps, and encourage a state of overall relaxation that promotes healing. Use the following essential oils in sitz baths, massage oils, and abdominal compresses.

Ginger is a potent circulatory stimulant with warming proper­ties. It also helps to improve liver function. Ginger has a spicy, warm scent.

Marjoram has potent sedative properties and is an excellent muscle relaxant that eases uterine cramps. It also has mild laxative action and helps to relieve constipation when used as an abdomi­nal massage oil. Marjoram has a spicy, herbaceous, slightly sweet fragrance.
Rose is gentle and relaxing, and helps to ease physical and emotional tension. It has mild hormone-balancing properties and is considered to be a uterine tonic. Rose has a deep, sweet, floral fra­grance.

Aromatherapy Massage Oil for Fibroids

10 drops ginger essential oil
10 drops rose essential oil
2 ounces almond oil
1/2 teaspoon vitamin E oil

Pour oils into a dark-glass bottle. Store tightly capped in a cool, dark place, and shake well before using. Use as a massage oil over the abdomen and lower back.

Aromatherapy Treatments for Vaginal Infections

Many essential oils have infection-fighting properties and are help­ful for treating vaginal infections. They can easily be added to baths, sitz baths, and vaginal rinses to help ease uncomfortable symptoms such as itching, inflammation, and discharge. In general, use approx­imately ten drops of essential oil in a sitz bath and five drops to one quart of warm water for a vaginal rinse or douche.

Lavender has soothing and healing properties and relieves itch­ing and inflammation. Although gentle, it is a potent antimicrobial. It has a sweet, floral, herbaceous fragrance.

Tea tree has powerful antiseptic properties and kills a wide vari­ety of infectious microorganisms. Always dilute tea tree oil before using it on tender mucous membranes such as the vagina. Tea tree oil has a pungent medicinal scent reminiscent of eucalyptus.

Aromatherapy Massage Oil Recipes for UTIs

Aromatherapy Massage Oil Recipes for Urinary Tract Infections

1 ounce almond oil
7 drops sandalwood essential oil
5 drops juniper essential oil
1/4 teaspoon vitamin E oil

Combine oils and store in a dark glass bottle. Use as a massage oil over the abdomen and lower back.

Aromatherapy Recipes for UTI (Urinary Tract Infections)

Aromatherapy essential oils can be added to baths, compresses, and massage oils to help to relieve urinary tract infections. Sitz baths can ease the pelvic pain that sometimes accompanies an infection. Add five drops each of juniper and sandalwood essential oils to the tub.

Aromatherapy Bath for UTIs

2 cups Epsom. salts
1 cup baking soda
6 drops sandalwood essential oil
4 drops juniper essential oil
Fill bathtub with comfortably hot water, adding Epsom salts and baking soda while the tub is filling. Add sandalwood and juniper essential oils just before entering the tub: Soak for 15 to 20 minutes.

Aromatherapy Recipes for Menstrual Pain

Herbs are excellent for relieving mild to moderate menstrual cramps, but more severe cramps call for extra help. Hot compress­es placed over the abdomen, massage with essential oils, and hot aromatherapy baths relax tense muscles and bring circulation to the pelvic area. Several essential oils are especially helpful for easing cramps.

Cramp- Ease Aromatherapy Massage Oil

2 ounces almond oil
6 drops marjoram essential oil
8 drops lavender essential oil
6 drops ginger essential oil
1/2 teaspoon vitamin E oil

Combine oils in a dark-glass bottle and shake well. Store tightly in a cool, dark place,

Hot baths are wonderful for relaxing the body and mind and easing cramps. Add ten drops of lavender and four drops of marjo­m essential oils to a bathtub of comfortably hot water and soak for 20 minutes. For additional muscle-relaxing properties, add two cups of Epsom salts, which are rich in magnesium, a natural muscle-re­laxing mineral. Hot sitz baths are also excellent for relieving uterine cramps. Add five drops of lavender essential oil and two drops of marjoram essential oil to the sitz bath desired.

Aromatherapy Recipes for PMS

PMS-Relief Aromatherapy Massage Oil Recipes

Use this PMS-relief massage oil as often as you desire. You can use it in massage treatments or apply a small amount after bathing as an all-over body moisturizer. You can also use essential oils in baths to ease PMS discomfort. Add four drops of clary sage or rose geranium and eight drops of lavender essential oils to a bathtub of comfortably warm water. Soak for 20 minutes, allowing yourself time to deeply relax and to enjoy the benefits of the essential oils on your body and your mind.

2 ounces almond oil
8 drops clary sage essential oil
16 drops lavender essential oil
½ teaspoon vitamin E oil

Mix oils together, shake well, and store in a tightly capped dark-glass bottle in a cool, dark place

What is Aromatherapy ?

The word Aroma Therapy means 'treatment using scents'. It refers to the use of essential oils in Holistic Healing to improve health and emotional well-being and in restoring balance to the body. Essential oils are aromatic essences extracted from plants, flowers, trees, fruit, bark, grasses and seeds. There are more than 150 types of oils that can be extracted. These oils have distinctive therapeutic, psychological and physiological properties that improve health and prevent illness. All essential oils have unique healing and valuable antiseptic properties. Some oils are antiviral, anti-inflammatory, pain-relieving,antidepressant, stimulating, relaxing, expectorating, support digestion and have diuretic properties too.

Essential oils get absorbed into our body and exert an influence on it. The residue gets dispersed from the body naturally. They can also affect our mind and emotions. They enter the body in three ways: by inhalation, absorption and consumption.

From the chemist's point of view, essential oils are a mixture of organic compounds viz., ketones, terpenes, esters, alcohol, aldehyde and hundreds of other molecules which are extremely difficult to classify, as they are small and complex. The essential oils' molecules are small. They penetrate human skin easily and enter the blood stream directly and finally get flushed out through our elementary system.

A concentrate of essential oils is not greasy; it is more like water in texture and evaporates quickly. Some of them are light liquid insoluble in water and evaporate instantly when exposed to air. It would take 100 kg of lavender to yield 3 kg of lavender oil; one would need 8 million jasmine flowers to yield barely 1 kg of jasmine oil.

Some of these aroma oils are very expensive. They are extracted using maceration. The purification process called defleurage is employed, and in some cases fat is used instead of oil. Then this process, called enfleurage, is used for final purification.