The Best Essential Oils for Healthy Skin

Having smooth, moisturized skin can be regarded as everyone's silent dream: a dream they want to achieve; even though it is not life-changing or extraordinary, it plays a huge role in their appearance.

Several factors impact our skin health, such as diseases, exposure to extreme sunlight conditions, and pollutants such as smoke. From ancient times, essential oils played a huge role in ensuring the skin remained moisturized. Essential oils are popular among most people as they revitalize the skin, improve skin firmness, reduce hyperpigmentation and help with collagen formation. However, recently, there has been a drastic increase in brands producing essential oils to benefit the skin. However, some of these brands are not genuine and produce low-quality essential oils that damage the skin. This article will dive deeper into what essential oils are, how certain essential oils work, and the best essential oils for healthy skin.

What are Essential Oils?

Essential oils are plant extracts from leaves, seeds, and flowers. Plants such as lavender and coconut are known to produce amazing essential oils. Coconut oil is popular for moisturizing skin and improving skin firmness. Additionally, it can be used to strengthen and moisturize the hair

Essential oils can treat dry, oily, sensitive, and acne-prone skin. They can also be used to treat skin rashes due to their therapeutic properties, as discussed below.

Best Essential Oils for Acne-prone Skin

Acne is a skin condition that causes skin inflammation. Some essential oils have anti-inflammatory properties that help treat skin inflammation. Essential oils such as rosemary and lemongrass have anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial properties, reducing skin inflammation. Below are the best oils for acne-prone skin.

Tea Tree

According to Mazzarello et al. (2018), tea tree oil has antibacterial properties, which help in treating bacteria that cause acne breakouts. It is derived from the melaleuca tree and has antiseptic properties which have medicinal value.

Lemon

Lemon oil helps in fighting skin inflammation. It also has antioxidant properties that enable it to stabilize free bacteria that damage the skin by causing inflammation and dehydration.

Essential Oils for Dry Skin

Dry skin can be caused by pollutants such as smoke and extreme temperature conditions such as excessive sunlight. Additionally, dry skin can result from a substantial reduction of activity in the sebaceous glands, which are tasked with producing oils that moisturize your skin. The following are essential oils for dry skin;

Chamomile

Chamomile oil is popular because it contains azulene. Azulene is well known for moisturizing the skin and reducing skin inflammation

Sandalwood

Sandalwood has anti-inflammatory properties which reduce skin inflammation. Additionally, it helps in moisturizing the skin and improving skin firmness

Lavender

Lavender also has anti-inflammatory properties. Furthermore, it helps in balancing out moisture levels in your skin, therefore repairing dry skin without making it too moisturized

Essential Oils for Sensitive Skin

Skin conditions such as psoriasis, eczema, and acne can make the skin sensitive. These skin conditions can be caused by skin inflammation, a reduction in collagen formation, and skin dehydration. Moreover, sensitive skin can also be oily and can occur alongside allergies.

Sensitive skin requires oils that have a balanced pH. Therefore, avoid acidic oils such as lemon, which would worsen your skin condition. Oils such as lavender and sandalwood work perfectly for dry skin.

Essential Oils for Oily Skin

People with oily skin also use essential oils to regulate oil production in their skin. The sebaceous glands produce excess oil, making the skin feel cramped and greasy. Factors such as humidity and heat may only make the situation worse.

Rosemary

Rosemary oil is popular due to its anti-inflammatory properties, which help reduce skin inflammation. Moreover, rosemary oil has analgesic properties that help relieve pain in the skin.

Rosemary oil is also popular because it rejuvenates and stimulates the skin, leading to increased skin firmness and collagen production.

According to Rašković et al. (2014), rosemary also helps with greasy skin and hair and can be used to stimulate hair growth and remove hair dandruff.

Geranium

Geranium has alkaline properties that help balance skin oil production and ensure the skin remains moisturized.

Clary Sage

Clary sage is popular since it helps in controlling sebaceous gland activities. It contains compounds such as acetate, which helps regulate oil production by the skin. Moreover, clary sage helps in reducing the appearance of wrinkles on your skin and has anti-inflammatory properties that reduce inflammation and acne breakouts.

Neroli

Neroli is an essential oil that helps balance skin moisture while ensuring that the skin does not dry.

Essential Oils for Anti-aging

Your body produces radicals. When unstable, these free radicals may accumulate and damage your skin by causing skin inflammation, itchiness, and dehydration. Additionally, your skin continuously loses collagen as you grow older, leading to the formation of sags, fine lines, and wrinkles on your skin.

Certain essential oils have antioxidant properties that regurgitate collagen production and stabilize free radicals, which cause the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles on your skin.

Rose

Rose contains Vitamins A, and C. these natural antioxidants help promote skin turnover and stabilize free radicals. Therefore, rose helps in slowing down skin aging.

Coconut Oil

According to Vala & Kapadiya (2014), coconut oil helps repair the skin's top layer because it contains a natural fatty acid. Therefore, coconut oil helps in moisturizing skin, improving skin firmness, and increasing collagen production.

Essential Oils for Pigmentation

Pigmentation may occur when acne scars are formed on the skin due to excessive exposure to sunlight. Certain essential oils are useful for pigmentation. They include:

Pomegranate

Pomegranate is known to have anti-inflammatory properties that help in reducing skin inflammation. It also has antioxidant properties that help prevent oxidative stress from the skin.

Tangerine

Tangerine is known to have antioxidant properties that help stabilize free radicals that cause skin dehydration.

Lavender oil

Sharma, Chandra & Puneeta (2020) suggested that lavender oil has anti-inflammatory and antibacterial properties, which reduce inflammation and skin redness

How To Use Essential Oils

Essential oils are majorly applied topically on the skin. Additionally, they can be inhaled, although ingesting essential oils is unsafe.

Essential oils can also be used by diffusing them into the room. A good example is lavender, which has an amazing scent and is dispersed into rooms so you can inhale them. However, lavender oil would help calm your mind and relax body tension when inhaled, although it will not help in improving skin quality.

Summary

Essential oils have been used to help improve skin health from time immemorial. In recent years, however, there has been a surge in the brands that produce essential oils, which has made it more difficult to purchase high-quality essential oils. Essential oils have anti-inflammatory properties that reduce skin inflammation. This helps in treating skin conditions such as acne and skin breakouts. Moreover, essential oils have antioxidant properties that help relieve the skin from oxidative stress. Also, the antioxidant properties help stabilize free radicals that lead to wrinkles, sags, and fine lines on the skin. Essential oils can be applied topically on the skin, which helps moisturize skin and improve collagen formation. Furthermore, essential oils can be inhaled to reduce stress and improve mood.

References

Mazzarello, V., Donadu, M. G., Ferrari, M., Piga, G., Usai, D., Zanetti, S., & Sotgiu, M. A. (2018). Treatment of acne with a combination of propolis, tea tree oil, and Aloe vera compared to erythromycin cream: two double-blind investigations. Clinical pharmacology: advances and applications, 10, 175.

Rašković, A., Milanović, I., Pavlović, N., Ćebović, T., Vukmirović, S., & Mikov, M. (2014). Antioxidant activity of rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis L.) essential oil and its hepatoprotective potential. BMC complementary and alternative medicine, 14(1), 1-9.

Sharma, L., Chandra, M., & Puneeta, A. (2020). Health benefits of lavender (Lavandula angustifolia). International Journal of Physiology, Nutrition and Physical Education, 4(1), 1274-1277.

Vala, G. S., & Kapadiya, P. K. (2014). Medicinal benefits of coconut oil. Int J Life Sci Res, 2(4), 124-126.