Essential oils have been gaining notoriety for their therapeutic and medicinal actions, becoming more widely recognized than just little bottles of good smelling liquid. For their medicinal use, they can be ingested (in very tiny amounts, and only with supervision from a health professional!), topically applied, or inhaled. It’s the inhaling part that most folks associate with “aromatherapy”, but its important to see beyond the “spa treatment” image of inhalation of essential oils. This method can really provide therapeutic results, not only in terms of mood and energy, but for the immune system and other physiological activity as well. So which diffuser to use for the most health benefits? Here we’ll investigate the most popular styles, and see what each type offers in terms of therapeutic activity.
The Science-Proven Health Benefits of Essential Oils
Research over the last decade has informed us of many important therapeutic effects of essential oils. Oils have been shown to have a wide variety of important activity, from anti-viral, antibacterial and anti-fungal, to anti-anxiety and anti-depressant. The great thing about inhaling the oils is that you can reap many of these benefits at the same time. Some of the same oils that will lower stress levels can also support immune function by both enhancing our immune systems and directly eradicating contagions.
The Right Diffuser For Aroma-Therapy
Just the scent of an essential oil alone can radically alter physiological processes — the scent of Lavender is a well-known “anxiolytic”, which is just a fancy name for stress reducer. When the aroma hits our smell scent, our brain signals our body to stop stressing out! Other scents have been shown to brighten our moods. Lavender has been shown to be as effective as Valium at reducing stress; it also lowers aggression, brings about a state of calm, and actually improves the quality of sleep. Bergamot essential oil was the subject of research where the subjects noted that they felt better when inhaling this sweet/tart scent. So which is the best diffuser for these uses? It turns out any of them will do, and your choice depends on the size of the environment you’ll be diffusing the aromas into.
Let’s look at the diffuser types, the area they’ll each cover, and a few other useful details if you’re just wanting the wonderful aromatic effects (we’ll get to which one’s are best for more medicinal applications in a moment). The order, from smallest to largest space covered is this: A warming diffuser is good for one small to moderate size room. It plugs in a wall and evaporates the oil from a small pad by heating it gently — it’s completely silent. A fan diffuser, which blows cold air over a pad with oils on it, can cover one large room, and you might here the quiet fan whirring. Then an “ultrasonic nebulizer”, which is essentially a small ultrasonic humidifier adapted to diffuse essential oils. These diffuse in an area from 400 to 700 square feet, and can have electronic accessories like an interval timer (which helps conserve your oils) and cool lighting effects. Finally, there’s the cold-air nebulizers, which make a mist of the pure essential oil without added water. These can cover areas larger than 800 square feet.
photo credit: foxandfeathers
All these diffusers are excellent for getting relaxing and uplifting aromas in the air. You’ll find that the more you spend, the more square footage your diffuser will cover. If you’re considering that you’d like to take full advantage of the immune supportive, air cleansing aspects of essential oils, you’ll want to be more conscious of output, and having the ability to really optimize output for your needs.
It is the nebulizing diffusers that allow complete flexibility in terms of essential oil output, and maximizing the concentration of essential oils in your environment. If this is what you are seeking, make sure you find a cold-air nebulizing diffuser, one that uses air rather than water to make the evaporating mist of essential oils. The fancier of these units will have an output control, enabling you to diffuse just a little at a time at the lowest setting, to really creating a visible vapour of essential oil within the nebulizing chamber.
Conserving Your Oils While Gaining The Most Benefit
An important note when using any type of diffuser, your nose will become sensitized to any aroma very quickly. If you diffuse the same scent continually, you’ll notice you smell it less and less within just a few minutes. This is because your nose only has so many receptors for each aroma, and once they’re filled, they take a little time before they can signal the aroma’s presence to your brain again. All “high end” diffusers will either have a timer control built in, or recommend the use of a programmable appliance timer to cycle the diffuser on and off. A typical cycle is only 5 minutes “on” every hour — yes, only five minutes! If using the diffuser for immunity purposes, you might consider however running the unit continually on its lowest setting. In any case, know that no diffuser is more efficient than another — the amount of oil in the air is always a direct result of how much you’ve put in the diffuser — but a timer can help you smell a smaller amount of oil from any diffuser.
For more on the therapeutic value of aromatherapy oil, and one of many important oils individually such as organic Patchouli oil, visit The Ananda Apothecary online.
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