High Quality OEM/ODM 100% Pure Console Blend Essential Oil for Relaxing and Aromatherapy Diffuser Compound Oil

Tames Muscle Pain

Mixing a few drops of Essential Oil into your Massage Oil may offer benefits for various causes of muscle pain, including chronic back pain. Research is limited at this time — here are two small studies on this topic, which are not conclusive.

For a study in Thailand, researchers assigned older adults with chronic back pain to receive a 30-minute Swedish massage (a gentle massage style aimed at relaxation) with ginger oil or a 30-minute Thai massage (an active massage style that uses firm pressure) with no oil twice a week for five weeks. While both groups experienced significant improvements in pain, the Swedish massage with ginger oil group saw better long-term outcomes, as found by assessments taken 15 weeks after treatment. However, it’s hard to know if the improvements were due to the ginger oil, the massage technique, or the two in combination.

Essential oils may also help lower muscle pain after a workout. A study published in September 2019 in Comparative Exercise Physiology randomly assigned 24 nonactive women to receive either one dose of a Rosemary Oil supplement, two doses of a rosemary oil supplement, or a placebo every eight hours for 14 days. After that, all the women performed an eccentric leg curl exercise to create muscle damage. They continued taking their supplement or placebo until 72 hours after the exercise session.

Researchers measured each woman’s muscle swelling, muscle pain, and several markers of muscle damage before exercise, then 24, 48, and 72 hours afterward. They found that the women who took two doses of rosemary oil had significantly lower levels of creatine kinase 48 hours after exercise when compared with the women who took one dose or a placebo. Creatine kinase is an enzyme that’s found in muscles, with higher levels indicating muscle damage. The findings suggest that supplementing with rosemary oil may reduce exercise-induced muscle damage and soreness.

However, using essential oils in the form of a supplement is generally considered a risky move. According to Operation Supplement Safety, there’s no reliable scientific evidence that consuming any essential oil orally is safe. “Essential oils are antimicrobial, so taking them orally could affect gut bacteria and the digestive tract, which for some people can cause irritation in the esophagus and stomach,” Davila says.

In a review and meta-analysis, researchers examined 12 studies on the efficacy of using essential oils for various types of pain in general, including chronic, acute, and postoperative discomfort. While researchers found a significant positive effect of aromatherapy in reducing pain across all studies, and with no adverse effects, they concluded that because there’s no uniform measure of the types of pain, and because the sample sizes were small, more research is needed to fully understand clinical applications of essential oils with regard to pain management.