Adding Essential Oils to Your Skin Care Routine

Essential oils are good thing to have in your medicine cabinet if you like to make your own personal care product. If you are not sensitive to most substances you may want to consider adding essential oils to your beauty care routines. Most good quality essential oil really isn't sticky or oily at all . They are liquid substances that have been extracted from flowers, herbs plants, barks, and fruits.

Essential oils have substances that are known to have helpful attributes like being anti bacterial and ant-inflammatory. Some just improve circulation which will improve the color and fresh appearance of your skin.

Oils that help balance the moisture content of your skin are rosemary, lavender, geranium and cedar wood. Most of us have combination skin so oils that help balance the natural oil in our skin are generally helpful. Those who have very oily skin may want to bergamot or lemon oil ;as they are antibacterial on oily skin without drying it out. Light weight oils can be used to moisturize acne prone skin . These lighter oils are almond and evening primrose oil. If you have active acne you need to help heal you may want to try tea tree or peppermint oil.

I add peppermint oil to Lubriderm in the summer to help heal bug bites and other out door related cuts and scrapes when I moisture after bathing. Jojoba oil is good for dry skin and dry hair. Tea tree oil is good in most homemade beauty treatments, if used sparingly. It has good anti fungal and healing properties, but it can be irritating if not diluted.

When buying essential oils avoid oils made for aroma therapy. These oils may be synthetic oil created to smell like certain natural oil. Also, look to buy cosmetic grade oils as these are the only oils you should use on your skin and hair. If you are worried about chemical contamination of the oil you should look for oil extracts that have been certified organic. This means that the substance the oil was extracted from was grown not using made fertilizer or pest control.

All essential oils need to be diluted prior to use. It is really a trial and error process when you are doing your own concoctions in the kitchen. Look online for tried and true recipes for making the beauty product you are trying to create to get an idea of how much you need to dilute the oil. Generally the more sensitive your skin is the more you will want to dilute the oil. If you have a reaction to certain oil I would just avoid using it , and not try to dilute it more. Which brings us to the last point that all doing theory own beauty products need to abide by, test your concoction on an inconspicuous spot on your skin to make sure you do not have an adverse reaction to it. If you do, take some bindery and thaw out you concoction. It is also a good idea to only create a small amount of any mixture to test out , so you are not wasting expensive extracts.

You can order cosmetic grade oils online. Be sure to store your oils and any beauty products you make in dark colored bottles in a cool place to avoid changing the chemical makeup of the oil. I would not make more than a few days worth of anything that you can not get accurate information about self life on. If a mixture does not smell or look like you think it should after storing it , just throw it out and chalk it up to experience.

Natural extracts may be a good alternative for folks who are sensitive to beauty products that are highly processed. They may also be substances that irritate your skin. It is really not about how highly processed a product is as it is about your skin's natural negative sensitivity to that product. If you are like most folks , homemade products will not break you or cause hives. Essential oils that are right for your skin type can be a great way to improve the effectiveness of homemade beauty products.

http://www.energeticessentials.com/introWikimedia

http://www.naturesgift.com/essentialoil-skincare.htm

http://www.completeskincaretherapy.blogspot.com/2009/03/essential-oils-and-skin-care.html