Essential Oils and Sleep Quality

Some conditions, life stages, and the stress of modern lifestyles can all lead to poor sleep – in quantity and quality. While tolerable occasionally, a chronic lack of shut-eye can be damaging. It can result in psychological problems and physical ailments, including extreme fatigue, a weakened immune system, abnormal hormone production, high blood pressure, and neuroendocrine disorders.
 
These difficulties can negatively impact mood, quality of life and relationships, and work performance. In addition, a lack of sleep can impact how well you drive or operate machinery, potentially posing a danger to your and others’ health.
 
As a result, individuals with sleep disorders seek help to improve their sleep, often relying on pharmaceutical solutions. While these medications help in the short term, depending on drugs can also cause issues over the long term. Yet, what are the alternatives? Complementary approaches include meditation and breathing exercises, exercise and yoga, herbal formulations such as valerian and hops, and aromatherapy.
 
What Is Aromatherapy?
This age-old natural treatment option uses essential oils from pure plant extracts. The aromatic oils offer potential therapeutic benefits to support and promote enhanced physical, psychological, and emotional health. While considered an alternative approach, essential oils have been tested scientifically and now enjoy medical recognition and use.
 
The therapy works through skin absorption and inhalation, using topical lotions, creams, cold and hot compresses, steamers, diffusers, and inhalers. Close to one hundred types of essential oils are available. They can be used alone (each type of extract offering specific benefits) or as blends, with combinations providing synergies not offered by individual oils.
 
Why Aromatherapy?
Potential benefits include helping to boost immunity and fight viral and bacterial infections, manage pain, including headaches, relieve sore joints, and ease discomfort associated with chemotherapy and even labor. In addition, aromatherapy may assist in reducing stress and anxiety and improving sleep quality. As a result, essential oils may help treat arthritis, depression, cancer, insomnia, fatigue, and more.
 
How Does Aromatherapy Help Increase and Enhance Sleep?
The most used essential oil for helping improve sleep is lavender oil, alone or as a base. The linalool and linalyl acetate contained in the lavender act on the olfactory nerves, pituitary, and hypothalamus, triggering memories and emotions. Meanwhile, these components slow the heart rate and reduce blood pressure. In addition, they help increase parasympathetic and reduce sympathetic nerve activity, helping to relax the body and mind to encourage more and better rest.
 
What Are Essential Oils?
Essential oils are created using state-of-the-art extraction techniques and technologies to ensure oils are as concentrated as possible and free of impurities. Methods include steam distillation, solvent extraction, cold pressing, expression, total oil extraction, wax embedding, Sumatera (slow folding), and resin tapping. The result is an aromatic oil reflecting each botanical’s unique essence and advantages.
 
Beyond lavender for addressing sleep concerns, other essential oils for happier slumber include chamomile, marjoram, bergamot, sandalwood, and ylang-ylang oil. In contrast, stimulating and energizing oils such as peppermint, rosemary, lemon, grapefruit, and cypress may worsen your insomnia. So avoid using these later in the day.
 
The Higher the Quality, the More Profound the Benefit
With these concentrated or diluted oils applied therapeutically, insomnia-related aromatherapy product manufacturers and suppliers must source pure, natural, well-documented extracts, such as Advanced Biotech’s essential oils. Every batch of superior-quality oil we produce is formulated to provide precisely what the ingredients promise.
 
Sleep Tight and Sweet Dreams With Advanced Biotech
Beyond sleep-essential lavender, our range of safe, natural, and efficiently produced oils provides a wide choice of extracts for blends. Please contact us for more information.