8 Benefits and Uses of Rosemary Essential Oil: Rosmarinus officinalis, or rosemary, is an evergreen plant with needle-like leaves that smells like wood. t is one of the most famous aromatic and healing plants in the world, even though it is best known as a food seasoning.
It is possible to get rosemary essential oil, which is the plant’s essence, and sell it in small bottles. Even though it’s called oil, it’s not really oil because it doesn’t have any fat in it (1, 3).
Sage oil has been used for a long time in traditional medicine, and now many scientists are looking into its possible health benefits. Most of this study is still in its early stages, but it confirms some old uses of the oil and shows how it might be used in new ways.
8 Benefits and Uses of Rosemary Essential Oil
1. May Improve Brain Function
- Acetylcholine is a chemical in the brain that helps you think, focus, and remember things. Inhaling rosemary oil stops it from breaking down.
- Twenty young people were asked to do math problems in a small room that was filled with rosemary oil. Their speed and accuracy got better as the oil was spread for longer periods of time.
- Additionally, the amount of certain chemicals in their blood rose, showing that rosemary can enter your body just by taking it in.
- Similarly, nursing students who breathed in rosemary oil while taking a test said they were able to focus and remember things better than those who breathed in lavender oil or no essential oil at all.
- Other study shows that taking in rosemary and other essential oils may help older people with dementia, such as Alzheimer’s disease patients, keep their minds sharp.
- Remember that we need to do more study.
Important Note: Breathing rosemary oil may help you focus and remember information. It may also aid your memory as you age, but more research is needed.
2. Stimulates Hair Growth
- Androgenetic alopecia, also known as male pattern baldness, is one of the most common kinds of hair loss. However, women can also get it.
- One way rosemary oil helps with androgenetic alopecia is by stopping a substance made from testosterone from damaging your hair cells.
- Men with androgenetic alopecia who massaged diluted rosemary oil into their head twice a day for six months saw the same increase in hair thickness as those who used minoxidil (Rogaine), a popular drug used to help hair grow back.
- Also, people who used rosemary oil said their scalps itched less than people who used minoxidil. This suggests that rosemary may be easier to handle.
- Another study suggests that rosemary oil might help with alopecia areata, a type of hair loss that affects up to half of people under 21 and about 20% of people over 40.
- People with alopecia areata who rubbed a blend of rosemary essential oils into their head every day for seven months saw a 44% drop in hair loss. Only 15% of those in the control group, who used jojoba and grapeseed oils, saw change.
Important Note: Rosemary oil may combat certain types of hair loss, including male pattern baldness and patchy hair loss.
3. May Help Relieve Pain
- In traditional medicine, rosemary is used to ease mild pain.
- A two-week study found that stroke survivors with shoulder pain who got a mix of rosemary oil and massage for 20 minutes twice a day felt 30% less pain. The pain was 15% less in people who only got massage.
- A study on animals also found that rosemary oil helped with pain a little more than acetaminophen, which is a popular over-the-counter painkiller.
Important Note: Rosemary oil is known in folk medicine as a pain reliever. Preliminary studies support its pain relief benefits and suggest that it may be more effective than acetaminophen.
4. Repels Certain Bugs
- If you want to keep bugs from biting you or getting into your yard, rosemary oil is a natural option to using chemicals.
- EcoTrol, a pesticide made from rosemary oil, was put on tomato plants in a garden. It killed 52% of the two-spotted spider mites that were there without hurting the plants.
- Rosemary can also keep away some bloodsucking bugs that can spread viruses and bacteria.
- It was tested against 11 other essential oils and was the only one that kept Aedes aegypti mosquitoes away for the longest time. These mosquitoes are known to spread the Zika virus. Mosquitoes were scared away for 90 minutes by a mixture of 12.5% rosemary oil.
- Also, a spray with 10% rosemary oil worked just as well as the chemical poison bifenthrin at stopping the spread of Lyme disease-carrying black-legged ticks in tick-infested parts of the northeastern US.
Summary: Rosemary oil is used in natural pesticides to kill certain insects. Additionally, the
oil helps repel some blood-sucking insects, such as particular mosquitoes and ticks.
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5. May Eases Stress
- Stress can be caused by many things, including tests at school. Inhaling rosemary oil might help you calm down before a test.
- Before and during the test, nursing students who used an inhaler to take in rosemary oil had a 9% drop in their heart rate. Without the rosemary oil, there was no significant change.
- Since faster heart rates are a sign of short-term stress and worry, rosemary oil may naturally lower stress.
- Also, 22 young people who sniffed rosemary oil for 5 minutes had 23% less of the stress hormone cortisol in their saliva than those who sniffed a non-aromatic molecule.
- Among other things, high amounts of cortisol can weaken your immune system, make it harder to sleep, and cause mood swings (23).
Summary: Simply smelling rosemary oil may ease your stress levels in situations like exam
taking. Rosemary may reduce levels of cortisol, a hormone that can have harmful effects on your body.
6. May Increase Circulation
- People often complain about having bad circulation. It might hurt your hands and feet the most.
- Using rosemary oil might help if your fingers and toes get cold even when it’s not too cold outside.
- One study looked at a woman with Raynaud’s disease, a disease that makes circulation worse. She rubbed her hands with a mix of rosemary oils and found that it helped warm her fingers more than a neutral oil. Thermal imaging showed that these impacts were real.
- If you have Raynaud’s disease, your fingers and toes lose their color and feel cold when you’re cold or worried. This is because the blood vessels in them narrow.
- Rosemary oil might help because it widens your blood vessels. This warms your blood and makes it easier for it to get to your toes and fingers.
- More study is needed to be sure of these benefits, but a low-cost experiment with rosemary might be worth it.
Summary: If you experience cold fingers or toes, massaging with rosemary oil may help warm
them. It may aid conditions like Raynaud’s disease, but more research is needed.
7. May Help Perk You Up
- In folk medicine, rosemary oil is often used to treat emotional stress and tiredness.
- Twenty healthy young people who breathed in rosemary oil said they felt about 30% more alert and 25% less sleepy than when they breathed in a fake oil.
- Changes in brain waves and higher heart rate, breathing, and blood pressure matched this rise in awareness.
- Since rosemary oil can reach your brain this way, putting diluted rosemary oil on your skin may have the same effects.
- One study found that after 20 minutes of putting diluted rosemary oil on their skin, 35 healthy people felt much more alert, happy, and focused than when they used a fake oil.
- Still, more research in this area is needed to confirm these results.
Summary: A few small studies suggest that rosemary oil may boost attention, alertness, energy
and mood. Yet, more research is warranted.
8. May Reduce Joint Inflammation
- There is some early evidence that rosemary oil may help lower muscle inflammation, which can cause pain, stiffness, and swelling.
- This might be done by stopping white blood cells from going to hurt areas and releasing chemicals that cause inflammation.
- People with rheumatoid arthritis who got 15-minute knee rubs three times a week using a mix of rosemary oil had 50% less inflammatory knee pain in two weeks than those who didn’t get the oil.
- When you have rheumatoid arthritis, your body’s immune system attacks tissues, like knees and other joints, hurting the lining of the joint and making it swell.
- More study needs to be done on how rosemary affects inflammation.
I have made rosemary oul for many years it really pays off with brain function
Hello Chevette
Can you tell us the ingredients and process, it will be very helpful for us.
I love rosemary oil! I use dōTERRA as I know it’s PURE oil and doesn’t have any fillers and has been distilled properly for medicinal use! Thank you for putting this info out there for people like me who love all things oil! 🙂