Hey Men, Diffuse Already!

It’s time guys. Time to quit bellyaching about essential oils being mostly for your wife or your girlfriend.  Yes men, we too can benefit from the power of essential oils.  Cross your arms, grunt all you want, give me your best Clint Eastwood staredown, but enough is enough.

And what seems to be the least manly way to use essential oils… diffusing them.  It’s easy to swallow peppermint in water before a workout or rub some Deep Relief on your temple for a headache or shoulder for overworked muscles.  But using a diffuser?  We may as well start prancing around the living room in a pink tutu to Taylor Swift!

But the honest truth is that the best way to use certain essential oils is by inhaling them, and it’s simply not practical to sit there with your hands cupped in front of your nose for thirty minutes, breathing in a couple drops from your palms (although for a quickie, this works well).

How does it work?

As the scent from the essential oils reaches the smell receptors in the nose, it travels along the olfactory system to affect the limbic system in the brain, causing chemicals to be released, thus affecting the whole person. When inhaled, it only takes seconds for the essential oil to reach the lungs and brain, affecting your emotions, hormones, and body.

Inhaling essential oils can have a calming or stimulating effect, improve mental clarity, help clear congestion, and much more.  Diffusing essential oils also removes odors in the air (instead of just masking them), and can destroy airborne germs and bacteria.

So next time you go to use your essential oils, don’t be afraid to use the diffuser.  It’s actually pretty easy.  Usually, you just place a few drops of the oil in the diffuser along with some water, and ‘press play’.   Although, make sure you check out the instructions for your particular diffuser (or do what I did, I asked my wife).