Need that added bit of nature’s essence to boost your post-salon makeover? Then you need to look no further. Essential oils are the go-to product to boost your hair’s natural growth and give it that regenerative glow-up. And the best part? If you mix and match them, you’ll get even better results!
Let’s walk through the nature of essential oils, the science behind their beneficial hair growth properties, and the best methods to use them together.
Table of Contents:
- Essential Oils – What Are They Exactly?
- Essential Oils for Hair Growth
- Peppermint Essential Oil
- Bergamot Essentual Oil
- Tea Tree Essential Oil
- Rosemary Essential Oil
- How to Use and Mix Essential Oils
Essential Oils – What Are They Exactly?
Simply put, essential oils are highly concentrated liquids that contain chemical compounds from plants. They are called “essential” because they are considered to contain the “essence” of the plant, not because they are necessary for our health, as in “essential amino acids”, for example.
Most of the time, they are extracted using steam, through a process called distillation, but there are other extraction processes too – such as expression, cold pressing, wax embedding, absolute oil extraction, sfumatura, and so on. The most common and popular essential oils obtained through distillation are lavender, eucalyptus, tea tree, peppermint, and patchouli oils.
The distillation process is actually quite simple – at first, the plant material (the flowers, roots, seeds, or leaves) is put into a distillation machine over heated water. Then, the steam produced by the hot water goes through the raw plant material. This vaporizes the volatile compounds, which are turned back into liquid form in a separate vessel. And voila! That’s how you get a distilled essential oil.
Essential oils are most often used in the health&beauty industry, more precisely in cosmetics, soaps, perfumes, and other body and skincare products. However, they can also be used for flavoring food, as well as for adding scents to cleaning products.
They have been largely popularized by aromatherapy, which is the practice of using essential oils, in various ways, for therapeutic benefits.
Essential Oils for Hair Growth
Now that we’re familiar with the full extent of the essential oil industry, let’s focus on one of their most attractive benefits – fighting hair loss, promoting hair growth and hair restoration!
Here are the four main types of essential oils (and the carrier oils you can use to dilute them) that can prove a tremendous help in giving your hair all the nutrients that it needs for healthy hair growth:
Peppermint Essential Oil
Peppermint oil helps primarily with itchiness, dryness, hair loss and other similar scalp problems, due to its antimicrobial, anesthetic, analgesic, vasodilating, and anti-inflammatory properties.
It can also reduce hair loss and help with balanced hair growth because it improves circulation to the scalp. This may be due to the menthol that it contains, which is a vasodilator, meaning that it improves blood flow. As mentioned above, the same menthol compound can also help soothe itching and other scalp irritations which might be stunting consistent hair growth.
Bergamot Essentual Oil
Bergamot essential oil has certain properties that can improve hair growth, although there are not as many human studies to back this theory up, as is the case with other essential oils.
That being said, its antimicrobial nature helps scalp health, in turn contributing to growing healthy and thick hair. It also has anti-inflammatory properties and can speed up the healing process of various scalp problems. Combined, these properties contribute to a longer hair growth phase and stronger hair strands in the long run.
Tea Tree Essential Oil
Using many hair products, especially for styling, can cause a lot of buildup on your scalp. In turn, this might harm your hair by stripping it of its oils and nutrients.
Tea tree essential oil can help solve this problem by preventing buildup, keeping the hair moisturized and therefore promoting scalp health and healthy hair growth. Furthermore, tea tree oil can prove incredibly helpful in combatting dandruff, thanks to its antibacterial and antifungal benefits.
Rosemary Essential Oil
Providing a similar effect to that of peppermint oil, rosemary essential oil also improves scalp circulation and has anti-inflammatory properties. Not only that, but it also promotes nerve growth. At the end of the day, these benefits contribute to hair growth and overall hair strand healthiness.
How to Use and Mix Essential Oils
Essential oils are highly concentrated, therefore even just a few drops, diluter in a carrier oil, can be enough for proper hair treatment. Here are a couple of methods to get the most out of the best essential oils for hair and scalp:
Invest in organic hair oil products
First off, you should never apply essential oils on your skin or scalp undiluted, so make sure to dilute them properly in a carrier oil – such as coconut oil, olive, jojoba, or castor oil, to name a few – before applying them topically. You can also, of course, dilute them in your favorite hair oil.
Cold-pressed and fully organic, WOW’s onion-black seed oil mix is highly beneficial for your hair on your own, and even more so when in combination with the above-mentioned essential oils, given that it serves to soothe, promote hair growth, hydrate, and seal in the moisturizing nutrients that your hair needs.
To start, dip your fingertips into the mixture and massage it into your scalp using circular motions. By boosting circulation, this scalp massage will help promote hair growth. If you want to, you can leave it on your scalp for a while, as a lot of people use this treatment as a leave-in overnight hair treatment, to ensure the best results.
A Few Drops Can Make All the Difference
Now that we’ve delved deep into the colorful and beautifully scented world of essential oils, I bet you’re thinking “Huh, who knew science could be this fun?”
And you’re not wrong. When the key to healthy hair and boosted hair growth is just mixing 10 or more drops of essential oils into your shampoo, conditioner, carrier oil or even by going the DIY route, what’s not to enjoy?
Truthfully, you can get really creative when it comes to using essential oils, and that’s where the beauty, fun, and excitement actually start. Go mix them up and enjoy your hair’s glow up!
Explore the WOW website for more natural hair care products. From our all natural sulfate, silicone and paraben-free collection we recommend Apple Cider Vinegar Shampoo and Red Onion Black Seed Oil Shampoo. And if you would like to learn more about apple cider vinegar's benefits or onion oil's benefits check out our ultimate guide on how to use them on your hair.
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