As the temperatures drop this winter, you can keep yourself warm from the inside out by improving your circulation.
Healthy blood circulation is essential for distributing core warmth to extremities. It ensures that your body distributes heat efficiently, keeping extremities like hands and feet warm even during the coldest days.
The body regulates temperature by constricting blood vessels in the cold to conserve heat and dilating them in the heat to release heat. which ensures a stable internal temperature is maintained.
As the temperatures plummet, blood vessels narrow to preserve heat. This can slow circulation to your extremities—like your fingers, toes, ears, and nose—which are often the first parts of your body to react to the cold.
To enhance your body’s ability to stay warm, consider essential oils to boost circulation.
How Healthy Circulation Boosts Warmth
Blood circulation plays a crucial role in regulating your body temperature. Your blood vessels act as highways for heat distribution.
When your circulation is strong:
- Heat reaches every part of your body. Blood carries warmth from your core to your extremities, such as your nose, ears, fingers, and toes.
- Tissues stay oxygenated. Oxygen-rich blood keeps your tissues, muscles, and skin functioning optimally, which helps the body generate heat efficiently.
- You feel less cold. Good circulation minimizes the temperature gap between your core and extremities, reducing that icy feeling in your hands and feet.
Poor circulation, on the other hand, can leave certain areas of your body feeling cold, even in temperate climates. If you typically need to wear socks to bed, maintaining healthy circulation could help you stay warm this winter and all year long!
How Essential Oils Support Circulation and Warmth
Winter doesn’t have to leave you shivering.
Essential oils are a natural and effective way to enhance your blood circulation, helping you stay comfortably warm this winter.
Essential oils help you support circulation by:
- Stimulate Blood Flow: Essential oils boost blood flow primarily by promoting vasodilation—the widening of blood vessels—which reduces tension in vessel walls and improves circulation. This helps more blood circulate through them, thereby improving circulation. Essential oils can also help constrict the veins, stimulating blood flow. Essential oils may also help reduce triglycerides that can form and restrict blood flow.
- Reduce Inflammation in Blood Vessels: Research has found that “Essential oils extracted from herbs can reduce inflammation by regulating the release of inflammatory cytokines involved in multiple signaling pathways” to help reduce swelling and inflammation in blood vessels, thereby improving blood flow
- Antioxidant Effects: Compounds in essential oils, such as those in Basil and Thyme, protect blood vessels by reducing malondialdehyde levels and combating oxidative stress that leads to vessel damage.
- Improved Circulation (Vasodilation): Compounds in essential oils, such as menthol in peppermint, widen blood vessels, increasing oxygenated blood flow throughout the body and creating a warming effect that promotes better blood flow, reduces blood pooling, and alleviates pain and swelling.
- Warming Properties: Oils like Ginger and Rosemary are known for increasing blood flow to the skin and underlying tissues.
- Lymphatic Drainage: Essential oils like cypress are effective at reducing venous congestion and promoting better lymphatic and blood circulation.
Essential Oils for Circulation
Essential oils are warming in nature, which helps them enhance blood flow and improve circulation by relaxing and supporting the health of the blood vessels. Natural compounds, such as essential oils, possess unique chemical constituents that confer therapeutic properties.
Plant compounds, including the highly concentrated essence of plants found in essential oils, have been shown to help the veins contract, stimulating blood flow and enhancing “microcirculation,” which is the flow of blood through the body’s smallest vessels. They may also help relax the smooth muscles lining blood vessels, thereby improving circulation and increasing warmth.
Sesquiterpenes are a subclass of the large terpene chemical family that is abundant in essential oils derived from plants, including black pepper, frankincense, ginger, myrrh, patchouli, sandalwood, spikenard, and vetiver. Essential oils high in sesquiterpenes have been shown to enhance blood flow. Sesquiterpenes are carbon chains that do not contain oxygen molecules but appear to absorb oxygen. This may be one reason why essential oils high in sesquiterpenes increase oxygen levels in the body and extremities when inhaled or applied topically.
The Role of the Nervous System in Warmth
When external temperatures drop, your nervous system detects the change through sensory receptors in your skin. It then signals the blood vessels near your skin, initiating vasoconstriction—the narrowing of blood vessels. This reduces blood flow to the skin, minimizing heat loss and preserving warmth for critical internal organs.
Simultaneously, your nervous system signals muscles to trigger shivering, an involuntary contraction that generates heat. This mechanism, combined with vasoconstriction, helps maintain your core temperature. When you move to a warmer environment, your nervous system detects the increase in temperature. It triggers vasodilation, which widens blood vessels and allows excess heat to be released through the skin.
Parasympathetic®
Activating your parasympathetic nervous system helps to induce vasodilation. Topically applying the Parasympathetic blend of clove and lime essential oils behind the earlobe and on the mastoid bone helps activate your parasympathetic nervous system.
What’s more, Eugenol, a bioactive compound found in clove oil, has demonstrated significant effects on cardiomyocytes – the specialized muscle cells of the heart responsible for contracting and enabling the heart to pump blood throughout the body. Studies indicate that eugenol exerts protective effects on these cells by reducing oxidative stress and inflammation, which are detrimental to cardiomyocyte health and function. Additionally, research on “Cardiovascular Effects of Eugenol, A Phenolic Compound Present in Many Plant Essential Oils” suggests that eugenol stabilizes cellular membranes and enhances the function of ion channels, which are critical for maintaining proper cardiac rhythm and function. By mitigating these stressors and stabilizing cellular mechanisms, eugenol helps preserve cardiomyocyte integrity and function, thereby contributing to overall heart health and reducing the risk of cardiovascular diseases.
Circulation™
Circulation™ is formulated to support healthy circulation, delivering oxygen and nutrient-rich blood to the body and brain while simultaneously carrying toxins and waste to the kidneys and liver for elimination. The Circulation™ blend contains a proprietary formulation of organic and/or wild-crafted essential oils that work synergistically to support healthy circulation and blood flow to the body and the brain. For example:
Black Pepper (Piper nigrum) helps to warm the body and stimulates circulation, increasing blood flow to your digestive system. This helps boost nutrient absorption so much that it is often added to supplement formulations to enhance their effectiveness.
Black pepper and its active compound, piperine, have been found to stimulate blood flow by dilating blood vessels and improving overall circulation. Enhanced blood flow delivers oxygen and nutrients to tissues more efficiently, thus reducing inflammation and promoting healing. Piperine also possesses anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties to protect blood vessels from oxidative stress and inflammation. Black Pepper also contains high levels of limonene, a terpene thought to stimulate circulation and increase warmth.
Cypress essential oil may help improve circulation and relax blood vessels, making it easier to stimulate blood flow. Cypress essential oil is also high in the compound α-pinene and has been shown in research to exhibit anti-inflammatory activity, which helps with blood flow. Finally, Cypress essential oil has a diuretic and detoxifying action, helping flush toxins from the body and promoting better blood flow and circulation.
Ginger root (Zingiber officinale) helps warm the skin and blood vessels when applied topically, promoting circulation. It also helps flush toxins and reduce inflammation of blood vessels, improving blood flow throughout the body. Ginger may also help calm inflammation that interferes with healthy circulation. The beneficial effects of ginger polyphenols have been extensively reported in research such as “Assessing the Effects of Ginger Extract on Polyphenol Profiles.” The anti-inflammatory effects of ginger are often attributed to secondary metabolites, like essential oils and gingerols.
Peppermint™ (Mentha piperita) is a stimulatory essential oil that can act as a vasodilator. This simply means it can help dilate your blood vessels to improve blood flow, stimulate the mind, alleviate pain, and boost energy. One reason for poor circulation is narrow or constricted blood vessels. When vessels are too narrow, there is less space for blood to flow easily. Peppermint™ essential oil can help expand the space within blood vessels. Widening or expanding your blood vessels allows more blood to flow through them.
Nutmeg (Myristica fragrans) helps improve circulation and supports cardiovascular and respiratory health. Nutmeg essential oil acts as a stimulant, increasing blood circulation and relaxing blood vessels. This may help thin the blood and reduce pressure on the arteries and veins.
Nutmeg essential oil is rich in anti-inflammatory compounds, such as Eugenol, Sabinene, and A-pinene, which may help ease pain and swelling.
Apply 2-3 drops of Circulation™ on the sides or back of the neck, over the left clavicle, on the wrists or ankles to support energy, brain endurance, and warmth of the distal extremities, like the fingers and toes.
You can also add 2-3 drops of Circulation™ to a warm Epsom salt bath to help relax muscles and promote better blood flow.
Featured Oils:
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References:
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7735857/
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21656368/
- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/8925226
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35474407/
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33086593/
