I have been noticing that Health Hacks have become all the rage!  Everything from specific diets to supplements, and even coffee claim their superior health hacking ability. While I am all for eating clean and love my coffee when my body can tolerate it, I personally believe that essential oils offer the ultimate health hack. Join me as I explain how Essential Oils work.

How Essential Oils Work

Essential plant oils are uniquely suited as health hacks as they can literally hack your system, accessing your body through your skin and your olfactory system – Kind of an accessible back door when the front door of your digestive system is impaired and not able to optimally assimilate and absorb healing nutrients.

This is not just any back door, but one that, in many ways, can access your body in a more powerful way than your digestive track.

You see, your sense of smell (part of your olfactory system), is one of the most powerful channels into the body.  The sense of smell is uniquely able to directly access the limbic system, an area of your brain where you store emotions and long term memory.  This direct access is the easiest way for you to release fear and anger based thought patterns that keep your body locked into a stressed state.

And you won’t believe how quickly it works!  The entire process from the initial inhalation of an essential oil to a corresponding response in the body can happen in a matter of seconds.

Similarly, your skin, which is your largest organ, is relatively permeable to fat soluble substances, like essential oils.  The molecules of essential oils are so small that they are able to pass through your skin, into the capillaries and quickly absorb into your bloodstream.  From there, they can disperse to your specific organs.  One study found that the constituents of topically applied lavender oil were measurable in the blood within 20 minutes, and they stayed in the blood system for up to 90 minutes.

Finally, because of the ease of administration, essential oils are ideal health hack for anyone with compromised digestion, who might be taking medications that contraindicate supplements,  who struggles to find natural alternatives that are vegan or gluten free  or children who struggle with supplements.

To learn more about my favorite essential oils health hack for digestion, click here.