David Murray
Mar 19, 20203 min
Tell me if this sounds familiar. You wash your hands frequently, use hand sanitizer and take preventive health care measures all winter long, but one day you wake up with a sore throat. You can feel pressure building in your sinuses, and you know it’s happening again.
Sometimes there’s no avoiding the common cold or flu. There is, however, a way to get relief while you’re fighting it out. Lavender can be a huge help in easing cold and flu symptoms. Here are five ways lavender may help you get through cold and flu season, and how to use lavender essential oil to unlock the health benefits.
1) Sleep Better With Lavender
Sick people really need their sleep. Sometimes we underestimate the power of a good night’s rest for helping us get and stay healthy.
But here’s the problem. When you’re completely congested, coughing every few minutes and generally feeling miserable, falling asleep isn’t the easiest thing to do.
Unless you have lavender.
Studies have shown lavender essential oil can help you relax and enter into a calming, deep sleep. That’s the first step in helping your body heal from a cold or the flu.
2) Soothe Your Achy Muscles While Fighting the Flu
No one likes that achy flu feeling, and even colds can leave your muscles feeling tense or stressed.
When you feel this way, an aromatic muscle rubmay help. The soothing essential oils relax the muscles to ease some of the pain.
3) Ease Sinus and Chest Congestion
One of the worst parts about being sick is the feeling that you can’t breathe. But essential oils like lavender can clear up some of that congestion.
Try surrounding yourself with the scent of lavender with a body mist, essential oil diffuser or steamy bath as described below. Restore that feeling of breathing deeply.
4) Relieve Headaches Caused by Your Cold
Growing evidence suggests lavender may relieve headaches.
Considering lavender can help you sleep and breathe better, it makes sense that it could decrease headache pain. It’s worth trying to see if it helps you, combined with all the other cold and flu relief benefits of lavender.
5) Lower Your Stress with Lavender
We could all use a little stress relief, especially when dealing with cold and flu symptoms.
Stress itself takes a toll on your body, causing aches, pain and nausea. It can even increase your frequency of catching colds, so stress certainly doesn’t help your body heal. When you’re trying to get healthy, you want to eliminate stress more than ever.
In addition to reducing or avoiding whatever might be stressing you out, you can also turn to lavender for help. The soothing elements of lavender are known to lower stress levels.
Can Essential Oils Like Lavender Help With COVID-19 Symptoms?
With all the COVID-19 scare and education still unfolding, we are in no way saying lavender will help cure or prevent this dangerous virus. What we are saying is that lavender has so many proven health benefits that using lavender may, indeed, be helpful. Please refer to the CDC website to see their recommendations for preventing illness and what to do if you are sick with COVID-19.
How to Use Lavender to Reduce Cold and Flu Symptoms
So how do you use lavender to treat your cold or flu symptoms?
Pure lavender essential oil offers one of the quickest ways to get relief. Here are four ways to use it:
· Add a few drops of lavender essential oil to a steamy hot bath, hop in and inhale deeply. The steam of the bath will help fill the room with the powerful lavender aroma so you can start feeling better.
· Don’t want to take a bath? Add two cups of water and a few drops of lavender essential oil to a saucepan and bring it to a boil on the stovetop. Carefully inhale the steam from a safe distance of about a foot.
· Use an essential oil diffuser to disperse lavender oil throughout your home.
· Go straight to the source. Take a sniff from your bottle of lavender essential oil, being careful not to let the oil touch your skin. Undiluted oil can irritate your skin. But the potent scent can be a big relief.
Use lavender essential oil with a relaxing muscle rub and lavender mist room spray to surround yourself with the healing power of lavender. Grab a cup of tea, wrap up in a cozy blanket and feel better soon!