Fine Oils To Make Your Hair Grow Faster

Therapeutic grade essential oils hold the promise for a great many people of stimulating the growth of bountiful healthy hair. Whether one is regrowing hair after hair loss, preventing the loss of hair, or just looking to make their hair more beautiful and lustrous than ever, essential oils and the carrier oils that comprise therapeutic aromatherapy formulas are very much worth investigating. We’ll first look at how and why you “build” your recipe, and conclude with a couple excellent formulations.

So What Essential Oils Have The Greatest Potential To Stimulate Hair Growth?

Many essential oils have found a place in today’s ultra-high end skin and hair products, often listed as “botanical extracts”. The active essential oils will generally fall into one of these categories: Stimulating, which enhance the “throughput” of the follicles — increasing their metabolic rate, and thus hair growth. Then there’s Nutrient Providing: several essential oils have a deep reddish or orange color, indicating a high concentration of growth promoting vitamins and vitamin-like compounds. Finally, the all-important Balancing oils create the optimum environment for the healthiest skin, follicles and hair, potentially moving out-of-balance conditions (over-oily, over-dry, or even hormone-deficient) to healthier states.

Choosing Essential Oils for Scalp Stimulation

We call them “stimulating” essential oils because they manage to signal the cells in the dermis to increase their metabolism. This means the follicles may become more active at growing new hair. This is the result of these specific oils containing natural “ketones”, chemicals with a “growth stimulating” type of signal. Rosemary Verbenone (a very specific type of Rosemary essential oil) and “Common” or “Dalmatian” Sage are the two most commonly used oils for stimulating hair growth. Of all the oils discussed here, Sage is the one that must be used by a limited population: it should not be used by pregnant or nursing mothers. Use at one percent or less in your total formula (these concentrations will be explained later with the recipes).

Getting Some Vitamins to the Hair Follicles

There are certain vitamins and vitamin-like compounds known to stimulate hair growth. Like the pharmaceutical preparation “Retin A” contains something similar to vitamin A (and does stimulate hair growth for some men), Carrot and Sea Buckthorn essential oils contain similar compounds. These are actually found as CO2 extracts, found in the same category as essential oils in stores. These oils are often used between 1 and 2 percent concentrations.

A Few Oils for Maximum Overall Health

Many, many people have either over-dry or over-oily scalp conditions which wreak havoc on hair growth. Balance is what’s needed here, and here’s the oils to do it. Lavender is the most widely used “balancing” oil, that has a wealth of therapeutic effects. If you do not have an outstanding skin condition that really needs clearing up, add a little Lavender to your blend — it is thought to really tie all the components together to help them work most effectively. If you’ve got an over-oily condition, a little Myrtle essential oil is thought to do the trick. It’s cleansing and balancing at the same time, restoring sebaceous output to proper levels. Finally, for mature women, be sure to use a little Clary Sage, thought to restore cellular estrogen levels to their optimum for the most beautiful skin and hair.

Your Formulation’s Foundation: The “Carrier” Oils

Once you’re essential oils are selected, you can create your own oil treatment formula by adding them to one or more carrier oils. The most popular carrier oils for hair care are: Jojoba, primarily used for moisturizing and giving hair a wonderful luster. Virgin coconut, while needing to be gently melted first to blend with other carriers, is fast becoming one of the most highly-praised therapeutic carrier oils. It is thought to have a very positive effect on hair loss all by itself, and like jojoba, will also result in wonderful hair texture. Evening Primrose is a very important carrier, offering essential fatty acids that we may easily be deficient in. This is best used by mature women, and also where the scalp is generally irritated. Hemp may also be used here. Finally, another very therapeutic carrier oil is Rosehip seed. It, like the nutritive essential oils, has vitamin-like compounds in it that have been shown in studies to promote youthful skin development. While it has not been as extensively researched for hair growth, there’s no reason to think it shouldn’t have as profound an effect on the scalp and follicles.

Getting Down To Business: Mixing Your Hair Growth Elixir!

Sometimes people are a little intimidated by mixing their own essential oil formula, but it’s really much easier than even baking cookies. Let’s describe how to make 1 ounce of hair stimulating blend, and then you can easily multiply the values to make larger amounts. This is best done in a 1 ounce empty dropper bottle, but again, you can start with a larger one if you like. To make the base, fill the bottle most of the way with your carriers. If you’re using using more than one carrier, estimating equal parts of each is fine. Make sure you leave a little room at the top for the essential oils! So, for each 1% of an essential oil, just add 8 drops of that oil to your bottle. Using 1% Rosemary? Add 8 drops. 2% Lavender, 16 drops. 1/2% Sage? 4 drops. To Make 2 ounces of final blend, just double these numbers — to make 4 ounces, multiply them by 4, and so on.

Great Recipes to Get You Started

Here’s two great recipes. For men, to make 4 ounces (which should last 2 to 4 months): To a base of equal parts Rosehip Seed, Hempseed and Coconut oils, add 32 drops Sage (Dalmatian or Common), 64 drops Carrot Root (also called Helio-Carrot), and 32 drops Lavender. For women, to the same base, add 32 drops Rosemary Verbenone, 64 drops Sea Buckthorn, 32 drops Lavender, and 32 drops Myrtle. Feel free to adjust as you see fit — using your intuition is an excellent means of customizing your recipe.

Now you can lightly swirl or invert your mixture until you feel it’s blended. Don’t shake it if you can avoid it, as it’s not such a good idea to introduce air into your oils too much (it can shorten the shelf life — which, by the way, should be about six months if kept in a cool, dark spot). The most effective oil treatment program is to first shampoo your hair, or at least moisten your scalp with warm water. This opens the pores and increases absorption of the oils. Then using an eye-dropper, distribute 1 to 2 droppers-full around your scalp and massage the oil in. Wrapping your head in a warm moist towel for the next 20 minutes to an hour can maximize absorption, and/or you can sleep with it on your scalp. And there you have it! A simple, effective means of supporting hair growth with the therapeutic potentials of essential oils.

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