Essential Oils for Sleep Author: Purple Staff Share Tweet Share

If you can’t get rid of a headache, worry a lot, or always wake up feeling drowsy, science thinks this: You may not have sniffed enough lavender lately. Lavender, lemon verbena and sandalwood are age-old folk remedies. Now, medical researchers are discovering the chemistry behind why certain smells can: ease pain

reduce anxiety

improve sleep Join us on a tour of recent discoveries—think of it as a sweet-smelling science fair … not like the one at your middle school that smelled like acne cream. Lavender Essential Oils Proven to Improve Sleep Let’s begin on the bucolic campus of a U.S. college. Researchers there identified 79 college students who were having trouble sleeping, probably via late-night stakeouts of dorm vending machines. They trained the students about good sleep hygiene—going to bed on time, avoiding coffee after 4 pm, getting your roommate to wear headphones when they listen to Migos, all that stuff.

All the students got an inhalation patch to put on their chest while they slept. One patch contained 55 microliters of lavender essential oil. The other group’s patch was empty. The students wore a Fitbit tracker and recorded their sleep experience in a diary. All of the students slept a little bit better. But the group with the lavender chest patches showed the most improvement. The most notable improvement was in waking up feeling refreshed. (At what time they woke up, the study didn’t say.) Lemon Verbena Essential Oils for Insomnia Now we fly across the world to Iran, with a tradition of medical research stretching back at least 1,000 years. Researchers there already knew of the traditional use of lemon verbena to sedate patients and treat insomnia. They conducted a four-week trial to see if 21st-century humans could benefit.

In their randomized, double-blind trial—”random” and “blind” are both good things in this context—insomnia patients swallowed a syrup before bed every day for four weeks. One group of patients got a syrup infused with lemon verbena essential oil. The other group got a placebo. The lemon verbena group started sleeping better after just two weeks and after four weeks showed even more shut-eye success. The researchers’ conclusion: Yep, lemon verbena is a legit insomnia treatment. Studies have also shown that lavender also improves sleep for people with insomnia. Aromasticks With Essential Oils for Sleep Now to the United Kingdom. There, researchers were trying to improve sleep for folks who really, really need it—cancer patients. For people suffering from a chronic disease, good sleep is a critical path to healing. A cancer center in the U.K. began experimenting with blended essential oil aromasticks for patients. Blend 1: Bergamot and sandalwood. Blend 2: Frankincense, mandarin, and lavender.