In the world of therapeutic aromatherapy, there are three modalities of using essential oils: Topical application, ingestion and inhalation. Sometimes inhalation gets dismissed as not real medicine, but this just isn’t the case. Essential oils still get into your bloodstream if you inhale them (thereby helping oxygenate your blood, as many proponents will attest to) and providing a host of other therapeutic effects. But which diffuser is best? There are so many types available, in a wide range of prices. Which one is best really depends on your goal: to simply enjoy the aromatic pleasures of fine essential oils, or go all the way and get every last health-supportive effect you can from aromatherapy. We’ll look at them all here: warming, fan, nebulizing, and ultrasonic nebulizing.
The Data Is In: Science Is Concluding Essential Oils Have Many Health Benefits
Scientific investigation over the last several years has revealed a great many truly medicinal properties of essential oils. We’re finding out its not just about great smells, but that these great smells can affect us profoundly. Diffusing essential oils has been scientifically proven to lower physiological markers of stress and lessen anxiety. Other research indicates essential oils can have a very positive impact on our immune system function. Oils stimulate the immune system into action, improve its function, and actually de-activate infectious viruses and bacterial. All these benefits can be gained by using the right aromatherapy diffuser.
Choosing A Diffuser For Aromatic Applications
One of the wonderful aspects of essential oils is that by simply inhaling the aroma, significant changes occur in our body’s physiology. This is because the olfactory sense is the most closely tied of the five senses to your brain. A scent can change the way your body is functioning without you even thinking about it (one study notes over 100 changes to the patterns of RNA transcription from smelling Linalool, the primary relaxing component in Lavender). Smelling certain oils can lower stress, improve mood, calm children, and improve the quality of sleep. And for this type of therapy, ANY diffuser will do the job. The only consideration that really matters here is how large an area you’d like to diffuse the oil into — would you like to smell it from one end of the house to the other, or just in one room.
Here’s a look at all the common diffuser styles, ranging from ones that will cover the smallest areas to the largest. First there’s the warming plug in units. These evaporate the oils using moderate heat. They’re very quiet, inexpensive, easy to use, and good for a couple-hundred square feet. The fan diffusers are next, ranging from personal desktop size, to ones that will cover several hundred square feet. They’re fairly quiet, only slightly more complicated, and evaporate the oils using fan-blown air. “Ultrasonics” are next, which make a mist of oil and water together. They’re great if you’d like a little moisture in the air as well. Finally, there’s the cold-air nebulizing diffusers, which make a mist of pure essential oil. Some of these are rated for over 1000 sq. ft.
Again, all these diffusers will enable you and your family to benefit from the aromas of essential oils. Typically the more expensive units will have higher outputs, and some will have bells and whistles like built-in timer cycles and lighting effects. Still, you can make your choice purely on the size they’ll cover, or if perhaps you live in a dry environment, the ultrasonic units may be especially attractive. Further, the ultrasonics and the cold-air nebulizers have no pads to replace, which may be another consideration. If you’d like to gain the most benefit from the oils now and in the future, meaning you’d like to maximize your immune function and clean the air in your environment, it then becomes important to consider the actual concentration of essential oil being output.
A cold air nebulizing diffuser (note, not an “ultrasonic nebulizer”) is the most powerful diffuser available, and will address every possible application of essential oils you may ever have. The reason is this: the nebulizer make very, very tiny droplets of your oils — so small that it forms a cloud of the oil within its glass chamber. The air is so dense with essential oil that you can actually see it. Now, you won’t see it like this once its emitted several inches away from the diffuser, but you can be sure there’s still a high concentration of oil in the air. And for those times of the year when children are bringing home one cold after another, or the flu is going around at work, the nebulizing diffuser will offer the best available protection from aromatherapy.
Getting The Most Out Of Your Essential Oils
All diffusers share a common result: when you run the diffuser all the time, its likely that you’ll stop being able to smell the oil you’re diffusing. Your nose can quickly become accustom to a scent, and while its still at the same concentration in the air, you won’t be able to smell it! The best approach is to run your diffuser for only a few minutes every hour if your aim is to enjoy the aroma. You’ll often see programmable timers with which you can adjust the on and off cycle of the diffuser to maximize your enjoyment of your oils.
The author regularly employs pure aromatherapy essential oils and Bach flower remedy therapy in her practice.
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