Ginger is a culinary and medicinal plant that is delicious and helpful for a variety of ailments through topical, internal, and aromatic use. Ginger essential oil made from the root of the plant has historically been used as an ancient Chinese, Indian, African, Greek, Roman, and Arabian folk medicine, primarily to bolster digestive health.
The versatility, affordability, flavor, and aroma of this essential oil make it one of our personal favorites.
Description
Botanical Name: Zingiber officinale
Origin: Southeast Asia, India
Extraction method: Steam distillation
Plant Parts Used: Root rhizome
Note Classification: Base to Middle
Scent: Sharp, warm, spicy-peppery, toffee-like, balsamic-woody, earthy with a hint of lemon
Blends Well With: Bergamot, ylang ylang lemongrass, helichrysum, grapefruit, lemon, lime, neroli, orange, mandarin, black pepper, cinnamon, clove, cardamom, cedarwood, coriander, eucalyptus, frankincense, geranium, jasmine, juniper, palmarosa, patchouli, rose, sandalwood, and vetiver essential oils.
Shelf Life: 6 years
Cautions:
- For a list of cautions associated with the use of ginger essential oil, please review this article.
- Read more about essential oil safety here.
Maximum Dilution: 4%
Benefits of Ginger Essential Oil
Ginger is a very warming, earthy, stimulating oil, which makes it great for fighting fatigue, moving stagnant energy, and energizing your system – mind, body and spirit.
Let’s look at how ginger
- Keeps your digestive system happy
- Is a powerful aid in healing and relieving pain
- Boosts Your Sense Of Mental, Emotional, and Sexual Well being
- Bestows radiance to skin and hair
Ginger Oil Keeps Your Digestive System Happy
Ginger Essential Oil For Healthy Digestion
Probably the most well-known and popular reason that people use ginger medicinally is for digestive issues. Ginger both prevents the formation of gas, and helps expel gas from the digestive system. It also suppresses muscle spasms.
The combination of these qualities, along with ginger’s capacity to soothe inflammation, make it great for managing digestive issues.
Ginger can ease discomforts associated with the stomach and bowel (do not use with gastric ulcers).
Feeling Nauseous? Ginger Oil To The Rescue!
Stress and anxiety creating a bind in your belly? Cut nausea at the root by soothing not only the belly, but your nerves with ginger.
Ginger oil works wonders to reduce various kinds of nausea, including morning sickness, motion sickness, hangovers, and nausea associated with chemotherapy and post-surgery symptoms.
Boost Hunger With Yummy Ginger
Ginger supports increased appetite, which makes it a great ally for anyone who is trying to gain weight, or to boost hunger during times of nausea and sickness.
Ginger Essential Oil For Little Bellies
Ginger is safe and effective to use in children who are have a belly ache, nausea, diarrhea, or constipation. It’s so important for those little digestive systems to be functioning properly as children are growing.
Ginger can help with intestinal gas pain in infants, though it should be generously diluted in a carrier oil and only applied topically.
Ginger Is A Powerful Healer of Infection And Illness
Break A Fever
The warming and stimulating qualities of ginger enhances blood flow and increases body temperature, so it’s especially good for alleviating chills and poor circulation associated with fever, or to break a fever altogether.
Ginger is especially helpful to apply to the bottoms of the feet during a fever. The inside mid-arch of your right foot, just under the big toe mound, is the reflexology point for the liver, which is a great place to put essential oil when you have a fever.
Breaks Through Congestion And Sinus Infection
Ginger is high in ketones, which research has shown to be great at breaking up mucus. This quality along with the way ginger soothes tissues to reduce swelling, makes it helpful in clearing up the respiratory tract and nasal passages. Ginger essential oil is effective for congestion associated with sickness, as well as allergies.
Fights & Soothes Ear Infection
Oh ear infections. Not many things make you want to scream for a simultaneously hot and soothing kick to an infection’s face. Ginger reduces swelling and eases pain, as well as breathes fire onto harmful bacteria in the body, making it a useful remedy for a mild ear infection or earache.
Beats Vertigo And Dizziness
Ginger oil can help relieve dizziness, nausea, and headache, which makes it a triple threat for combating the symptoms of vertigo.
Ginger Boosts Mental, Emotional, and Sexual Well being
Empowers Mental Fortitude
This plant is amazing! It’s a huge support for our mental well-being. I’ve heard ginger referred to as the “oil of empowerment”, for its mood-boosting, confidence-building potential.
Where else will you find an ally that improves concentration, boosts confidence and enhances calmness? If that was not enough, ginger is amazing at lowering anxiety and stress. Introverts, unite!
An Ally In Emotional Times
One of the most consistent, yet insidious contributors to a depleted sense of well-being is an emotional body that has run off the rails. Being human, most of us at one time or another experience feelings of loneliness, depression, stress, anxiety, agitation, irritability, persistent or seasonal sadness, and unprocessed anger and grief.
Suppressing our feelings doesn’t help, but allowing ourselves to feel them with the support of both human and plant allies can make a huge difference in our quality of life. Ginger essential oil is an incredibly helpful ally when we are feeling overwhelmed, charged up, or down in the dumps.
Encourages Sexual Health
In addition to all of these other amazing qualities, ginger is a very sexy essential oil to boot! Ginger can be helpful for men who are experiencing impotence. In fact, women in Senegal have historically woven ginger into their belts to rev up their lover’s libidos.
Reduced stress, anxiety, and depression contributes to a higher libido, as do increased feelings of confidence. Additionally, the grounding, warming, earthy nature of the oil makes it a very sensual one for massage.
Ginger Combats And Soothes Pain
Pacifies Headaches and Migraines
Again, challenging emotions and stress tension are huge contributors to head pain. Allow the soft hands of ginger to stroke your temples and remind you everything is ok, as you breathe a sigh of relief.
Calms Arthritis, Rheumatism, and Joint Pain
While ginger essential oil is not a cure for arthritis or rheumatism, the heat and calming effects of ginger oil can bring relief to swollen, achy, arthritic joints. A gentle massage with an oil blend will help reduce pain in your joints.
Eases Back Pain
The power of ginger to reduce aches, pains, and inflammation works pretty much anywhere on your body, including one of the most common culprits of discomfort: back pain. Most of us at one point or another have experience tension and strain in our backs.
A little bit of ginger essential oil to soothe the achiness can help us get the ball rolling towards more movement and, ultimately, a healthier back.
Settles Menstrual Cramps
Heat is commonly used for menstrual cramps, and the warming quality of this oil offers an immediate soothing sensation for those days when cramps have you laid up and unable to do a whole lot.
I’ve noticed that when I’m menstruating, my body seems to be asking me to slow down and take gentle care.
Ginger For Radiant Skin and Hair
Bestows A Healthy, Vibrant Complexion!
Ginger essential oil is a fantastic natural beauty product. When used topically, ginger can reduce redness and even out skin tone. Ginger restores color and radiance to a dull complexion, leaving you bright, glowing, and feeling ready to face the world.
Supports Graceful Aging
If you’re wanting to soften the appearance of wrinkles, cellulite, and loose skin, ginger essential oil can help. The tonic and stimulating effects of the oil enhance skin elasticity and diminish wrinkling. Ginger will nourish your skin so it stays healthy as you evolve.
Keeps Skin In Great Health
Ginger detoxifies the skin and eliminates bacteria, which supports overall skin health, and helps with healing burns, cuts, scrapes, and bruises, chronic skin conditions, and periodic skin outbreaks. And, as you might have guessed, so many skin conditions arise from stress, so yes, I can’t say it enough, allow ginger to calm your entire system, and your skin will respond in kind.
Who Wants Gorgeous Hair?
And let’s not forget about our hair! Ginger essential oil contributes to the health and cleanliness of the scalp and hair. It improves circulation to the scalp, which stimulates healthy hair growth. Ginger also helps with dandruff by reducing dryness and itchiness of the scalp. Makes me wonder if the lovely red- haired Ginger on Gilligan’s Island got her name from our just as spicy herbal buddy…
Read next – How to actually use ginger oil? 23 practical ways here!
The Bottom Line
- If you’re trying to choose a handful of essential oils to keep in your medicine cabinet, make sure to include ginger. Not only is it affordable and delicious, but amazingly versatile, so in a pinch, you can use it to help with uncomfortable symptoms in almost any part of your body!
- Ginger is an amazing ally to manage symptoms of illness, internally and externally. The warming, soothing qualities of ginger make it helpful in reducing various kinds of aches and pains all over the body.
- Ginger works on a deeply emotional level and the effects ripple throughout the body, creating health from the inside out.
- As far as digestive health goes, ginger is both a remedy to prevent digestive issues, as well useful to address a wide variety of digestive symptoms.
- Ginger essential oil is a wonderful beauty aid, especially good for the health of your skin and hair.
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