Hops Essential Oils

The Medical Benefits in Aromatherapy
of Hops Essential Oils

Hops plant or Humulus Lupulus is a very popular plant found across Europe and Asia.

It is harvested in early fall and its flowers and pods are stored in cold storage for sale in future.

The Hops plant is known for several characteristics and healing properties. Due to its wide range of uses and features, it is popular in brewing as well as in aromatherapy. This article looks at the hops essential oils in a bit more detail.

Profile.

Botanical name : Humulus lupulus.

Origin : Hungary.

Scent : spicy sweet odor.

Note : Middle.

This essential oil is extracted from the flowers by steam distillation.

Blends Well With : Citrus, Copaiba balsam, hyacinth, nutmeg, pine, and spice oils.

Characteristics

The Hops oil is probably the most popular with the beer brewers. Traditionally beer manufacturers have used Hops essential oils in various forms to add bitterness and aroma to their beers.

These obviously are the two most striking features of Hops essential oils.

The hops oil consists primarily of the four constituents: humulene, myrcene, caryophyllen and farnesene. These constituents give it its bitter taste and other properties that hops oils are famous for.

Benefits

Did You Know...

Scientists have found that a substance in hops called lupulin acts as natural sedative to put you to sleep. The herb can be used to make a pillow where the scent will induce you to relax and sleep.

Hops Plant

Hops oils have been used as non-toxic and non-irritant aromatherapy treatments. It has the following medicinal properties:

Anodyne: It can help relieve pain, distress and stress. Excessive use can make it a sedative.

Anthelmintic: It can help get rid of worms from the body and cleanse the body internally.

Diuretic: It can increase the urination rates in the body.

Antipyretic: It helps reduce fever

Stomachic: Tones the stomach and helps improve appetite.

Anaphrodisiac: This is probably one of the not so pleasant features of this oil. It can reduce the libido in a man due to its high estrogen content, hence control consumption is recommended.

Dematitis: Prolonged exposure to hops oils can lead to inflammation of the skin and excessive irritation, hence it must be avoided.

Common Uses

Hops oils are very popular in inducing sleep at night. Given that many people opt for aromatherapy to reduce stress, the Hops oil with its fundamental property is an ideal candidate for this treatment. Thus it helps fight insomnia.

Given the high estrogen levels, it is also ideal to support the estrogen levels in females during menopause.

Precautions

Though hops oil is non sensitizing, it must be used in moderation. As stated above, excessive use can lead to many harmful effects.

Direct application of concentrate hops oils to skin can cause rashes, however the same when diluted can help cure them; so you it with care for best results.

While it has a calming effect on the body, hops oil when used I excess can cause depression too. So you need to calm you nerve so that you get a good night sleep, but that doesn�t mean that you over calm yourself and go into depression.

Thus we find that Hops Essential oils have great many uses. You can blend then with many other base oils like nutmeg, pine, citrus, etc. to get varied aroma with calming influence.