Essential Oils for Irritated Skin

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If you have been around How We Flourish for awhile, you know that last year I had an awful struggle with my skin. My legs and arms itched horribly and my elbows were so bad the skin was crusty. Nothing I tried would give me relief. At the time, I wrote a blog post about how to deal with these symptoms. A variety of remedies, like shea butter and aloe, would make things slightly better, but nothing healed my horribly damaged skin. Every time it got better, it would just get worse again. I soon learned that treating my the symptoms was not going to make it go away – I needed to get to the root of the cause of this problem. I went on an elimination diet and within a week, my skin was completely clear. If you, too are struggling, I suggest an elimination diet like the one I went on or the AIP protocol to heal such skin problems from the inside. Why treat symptoms that will come back if you could heal them?

However, while you are still healing, I know how important it is to have immediate relief from symptoms. My recommendations from my initial post are okay. Moisturizing and avoiding scratching and triggers can be very helpful, but they weren’t able to fully heal my skin. Finding something that can staunch the itch is great, but since I’ve found an alternative to steroid cremes, I have no desire to go near them.

What has helped me relieve my itching and irritation and any flares I might have? Essential oils!

Essential Oils for Irritated Skin

Lavender and Geranium
This is a simple and soothing blend of essential oils. Lavender is great to relieve itching and very soothing and healing in general. Diluted in a carrier oil or mixed in with some shea butter is a wonderful remedy for irritated skin. When I add in some geranium, which is also a good choice for irritated skin, I see even greater improvements.

Cedarwood
Last fall I had a stubborn patch on my foot. While the lavender and geranium soothed my skin, it never cleared up the roughness I was experiences. I read a blog post about using cedarwood essential oil to totally clear it up. Crazy! So I tried it. Within two days of applying diluted cedarwood a few times, my foot was smooth again!

Myrrh
Myrrh isn’t explicitly recommended for the skin problems that I deal with. However, it is a useful oil for skin health and can be very soothing. In the winter my skin gets crazy chapped. It exasperates my skin that is already so prone to irritation, but thankfully my diet changes have held off any fully blown flares. I actually thought it was a mild flare for awhile, but none of the above remedies worked, nor did slathering on shea butter at night. So I looked up chapped skin and myrrh was recommended.

Oh. My. Goodness. I diluted one drop of myrrh in fractionated coconut oil and applied it to my chapped skin, followed by shea butter. The next morning, my hands that had been awfully chapped for the past month were almost completely smooth. At the end of the day, when my hands are usually cracked and painful, they were slightly chapped, but nothing too bad. 3 days of application later and my hands were not even chapped at the end of the day!

Almost every new oil I try amazes me with its effectiveness. Cedarwood and Myrrh are no exception. I encourage you to try these essential oils for irritated skin if you have stubborn skin problems!

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