Essential Oils
10 Amazing Benefits of Frankincense Essential Oil and How to Use It
Aug
When you hear the word "frankincense," your probably think of something exotic and festive. For many of us, this is probably due to frankincense's longtime association with Christmas. And, to be fair, there's good reason for that.
Frankincense has a long and storied history of use in religious ceremonies in the Middle and Far East. It's one of the oldest and most traditional forms of incense, which is why the word "incense" is right there in its name.
The pleasing sweet, woody, and spicy scent of burning frankincense has long been considered so special that it was assumed it must have some kind of divine significance.
In addition to religious usage, frankincense also has a long history of medicinal use. The benefits of frankincense essential oil have been known to humanity for longer than almost any other essential oil.
What is frankincense?
Frankincense is a catchall term for the dried sap from trees of the Boswellia genus. Boswellia sacra is the species most commonly used, but there are five species in this genus, and all of them produce frankincense. There is no difference in quality or in medicinal benefit between the species, so you will rarely see frankincense sold by species.
To harvest frankincense, the slashes are made in the bark which allow the sap to bleed out, dry, and harden. These strips of hardened sap are called tears. A tree will be tapped like this two or three times in a year, with the final tapping yielding the best frankincense.
When it's used for incense, processing ends here. The tears of frankincense are already well-suited to be used this way, so they're simply packaged and sold. For perfumes and medicinal uses, the essential oils that give frankincense it's aroma and medicinal benefits are extracted from the solid resin.
This is can be done in two ways. The easiest, fastest, and cheapest method is to use chemical solvents to extract the oils. These solvents break down the resin and separate its compounds, allowing the manufacturer to easily remove and package the essential oils.
While this is easy and cheap, it's also a harsh method that may cause some degradation of the essential oils, potentially lessening their medicinal benefit. Some people also fear that this extraction method will leave some amount of the harsh chemical solvents in the finished product.
The other extraction method is distillation. This is the same process used to create alcoholic drinks like whiskey and vodka. The frankincense is placed in a boiler, often with water, and then heated.
The essential oils are the lightest and most volatile (most responsive to heat) compounds in the boiler, so they will evaporate first. The evaporated oils will then travel through a long metal tube which runs through a chamber of cooled water, condensing the oils back into liquid form.
This method is much gentler than the solvent method, and is known to produce oils that are very pure and potent. There is little risk of degrading the oils, so this method is the most popular extraction method with many essential oil manufacturers. While it's more time consuming, and more expensive, it's the best way to get the benefits of frankincense essential oil.
Frankincense Essential Oil Combo
Frankincense essential oil has several health benefits including: boosting immune system and relieving stress and anxiety.
Vivorific’s frankincense essential oil combo is: 100% Pure and natural, free from fillers, additives and harmful chemicals, vegan and kosher certified and sealed with tamper evident closure and Euro style dropper cap.
History of Frankincense
The benefits of frankincense essential oil have been known to humanity for a long time. It's been harvested and traded on the Arabian Peninsula for at least 6,000 years, and locals may have been using it long before that. From Arabia, it spread throughout the Middle East, India, and even China.
By the time the first major civilizations were forming in Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley, frankincense was already a major commodity and the benefits of frankincense, as well as it's desirability for use in religious ceremonies, was well known.
It likely spread throughout Europe and Africa during Roman times, although it disappeared from Europe when the Roman Empire collapsed. It was reintroduced to Europe during the Middle Ages by Frankish crusaders, who gave it the name frankincense ("franc" meaning noble or pure, so it was called noble incense). Previously it had been called olibanum in most the world.
Benefits of Frankincense Essential Oil
Frankincense has a long history of use in Ayurvedic medicine, as well as the medicinal traditions of many other cultures. It's benefits have been understood for a long time, although modern medical science is only just now beginning to catch up with long-held cultural wisdom.
Treats Arthritis
Arthritis is a condition that's caused by inflammation. Inflammation is actually a function of the immune system. When your body detects an infection, it floods the area with blood rich in white blood cells and other infection-fighting fluids. This causes lots of swelling and redness.
Arthritis occurs when the body's immune system mistakenly believes there's something wrong in your joints, and causes inflammation in them. Because the immune system is misfiring, the inflammation doesn't go away on its own- your body is convinced there's a threat there, so it keeps the inflammation going. This causes painful swelling in the joints that can make movement difficult and can lead permanent damage.
Frankincense is an excellent natural, safe way to treat arthritis. Frankincense essential oil has a powerful anti-inflammatory effect. It reduces the inflammation caused by your immune system, providing effective relief for those who suffer from arthritis. This provides safe, non-addictive pain relief as well as protecting your joints from long-term damage.
Boosts the Immune System
Frankincense has been scientifically proven to give your immune system a powerful boost. It does this in two ways. The first is poorly understood, even though we know it's happening.
One of the most interesting benefits of frankincense essential oil is that it can actually boost the strength and effectiveness of the immune system. Again, it isn't really clear exactly how it does this.
All we know is that it improves the ability of your immune system to combat viruses, bacteria, and even some types of cancer. In addition to improving the effectiveness of your body's natural defenses, frankincense also acts directly to help your immune system. Frankincense essential oil has strong antiseptic properties, so it can kill germs on its own even as it helps your immune system to fight them off better.
Frankincense essential oil also helps to break up phlegm in the lungs and throughout the respiratory tract, which reduces congestion and alleviates coughing, which can help you recover from illness more quickly.
Pain Relief
Another benefit of frankincense essential oil is pain relief. Frankincense can be used to treat minor pains, such as small cuts and bug bits. Pain from injuries like these is the result of inflammation, as your body fights to heal the wound.
The area is flooded with extra blood and other fluids to ensure the maximum amount of oxygen and nutrients needed for healing, but this system is imprecise and you likely don't need as much as what your body is sending.
An anti-inflammatory substance like frankincense can provide quick, effective relief from insect bits and small wounds. It is not limited to small pains, though. We have already examined the ability of frankincense to relieve severe pains from arthritis; the anti-inflammatory benefits of frankincense make it a very effective pain reliever.
If you need more convincing, remember that some of the most effective pharmaceutical painkillers operate on the same basic principle as frankincense.
NSAIDs, or non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, are the most commonly prescribed painkillers for conditions like arthritis or kidney stones. In smaller doses, these are the medicines you use to relief pain from headaches, sore muscles, etc. They're the standard painkillers of our society.
NSAIDs are widely used because they're very effective pain relievers but they don't present a risk of addiction or other serious complications like opioid painkillers do.
However, pharmaceutical NSAIDs can cause liver damage with prolonged use, so they aren't perfectly safe. They treat pain by reducing the inflammation that's causing it, so while they aren't necessarily the best choice for treating all pain, they are very effective in most situations.
Frankincense treats pain in the exact same way as NSAIDs, but it does so without the same risks. Frankincense essential oil reduces inflammation, which relieves pain. It can be effectively substituted for NSAIDs in almost any situation, with only the most severe pain requiring something more than frankincense for relief.
Reduces Stress and Anxiety
Like many essential oils, frankincense is often used to relieve stress and treat anxiety. This particular benefit of frankincense essential oil may be the reason it was believed to have religious significance in antiquity.
That's because this property of essential oil is most noticeable when it's used in aromatherapy, which is exactly how burning it as incense would work.
Multiple studies have shown that inhaling frankincense essential oil reduces blood pressure and heart rate almost instantly. You can imagine how ancient people, upon feeling this immediate soothing, calming effect, must have felt that this was divine activity.
It isn't clear if the reduction in blood pressure or heart rate is directly affecting stress and anxiety, or if there's another mechanism at work. What is clear, though, is that frankincense aromatherapy definitely improves stress and anxiety symptoms.
This has been demonstrated in multiple scientific studies, so there's no doubt that it's true. Using frankincense essential oil for aromatherapy can help to relieve stress and anxiety, without any of the side effects associated with prescription drugs.
Better Digestion
One of the lesser known benefits of frankincense essential oil is that it can improve your digestion. First, frankincense stimulates the process of stomach acid and bile, which speeds up and improves the actual process of digestion. Second, frankincense promotes peristalsis, which are the waves of muscle contractions your body uses to move the food you eat through your digestive tract.
By promoting peristalsis, frankincense can relieve constipation and stomach cramps, and often does so without the unpleasant side effects of many constipation medications. Please note, though, that it's unlikely that frankincense will relieve serious digestion issues related to major medical conditions like celiac disease.
Frankincense Essential Oil Combo
Frankincense essential oil has several health benefits including: boosting immune system and relieving stress and anxiety.
Vivorific’s frankincense essential oil combo is: 100% Pure and natural, free from fillers, additives and harmful chemicals, vegan and kosher certified and sealed with tamper evident closure and Euro style dropper cap.
Treats cancer
Cancer patients have used frankincense oil for years now. It helps to treat the side effects of common cancer treatments, especially the nausea that's caused by chemotherapy. Research is now showing, however, that frankincense is not limited to treating the side effects of chemotherapy.
One of the most difficult parts of treating cancer is that, after a certain amount of time, cancer cells can become resistant to chemotherapy. Once that happens, it can be nearly impossible to treat that cancer.
We now know, however, that there is a compound called AKBA, found in frankincense essential oil, which can kill cancer cells that are resistant to chemotherapy. Perhaps the most exciting part of this discovery is that frankincense can treat these cancers without any of the horrible side effects associated with most cancer treatments.
This does not mean that you should use frankincense essential oils to treat cancer without consulting a physician, but it should certainly be one of the options you discuss with them.
Beautifies the Skin
Frankincense promotes cell regeneration, which helps to maintain a youthful, healthy appearance. By keeping your skin cells strong and healthy, frankincense can prevent or reduce wrinkles and improve the elasticity of the skin. Frankincense has astringent properties which tightens the pores and reduces acne.
That astringent quality even helps to treat razor bumps, allowing you to use frankincense essential oil as an all-natural aftershave. The anti fungal qualities of frankincense can be of benefit to skin on your scalp and feet, as dandruff and athletes foot are both caused by fungal infections. Thus, frankincense is an excellent skin treatment for the whole body, not just the face.
Promotes faster healing
One of the longest-known benefits of frankincense essential oil is its ability to help wounds heal more quickly. This is related to its ability to promote cell regeneration. Because it encourages new cell growth, when frankincense is applied to a wound it can speed up the rate at which your body regrows the damaged cells.
In ancient times, frankincense was applied directly to cuts to heal them faster. This had the duel effect of physically healing the cut more quickly, and also preventing infection because of the antibacterial qualities of frankincense essential oil. In effect, frankincense is nature's version of the antibacterial ointments we use with band aids now.
Better sleep
Inadequate sleep is a widespread and growing problem in the modern world. Without enough sleep, people struggle to focus during the day and are more likely to be stressed and anxious.
In addition, lack of sleep is linked to weight gain, heart disease, diabetes, and a weaker immune system. Because of this, getting enough sleep is a huge priority.
Unfortunately, that's easier said than done. For many people, even when they try to go to sleep at a healthy time to ensure that they get enough sleep, they find that they have trouble falling asleep and staying asleep. There are countless reasons for this, so treating it medically can be difficult.
Fortunately, one of the benefits of frankincense essential oil is that it's an effective natural sedative. Whether this is related to its stress relief and blood pressure reduction effects isn't clear.
Using frankincense for aromatherapy at bedtime can help you fall asleep faster and stay asleep longer, promoting deeper and more restful sleep. It does this without causing you to feel drowsy the following day, and there's no risk that you'll become chemically dependent on it as you might with pharmaceutical sleeping medication.
Deodorize the Air
This is not a medicinal benefit of frankincense essential oil. At least, not directly. Frankincense has a very pleasing scent. While we could describe the scent as woody, spicy, and sweet, it's important to note the the scent really does smell pure and clean. There's just something about the smell of frankincense that creates a sense of purity in the air; yet another reason it's so popular in religious ceremonies.
This also means that it's a great way to deodorize the air in your home. Houses are filled with the smells of cooking, both fresh and stale, along with pet odor, body odor, and countless other smells that may be undesirable in varying degrees. Frankincense is a great way to remove those odors from the air and replace them with something that smells clean and pleasant.
While this doesn't provide a direct medicinal benefit, it may provide an indirect one. In addition to all of the other benefits you get from frankincense aromatherapy, you may get some benefit simply from improving the smell of your home. Having a bad-smelling home can contribute to anxiety, and improving the smell can make a bigger difference than many people realize.
Is Frankincense Safe to Use?
Frankincense is an all natural product, but that's not a guarantee of safety on its own. It's a common misconception that "all natural" means "safe." In fact there are many all natural products that can be quite dangerous and toxic when not used properly.
So, it's good to examine the safety of a product like frankincense essential oil. First, remember that all essential oils are very powerful, potent products. Applying a pure essential oil to your skin is a bad idea, and will almost always result in painful irritation of the skin. For topical applications, all essential oils must be diluted with a carrier oil to make them safe for use.
Frankincense essential oil has stimulating effects on blood flow, and in some cases this can encourage menstruation in women. This makes it unsafe for pregnant women to use frankincense essential oil, as menstruation could be very dangerous for the baby.
Even while nursing, it's best to avoid using frankincense essential oil until you have consulted with your physician first. Always store your essential oils out of the reach of children.
Frankincense is also a natural blood thinner. While this can be beneficial (i.e. lowering blood pressure and heart rate), there are situations in which it could be dangerous. If you are already taking an anticoagulant medicine, or if you already have a bleeding disorder, it's not advisable for you to use frankincense essential oil.
Rashes, stomach pain, and nausea are all possible side effects of frankincense essential oil. However, these effects are extremely rare, especially when the oil is used properly.
If you are not pregnant and have no bleeding disorder, and you use the oil in aromatherapy or a properly diluted topical treatment, there is almost no risk of any negative side effect when using frankincense essential oil.
If you still have concerns about using frankincense, just remember that people have been using this substance for thousands of years. If it were dangerous, we would have stopped using it a long time ago.
How to Use Frankincense Essential Oil
If you've been convinced to try out the benefits of frankincense essential oil, you need to figure out how to use it. Like all essential oils, there are two ways to use: aromatherapy and topically.
Aromatherapy is generally the most common way to use essential oils of all kinds. It's very effective because, when you inhale a substance, it goes directly into your bloodstream and you feel the effects almost instantly. It's also very safe, because the diffusers used for aromatherapy dilute the oil to safe levels for you.
In addition, aromatherapy has been the subject of numerous scientific studies that confirm its benefits. To use frankincense essential oil in aromatherapy, you first need to buy a diffuser. Diffusers use sound waves to create tiny droplets of oil that then diffuse into the air. You'll first fill the reservoir with water, and then add a few drops of your preferred oil.
Turn on the diffuser, and then let it run as long as you like. As you can see, this is a simple, hands-off way to enjoy the benefits of your favorite essential oils. It's certainly effective, but it does have the drawback of needing special equipment. It also isn't always the best way to experience the benefits of your oil.
For pain relief, wound healing, and skin benefits, you'll really want to apply your frankincense essential oil topically. To do this, you'll need to blend a few drops of frankincense oil with a carrier oil like olive oil, jojoba oil, or MCT oil. Then, dab or rub the oil in the spot you need it. You can apply this mixture directly to a cut, or arthritic joints, or to the skin of your face.
Which Frankincense to Buy
Choosing an oil can be difficult, because there are dozens of manufacturers out there who are producing high quality oils. That said, this frankincense oil from Vivorific is among the best. It's made from the best possible frankincense oil, sourced and extracted using the best methods.
It's blended with fractionated coconut oil and bottled in a roll-on bottle for a ready-made topical oil. This is ideal because many of the benefits of frankincense essential oil are best experienced when used as a topical treatment, but also because you aren't limited to purely topical applications.
You can actually use topically applied oils as a form of aromatherapy. You simply apply the oil to your chest or to the skin of the upper lip, just under the nose, like you would with a mentholated ointment. In this way, you can use a topical oil for aromatherapy. For this reason, we like the roll-on bottles of frankincense oil. You get the best of both worlds, and it's a very high quality oil.
Conclusion
Frankincense is sometimes called "the king of essential oils" because it's so powerful and versatile. It has a longer history of use than any other oil, and its medicinal benefits of have known around the world for centuries.
While most essential oils are inherently versatile and useful for treating a wide range of ailments, few oils are as useful as frankincense. In addition, few essential oils have had their medicinal benefits backed up by scientific research as consistently as frankincense. The only oil that even comes close is lavender, and frankincense is arguably better than lavender.
Frankincense shares a number of benefits with other oils, and exceeds them. While stress relief, anti-inflammatory properties, and sedative qualities are common, the pain relief, healing, and cellular rejuvenation properties really set frankincense apart from other essential oils.
What's perhaps most exciting is its potential as a cancer treatment and a potential alternative to chemotherapy. This is something rare in the world of natural medicines: a natural treatment for cancer that's been supported by medical research.
There are very few situations in which frankincense oil doesn't provide at least some benefit, and if you plan on using essential oils, frankincense should always be in your inventory. There's almost nothing it can't help with, even if all you want is an oil to make your home smell better. Before you try any other oil, try frankincense.
You May Also Like
