Spearmint Essential Oil benefits includes alleviating gas and bloating, promoting healthy digestion, treating nausea and vomiting, promoting oral health, boosting circulation, promoting wound healing and suppressing cravings and appetite. Other benefits includes reducing fever, preventing cancer, healing sore muscle and joints, and promoting respiratory health.
What is Spearmint Essential Oil?
Spearmint essential oil is amongst the most popular of the volatile mint oil family, having been originally found in Europe, but now cultivated in many parts of the world.
Known by the scientific name Mentha spicata, the essential oil is extracted via steam distillation of the flowering units of the spearmint plant, and not merely the leaves as many people assume. Sharing many properties and similarities to peppermint oil, Spearmint essential oil has its own set of functions but stands apart most in its difference in menthol content. Yes, it still contains menthol, but is less than that found in peppermint. The reduced presence of this compound does not inhibit its medicinal potency however, as its storied history still dates back to ancient Greece and even
1. Has Carminative Properties
A carminative is a substance that when taken helps in the alleviation of gas and bloating. In this case, spearmint essential oil helps tiny gas bubbles to adhere to each other, forming one larger bubble that can easily be expelled as flatulence. Spearmint oil is said to relieve the surface tension of the bubbles, which is a type of force that keeps them apart. This explain why spearmint is amongst the most popular natural remedies for gas and bloating.
2. Promotes Healthy Digestion
Spearmint is a popular ingredient found in many antacid preparations, owing to its ability to balance gastric acid secretion. It also promotes the breakdown of food and transit through the intestines. It also relieves painful stomach cramping, by acting on the smooth muscle of the GI tract. This makes it useful as an adjuvant in relieving pain associated with diarrhea or even menstrual cramps.
3. Treats Nausea And Vomiting
Spearmint is an effective treatment for nausea or vomiting, owing to its ability to desensitize the CTZ (chemoreceptor trigger zone), an area adjacent to the brain that is strongly involved in our gag reflex. This is why just smelling the volatile, refreshing aroma of Spearmint oil can relieve nausea and soothe your stomach. Its ability to reduce gastric acid can also be a reason for the relief, as high acid levels are associated with a greater frequency of nausea.
4. Promotes Oral Health
Spearmint is used in many breath freshening mouthwashes, as well as many toothpaste products since its distinctive taste keeps breath fresh for long periods of time. Plus, use of the oil itself as a rinse Is effective owing to its anti-microbial properties. A few drops of the oil mixed in coconut oil and used for oil pulling can even exceed alcohol based rinses in anti-microbial potency, and preserve your oral health. Poor oral health can act as a gateway for more serious infections as well, such as bacterial heart disease.
5. Boosts Circulation
Spearmint oil consumption or inhalation has a stimulating property on the heart that increase the rate of blood flow. This is great when suffering from conditions that impair normal blood flow, such as varicose veins. In turn, this ensures that efficient oxygen transport occurs, as well as removal of waste metabolites from the blood. Athletes are likely to benefit significantly from this as well, since rapid nutrient delivery and waste removal improves performance and recovery.
6. Promotes Wound Healing
Spearmint essential oil is a wonderful antiseptic agent, which can be useful in preventing infections of open wounds. Though it is best to dilute it in a suitable solvent before application to wounds as it can be irritating, regular application to an open wound not only speeds up healing but can reduce the appearance of a subsequent scar.
7. Suppresses Cravings And Appetite
Spearmint oil is excellent for assisting with weight loss, as it has proven itself time and time again to be able to suppress cravings and appetite as a whole. Cravings can derail the best diet plan, making it absolutely essential that you invest in insurance that can help you achieve your goals. Adding just a drop or two to beverages and sipping throughout the day should be enough to suppress cravings and appetite, as is inhaling the aromatic vapors of it.
8. Supplemental Fever Reduction
While spearmint essential oil is not an anti-pyretic agent, it is still useful in helping to manage fevers, especially in children who may find the body temperature increases unbearable. In addition to using proven fever reducing agents, spearmint oil can help by actively cooling the body. It assists in the dissipation of heat, speeds up cooling of the body and can help you sleep easier.
9. Cancer Prevention (and Radiation Defense)
Cancer is one of the largest causes of death in the world, happens when we least expect it, and is extremely difficult to treat. Preventing, however, is a little easier, as living a holistic lifestyle filled with good foods can be the best thing you do in your life. Spearmint essential oil contains menthol, like peppermint oil, although in smaller amounts. However, this is the compound that is shown to have an inhibitory effect of cancer cell multiplication, stalling them and allowing the immune cells to naturally destroy them. The immune system actually kills a large number of pre-cancerous and early stage cancer cells, but can miss some if it becomes overwhelmed. Spearmint oil can help supplement the cancer preventative actions of the immune system, and even reduce the destructive effects of radiation on healthy cells. This leaves it uniquely poised to help out in some way or the other in cancer prevention and even treatment.
10. Sore Muscles And Joints
The application of heat has been used for centuries to treat pains and sprains, and is one mechanism by which spearmint essential oil can help to relive plain caused by sore joints or muscles. Spearmint, while having a cooling after effect, initially generates heat that helps to loosen up tensed muscles and sore joints. It boosts circulation, which is a great assist in relieving pain by clearing the area of waste products, and even exerts a mild anesthetic effect to blunt pain for a period of time. Spearmint oil is also anti-inflammatory in nature, helping to soothe inflammation as a result of injury and reducing localized swelling and tenderness.
11. Promotes Respiratory Health
Spearmint oil, along with many other members of the mint family share a long history in being used to treat ailments of the respiratory tract. Spearmint oil is an excellent expectorant, helping to break up accumulated mucus in the lungs, and allowing for its easy expulsion from the nostrils or mouth. In addition, it volatile scent can be used to cure nasal congestion, or it can also be consumed, either method helping to clear the sinuses. Suffering from a cough? No problem. Spearmint oil is a natural anti-tussive agent, especially for chesty coughs, though it does show potential in managing dry coughs as well.
Conclusion
Spearmint is and will continue to be one of the most used essential oils of this lifetime. Its affordability, myriad of health benefits and ease of obtaining all make it very attractive, and in cases of peppermint oil shortage, can be used appropriately to fill the void thanks to the fact that it still contains some menthol.