Do Essential Oils Actually Do Anything?

This post is part of our Home Remedy Handbook, a tour of the landscape of home remedies from the iffy to the doctor-approved. Read more here.

It’s time to bust some myths about essential oils. These are oils derived from plants that have strong smells and are often marketed as having medical uses. Should they really count as home remedies, though? Let’s dig in.

Essential oils are not “essential”

Let’s start by clearing up the meaning of the name: Essential oils are oils that contain the “essence” of the plant they come from—usually meaning their flavor or scent. For example: That sharp, minty aroma we associate with peppermint? Uncap a vial of peppermint essential oil, and you’ll get a big whiff of it.

This is not the same way we use the word when we talk about essential amino acids, or essential fatty acids, or when we say vitamins are essential. In nutrition, “essential” refers to substances that our body needs but cannot make (or cannot make enough of), so we have to get them in our diet. Methionine is an essential amino acid because if we never eat any, we’ll die.

So don’t confuse the two. You won’t die if you fail to get enough lavender essential oil. Even though essential oils use plants as ingredients, the essential oil itself is a manufactured product. Our health does not depend on whether we have access to it.

What’s actually in an essential oil

Imagine putting your nose up to a flower growing in a garden, and taking in the scent. Floating in the air you inhale are hundreds or even thousands of different molecules that interact with sensory receptors in our nasal cavity. If we taste a flavorful plant, roughly the same thing happens, but we would describe it as a taste rather than a smell. (Many of the same receptors are involved in both.)

Since ancient times, people have wanted to gather the chemicals that make up the scent, flavor, or what they believe to be the medicinal properties of a plant—to bottle its essence, if you will. Some of these molecules mix easily with oil, or they take the form of an oil themselves if you can get enough together in your little vial.

These days, many essential oils are steam-distilled, which means hot steam is mixed with a mush of plant parts. The flavorful molecules are called volatile compounds, because they fly away—the reason they were able to float in the air on the first place. The mixture of steam and volatile compounds can then be chilled to produce an oil-water mixture, and then separated; the oil portion is our essential oil.

That said, there are other processes, like extracting the volatile components by soaking the plant parts in oil, or in the case of some citrus fruits by simply squeezing them out of the plant. Some essential oil sellers will make a big deal about how their process is the best one or the only correct one, but historically, the word “essential oil” has been used to describe scented, plant-derived oils made in a variety of ways.

They may be natural and ancient (sort of), but that doesn’t make them harmless

There’s a mystique around essential oils, with some proponents pointing to the frankincense mentioned in the Bible or the resins detected on Egyptian mummies’ wrappings as signs that wise peoples of the past were doing basically the same thing you do when you buy a package of little bottles from DoTerra or Young Living.

It’s true that scented oils and aromatic plant parts were used in a variety of cultures for a variety of purposes. Frankincense, a tree resin sometimes burned as incense, isn’t the same thing as an essential oil, but an essential oil can be made from it. Before modern pharmaceuticals, medications were often made by cooking plants or extracting the components that were believed to be healing. So, yes, plant oils have a history in pre-modern medicine. They weren’t necessarily used in the same way as essential oils are today, of course, but there is some historical continuity.

It’s important to remember that ancient peoples weren’t a source of infalliable wisdom. Egyptian medical papyri, for example, indicated willow bark for inflammation and castor oil as a laxative—two things understood today to be effective. (Aspirin is a chemical reformulation of the active ingredient in willow bark.) But, you know, they also recommended crocodile dung in the vagina as a method of contraception. Lots of ancient medical treatments were ineffective or harmful.

And plenty of things in nature are harmful, as well. As a general rule, medicines that are powerful enough to help are often also active enough in the body to cause harm. Much of the practice of medicine involves learning to prescribe drugs in the doses and contexts, and to the patients, in which they are helpful. It’s not as simple as “this oil can be good for that condition” and then having people take as much of the oil as they want, whenever they want, in whatever manner they want. But that’s how essential oils are often described by the people who sell them.

Information on essential oils as remedies often comes from people selling them

There are two large multi-level marketing companies, DoTerra and Young Living, that produce essential oils and task an enormous number of “distributors” with marketing and selling them. Many of these distributors share lists of the oils’ potential uses, and often go well beyond the known science (or the claims allowed by agencies like the FDA).

For example, the FDA sent a warning letter to Young Living pointing out that their distributors are making bold claims about what essential oils can do, basically positioning them as drugs to treat specific conditions. But these oils have never been proven to be safe and effective when used as medication. Distributors call the oils “remedies” and encourage their use for conditions that are far too serious for people to treat on their own. (Over-the-counter medications are not allowed for these conditions, either.) From the letter:

Based on the above-referenced claims, your “Essential Oil”, “Vitality”, “Ningxia”, and “Nature’s Ultra CBD” products are intended to prevent, treat, or cure conditions that are not amenable to self-diagnosis or treatment by individuals who are not medical practitioners, such as urinary tract infection, yeast infection, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, cancer, kidney stones, addiction, Alzheimer’s, anxiety, depression, chronic pain, diabetes, drug withdrawal, epilepsy, glaucoma, and Parkinson’s disease.

Besides these claims from distributors, you can also buy reference books that talk about essential oils as remedies for health conditions, or search on Pinterest for essential oil recipes positioned as cures and treatments—like “liquid xanax” (since renamed to “liquid calm”).

Essential oils don’t do very much therapeutically

With all of this history, and the marketing, you might expect essential oils to indeed be powerful medicines. But the evidence is underwhelming.

One thing we can say for sure is that essential oils have distinct smells. Many of their uses in complementary medicine (meant to be used alongside modern medicine) likely owe their effectiveness to the simple fact that people often think they smell good. For example, putting lavender oil in your ostomy bag increases “quality of life” and makes it easier to get used to living with an ostomy bag, one study found.

Studies collected by the National Cancer Institute include several that show aromatherapy may be helpful for people undergoing cancer treatments. For example, smelling lemon and ginger essential oils can make you salivate, which can be helpful when undergoing treatments that cause dry mouth. Women having breast biopsies reported less anxiety when they were given lavender and sandalwood oils on a felt tab attached to their hospital gown.

But notice we’re not talking about essential oils helping with the actual cancer. Studies on the effectiveness of essential oils on physiological medical conditions often find negative or inconclusive results. The evidence in favor of essential oils tends to be for things that are extremely subjective, like whether you feel more relaxed after being massaged with the oils.

Because of the strong scent, it’s hard to do trials that have a true control group. You can compare massage with and without the oils, but if somebody gets a strong whiff of lavender during their massage, they will know exactly which group they were in. And the placebo effect is traditionally very strong in exactly the types of studies where essential oils come out on top. This isn’t a bad thing—feeling better is feeling better—but it’s hard to conclude that the oils have truly medicinal properties as they are commonly used. It seems like maybe they just smell nice.

So why do essential oil aficionados often claim the oils have antibacterial, anti-cancer, or antifungal properties? Because these things have been demonstrated in the lab, not in human bodies. For example, some essential oils can inhibit the replication of HSV-1, a herpes virus, but so can bleach. That doesn’t mean you should use either one as a medicine.

Some oils may have enough evidence to use them for specific, minor conditions, but check with a doctor rather than relying on an essential oil salesperson for your information.

Essential oils can be harmful

If you’re using essential oils for their smell or flavor, you probably don’t have much to worry about. I’ve used essential oils myself to make scented bath salts, which may not be medicinal exactly, but it sure is nice to relax in a hot lavender-scented bath when you’ve got some sore muscles.

But it’s worth discussing the downsides of some essential oils. The Poison Control Center has a page with warnings about some of the oils they commonly get calls about. Among them:

• Oil of wintergreen is harmful if swallowed. (It’s chemically similar to aspirin, and can be like overdosing on aspirin.)
• Tea tree oil can be harmful if even a small amount is swallowed; the Poison Control Center recommends not using it in the mouth, even as a mouthwash or toothache treatment.
• Eucalyptus oil has caused seizures in children when swallowed.
• Sage oil has also caused seizures in children when swallowed.
• Camphor oil has caused seizures in children when large amounts of it were used topically and/or covered with extra clothing.

If you use essential oils, make sure to read up on the potential side effects and dangers of the specific ones you are using, and make sure to get information from a reliable source (like a doctor, not a distributor) about how to use them safely. Keep essential oils out of reach of children.

It’s also possible to be allergic or sensitive to essential oils, and to have a reaction called contact dermatitis as a result. This takes the form of a red, itchy rash. Essential oil enthusiasts will sometimes describe this as the skin “detoxing” in response to a treatment, or they’ll even say that a reaction like this confirms the treatment is working. Please, if you get a rash from applying something to your skin, stop applying the thing to your skin.

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