AWP 049: Successful Essential Oil Blend for Back Pain

Essential Oils for Back Pain

You’re listening to the Aromatic Wisdom Podcast, Episode 49. In today's episode, I'm going to tell you a story about how I addressed my husband's back pain with a blend that I bought for a whole different purpose.

Hello Friends! I'm Liz Fulcher and thank you for spending some time with me in your earbuds today as we share another episode of the Aromatic Wisdom Podcast. This probably won't be a very long episode, but the experience I had was too good not to share with you and too long to insert it into a regular podcast as a "Smell My Life" segment.

Though It may just be a quick little episode, but I think you'll enjoy it.

Let me start by telling you a little bit about my husband and why he has back pain. James wears a lot of hats. Of course, he's a dad and a husband iand an importer of beautiful copper stills, and he's also a Master Carpenter. He is also a Construction Supervisor and he's done that work for nearly 40 years.
That means that for four decades he's been using his body really hard. He lifts heavy objects, he builds, he repairs. He's extremely skilled and can really do a lot as a result and the result is chronic back pain. Without going into his medical history, he has had loads of tests. The bottom line is it seems that this issue really is muscular, which is such great news.

We know that he does not need surgery. The two modalities that seem to give him the fastest relief are massage therapy and chiropractic adjustments. He will not take any medication other than over-the-counter painkillers, like Advil or Tylenol, which we have here in the United State.

That's gives you a bit of "back story" 🙂

Now, I want to tell you about this blend that I bought. I was shopping in a local health food store recently and when placed my items on the counter to pay, I noticed that they were diffusing an essential oil blend that I'd never seen before. It's the only health food store in my community and so I shop there quite a lot, and I know that they carry one brand of essential oil that you commonly find in health food stores in the states.

The family that owns the store are always diffusing something at the counter near the register. When I go in there, I can often recognize the essential oil they are diffusing. I don't really pay that much attention, but on this day they were diffusing something that caught my "aromatic attention" because it smelled really nice.

Now, here in the US, Americans go crazy in the autumn for things that smell like clove and cinnamon and spicy, and things like. And this blend had that kind of an aroma. So I picked up the bottle that was next to the diffuser. I looked at it and it was called surprise, surprise, pumpkin spice. Everything's pumpkin spice in the autumn coffee, pumpkin spice cookies, pumpkin spice candles.

So I was intrigued. I turned the bottle over, read the ingredients, which were:
Tangerine
Sweet Orange
Cinnamon
Cardamom
Nutmeg
Ginger
Clove Bud

It was a blend and had a cozy, comforting, warming, spicy aroma. If you are outside of the US, I'm curious if your country also embraces the aromas of cinnamon and clove and spices in the autumn, or is that just an American thing?

Back to my story. I was in a particularly good mood this day and feeling particularly fall-ish and really enjoying this blend. So I decided to purchase it to diffuse at home and also to add to a spray bottle with water and alcohol to wipe down surfaces, because I know that the essential oils in that blend not only have an aroma that smells like the fall, but they're also essential oils that are antibacterial.

I know for a fact that the company that produces these oils do not GCMS test them, or at least they don't make that available to the public. Sometimes I will try to reproduce an oil that I buy, uh, using my own GCMS tested oils, and I can usually get pretty close.

Okay. So I got home, put the pumpkin spice blend in the diffuser and really enjoyed it. A couple of days later, James was holding his back the way people do when their back hurts so I said, "come on, I'm going to heat my hot stones and I want you to get on my massage table and I'm going to massage your back and neck.
While I heated my stones, I sort of had this flash about that pumpkin spice blend, and thought it might be helpful for warming and reducing James' back pain. I looked at the ingredient list again and kind of went through each one and paid attention to the chemical components that I know exist in those oils and their therapeutic properties.

All right, I'm going to give you the ingredients again. And I'm going to tell you the therapeutic properties about each of those oils. Just kind of an overview without going too deep into the chemistry and you'll understand why I knew I needed to use this blend for his back pain.

Cinnamon bark, is analgesic warming and rubifacient. You have to be careful with. As long as the essential oil is well diluted, which I always dilute and not. I'll tell you about that in here in a second. So cinnamon bark is terrific

cardamom. latin name here has properties that make it analgesic and anti-inflammatory one of the components is 1,8 cineole, which we've talked to, I've talked about in other episodes, um, making it very analgesics.

Nutmeg Myritica fragrans, is analgesic anti-inflammatory antispasmodic and warming

Ginger, It warming and analgesic, anti-inflammatory, antispasmodic and rubifacient which means it is going to brings blood to the surface. So it's great for circulation.

Clove bud. This essential oil is high in the phenolic component called eugenol making it both analgesic, extremely analgesic. I mean, almost numbing. You have to be super careful with Clove Bud as well as Cinnamon because they are what we call "hot" oils which means they can be incredibly irritating if they're not well diluted. Clove Bud is also analgesic, anti-inflammatory, rubifacient and warming.

The oils that I mentioned initially were probably in the highest quantity on the ingredient list; they were Tangerine Citrus retuculata/i> and Sweet Orange Citrus sinensis The citrus oils are in the Monoterpene family and are made up of tiny molecules. Essential oils from the Monoterpene family are nice to add to a blend that you're using specifically for topical issues like pain and warmth. Because the citrus oils do are "drivers", they help penetrate the essential oils into the tissue.

After reading that list, you can see why I knew this blend would help my husband.

After my stones heated up I began to work on James' back then added the blend to a carrier in my hand. Trauma oil would have been a great carrier but I only had Jojoba Oil.

I then covered him with a blanket and I put more hot stones on his back so that the heat would penetrate. He stayed like that for quite a while as he was very relaxed and calm at this point. When he got up later and was moving around, he must've said at least three times throughout the day, "my back really feels great! Whatever is in that blend, and whatever you did today, do that every time."

Now, by the next day, his back hurt again which was normal. This was not intended as a "cure all". But it did give him extended relief. He was pain-free for the rest of the day.

So you see, you never know where healing is going to come from, and this is another reason why I stress to my students and I stress to you, my listeners to really get to know your essential oils. Know their therapeutic properties and study their chemistry because you never know when you may come across a blend that although it's for one purpose or it's sold for one purpose, it can be used for something else.

I'm going to end the episode a little shorter than usual without smell my life or ask Liz, because today is the 20th wedding anniversary of my marriage to James. And we'll be going out. So until next time...

Be Happy, Be Well

Liz xo

©2021 Liz Fulcher | AromaticWisdomInstitute.com