Herbal Oils

What can be more pleasant and positive than gathering a bowl of fresh jasmine, rosemary, St. John’s Wort, calendula or chamomile flowers for preparing your own herbal oils? You may be surprised but making herbal infused oils is quite an easy thing, and you can use these herbal oils for preparing other types of herbal preparations like herbal ointments or herbal salves. The greatest advantage of preparing your own herbal oils is the opportunity to use various combinations of herbs and herbal materials for making massage oils or other types of medicinal oils.

Herbal infused oils are great natural products which can be widely used in terms of various treatments or therapies like skin care or infection treatment, etc. If prepared and stored properly (in a cool dry place) they can be considered fresh and usable for up to one year. However, sometimes homemade herbal oils grow mold. It can mean that either low quality oil was used, or there was moisture left in the container. It is necessary to be 100% certain that there’s no moist in the jar which you are going to use for preparing or storing infused oil. Also, specialists recommend using only high quality olive oil for preparing infused oils, though other types of vegetable oils will also do.

There are several methods of preparing herbal infused oils. The simplest and the most common one is placing your dried herbal materials (blossoms, leaves, etc.) to a glass jar or bottle, adding some high quality olive or other vegetable oil and making sure that those herbal materials are totally covered with oil. Then, the jar should be sealed and placed to a warm dark place for minimum 2 or 3 weeks. Besides, just like it was for making solar infusions and lunar infusions, you can use sunlight and moonlight for preparing your solar or lunar infused oils.

Another method or preparing herbal oils includes simmering your oil on a very low fire. You can use a double boiler as well.  Simmering should last no more than 30-40 minutes. If you want to, you can strain your oil through muslin or a piece of cheesecloth. Also, some specialists would recommend you adding a little of white wine or cider vinegar to your herbal oil, for giving it a special taste. Well – that’s up to you, actually. Keep your herbal oils refrigerated or store them in a cool and dry place. Remember that there’s a wide variety of uses for herbal infused oils: from aromatherapy and herbal bath to sprinkling such herbal oils onto your salads and other meals.

Author Info: Hi! My name is Carla and I am a 5th year medical student at HYMS. I am interested in alternative medicine and I have done months researching the topic of herbal medicine. Besides, I like interviewing people and learning more about their experiences with one or another type of herbal treatments. I am willing to contribute to this site with my knowledge, and I would be happy to help you out to the best of my ability with any specific questions or problems related to alternative medicine.

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