Top 8 Essential Oils for Sore Muscles

Are you familiar with sore muscles after a workout or strenuous physical activity? Sore muscles and muscle aches develop because of increased levels of physical exercise.

I’d like to help you understand the benefits of using natural therapeutic essential oils in soothing and relaxing your sore muscles.

Put an end to sore muscles! Ease the painful experiences of tensions, swellings, and aching joints. There is remedy and relief for your muscular systems if you apply these essential oils for sore muscles.

If you learn how to apply them to the affected muscles and joints, you’ll be able to enjoy the therapeutic and calming effects of essential oils.

How to Apply Essential Oils for Sore Muscles

There are several ways to use essential oils in alleviating tired and aching muscles in your body. In summary, sore muscles are best treated through massage, a warm steam bath, or a compress.

You may opt to diffuse essential oils into the air where you are, but that will be the least powerful application of essential oils for sore muscles.

Application through Massage

Massaging is the easiest way to get these oils into your aching tissues. Massaging gets the essences into the body faster, increases the flow of blood to every part of the body, and promotes quick recovery.

Besides, the feelings of physical touch by a gentle hand offers a relieving and healing effect all on its own.

Always remember that you should never use essential oils without diluting them using carrier oils.

Notice which parts of your body are stiff, swollen, and painful. You can calm the tension by rubbing essential oils onto the areas as much as possible, but to avoid skin irritations, don’t overdo it. Blend two or more essential oils together for an enhanced effect.

• More tips on essential oils for massage

Using a Warm Steam Bath

Warm steam baths are ideal for enhancing healing. If you are taking a warm steam bath, the heat will help to stimulate the body, causing circulation of blood to every other part of the body. Heat promotes blood circulation, thereby improving the function of your limbic system, and alleviating your muscles soreness.

In a bath, all of your skin absorbs the therapeutic qualities of the essential oils. This treatment provokes relief and wellness throughout all parts of your body.

• Try this Muscle-Soothing DIY Bath Salts recipe

Applying through a Warm or Cold Compress

People use essential oils because they have some curative and healing features.

With a warm compress, muscles can be relaxed and loosened, and will be well on their way to make the tissues flexible and agile again. Add any essential oil you have chosen onto a fabric cloth and fill a bowl with hot water.

TIP: Use hot water for alleviating aches and pains, or cold water for treating and calming inflammations.

Diffusing the Oil into the Air and Surroundings

You can use an essential oil diffuser to spread the ointment into the air or the surroundings around you for quick inhalation through your nostrils.

Top 8 Essential Oils for Sore Muscles

Use these essential oils for sore muscles:

• Peppermint Oil. Do you want instant relief from painful muscles? Peppermint oil can offer you immediate relief from muscular and joint pains because it has a therapeutic ingredient called menthol. This active element is relevant in reducing tensions, strains, and pressures since it has a stimulating and revitalizing scent with palliative and antispasmodic effects. Peppermint oil releases a cooling effect necessary for alleviating muscular aches and calming your nerves. By mixing six drops of this essential oil with one tablespoon of neutral carrier oil like olive oil or jojoba, and then, applying it several times on the achy parts of your body.
  Peppermint Oil
• Juniper Oil. Are you stressed up and looking for ways to de-stress and even detoxify your body system? Juniper essential oil is ideal for relieving inflammation and right to be used as an antioxidant. You will enjoy the antiseptic, anesthetic, and anti-rheumatic potentials contained in this beautiful oil, as it will help to keep your body agile, perfumed, and healthy. Juniper oil can be used in a warm bath, by adding about fifteen drops of the oil into steaming water and then get in the tub and enjoy a therapeutic shower. After this, you will notice all aches, inflammations, and sores healed. If you want to use it for rubbing your muscles, then put about four drops of this essential oil in a container and mix with a carrier oil. Rub onto the affected parts for twenty minutes, and you will experience a difference.
  Juniper Oil
• Rosemary Oil. Rosemary essential oil is rich in anti-spasmodic and anti-inflammatory elements with antioxidants making it renowned as one of nature’s miracle plants. It also contains carnosol, an essential ingredient capable of alleviating inflammations and body pains. Massage about six drops of the oil onto the affected parts of your body after blending it with a carrier oil. Additionally, you can mix it with peppermint oil and coconut or olive oils for an enhanced effect because this unique blend of aromatic essential oils will improve your physiological well-being.
  Rosemary Oil
• Clove Oil. Let your body experience the therapeutic essences of clove oil that have been used by experts for decades in palliating sore muscles; as it has anti-bacterial and anti-inflammatory substances with anti-microbial properties making warm impressions on your body, thereby relieving inflamed tissues. Again, it is capable of reducing tension on your ligaments and joints, since it can loosen stressed and tired tissues by energizing and reviving worn-out muscles. The mild anti-neuralgic effects of clove oil help it in anesthetizing or sedating the topical part of the body, especially where the pain is located making you feel less pain, although that feeling may last for a short while. However, you need to do a skin patch test before applying this essential oil to your body because it contains eugenol capable of causing irritations and a burning sensation. Therefore, mix clove oil with any of these carrier oils like moringa, coconut, and jojoba oils.
  Clove Oil
• Frankincense Oil. Frankincense oil is an aromatherapy essential oil that is calm on the body but can be used in various ways. You can apply it in the bath for a warm and refreshing shower since it can tranquilize and kick off every pain gradually out of your body. Most people prefer to use it because of its anti-spasmodic, analgesic, anti-anxiety, anti-inflammatory, and anti-bacterial constituents in the body. Additionally, it is very relevant in the bath for a soothing shower. But, if you are applying it on the skin, you should dilute it with carrier oils.
  Frankincense Oil
• Thyme Oil. Reduce the effects of COX-2, which is a substance responsible for muscular soreness and inflammations by applying thyme oil. It contains carvacrol known for alleviating painful, acute, and chronic conditions in the body.  This essential oil will give you an analgesic experience, as it has antispasmodic elements capable of providing you relief from bodily pains. Mix about four drops of thyme oil with a tablespoon of carrier oil and massage deeply into your skin. This will give you instant relief if you can sustain the rubbing for twenty minutes. You can also use it in a warm bath by mixing about 3-5 drops into the water before bathing.
  Thyme Oil
• Turmeric Oil. Turmeric is made to support and restore disparities in your body, as it has potent antiviral, anti-inflammatory, antibiotic, antimicrobial, and antioxidant elements that can inhibit the actions of debilitating enzymes from damaging the bones and muscles. In fact, with this oil, you can eliminate arthritis and other rheumatic conditions, if you apply a soothing massage by mixing about six drops of turmeric oil with carrier oils like jojoba, moringa, and coconut oils, as the case may be.
  Turmeric Oil
• Lavender Oil. This essential oil has sedative effects, as it can soothe tensions and unnecessary pressures in the muscles. Due to its mild and calm nature, you may not dilute it with carrier oils before applying on your body. You may use it on the skin since it has analgesic and anti-inflammatory elements making it perfect for strained, tired, and sore muscles.
  Lavender Oil

Essential Oil Blends for Sore Muscles

Many popular essential oil companies have put together their own proprietary muscle-soothing essential oil blends.

Examples:

• “Muscle Aid” from Plant Therapy (also comes in a roll-on). Costs less than $10.
• “Muscle Relief” from Edens Garden (roll-on available here), also costs less than $10.
• “Muscle Soothe” Roll-On from Rocky Mountain Oils, around $15.
• “Ache Relief” from Simply Earth, less than $15, or in a roll-on

The following oils are child safe (age 2+) varieties of sore muscle blends:

• “Aches & Pains” ($11.95) from Edens Garden for 10 mL, or $13.95 in a roller bottle
• “Grow Ease” from Plant Therapy, $19.95 for the blend or $9.95 for the roller bottle

Making Your Own Muscle Oil Blend

Do you know that you can make your own homemade essential oil blend for sore muscles? In fact, if you want to get pure and unadulterated oil, it is advisable to make a blend by yourself. It is less expensive and does not take much time to get done.

Here are the items and ingredients, and the steps to follow:

The Ingredients and Items you need

Some of the required items and other ingredients you need for this do-it-yourself project are:

• Small round metal tins with lids
• A glass container or a small mason jar (or a double-boiler if you have it)
• 1/2 cup of unrefined coconut oil
• 1/4 cup of grated and well-chopped Shea butter or beeswax
• 15 drops of Rosemary oil
• 6 drops of Turmeric oil
• 15 drops of Peppermint oil
• 2 drops of Ginger oil

How to Mix the Ingredients Together

Now you will learn how to blend the ingredients to make your own muscle-soothing massage oil.

Using a low to medium heat, warm about 2 inch of water in a pot or saucepan. Take a glass container and mix all of the solid ingredients such as coconut oil, shea butter or beeswax, and place in the warm water and leave them to dissolve. Then, bring the saucepan out of the heat and leave the mixture to cool down. Add all the essential oils you want to blend, and then, stir the mix thoroughly.

After this, pour the blended oil into round tins and leave them to cool down thoroughly.  Then, store this domestic oil in a cool place and use for about six months.

Final Thoughts

Treating sore muscles with essential oils is a double-duty wellness act. Not only do you get the healing power of the essential oils, you also benefit from receiving the hands-on massage, from the space and relaxation of a steaming hot bath, or you can enjoy the soothing feeling of a compress application.

In either case, I hope your body feels better after these home remedy treatments.

To your well-being,

Emma

References

https://www.up-nature.com/blogs/news/essential-oil-for-joint-pain-and-muscle-spasms