Common names: Lavender, English Lavender, French Lavender
Taxonomic name: Lavandula angustifolia (English Lavender), L. dentata (French Lavender)
Family: Lamiaceae
Related herbs: Sage, Rosemary, the whole Mint family
Area of origin: Europe, Mediterranean, Asia
Parts used: leaves, flowers, oil
Can be used for: Food, cosmetics, relaxant, sugar problems, headaches
Organ/System affinities: Heart, Liver
Healing Actions: relaxant, antispasmodic, circulatory stimulant, relaxing nervine, uterine tonic, analgesic, carminative, cholagogue, antimicrobial, antiseptic, cooling stimulant
Taste: Bitter, aromatic, somewhat pungent, antiseptic
Tissue states: Heat, damp, rising, tension, excitation atrophy, depression
Energetics: Cooling, drying but with some warming potential. Stimulating, dispersing, relaxant.
Healing constituents: Volatile oil containing –
Monoterpenes (including limonene, alpha-pinene, ocimene, camphene, allo-ocimene, beta-myrcene, camphene, cineol, terpinene-4-ol) Monoterpenols (including linalool and its acetic esters, geraniol, terpineol, borneol, lavandulol) Triterpenes (including ursolic acid) Sesquiterpenes (including carophyllene, farnesene)3
Other constituents –
Coumarins (umbelliferone, herniarin, coumarin) Flavonoids (including luteolin) Esters (including linalyl acetate, lavandulyl acetate, geranyl acetate) Oxides (including cineole oxide, linalool oxide). Ketones (including camphor, octanone). Tannins. Courmanic acid. Umbelliferonemethylether. Cedrene.
Warnings: Lavender is a uterine tonic, and emmenagogue, so should be avoided in pregnancy
Description
Everyone who was ever a kid knows Lavender! It’s that purple plant in the garden that your Grandmother and her friends always smelled of. It’s the one your Mum tied up in little bags and put in the clothes drawer.
Lavender has been a part of most of our lives, but how to use it as a remedy when we are ill? It’s probably no surprise that Lavender helps us to relax. It’s used in pillows, as oils and as teas for just that reason. Growing up, I used to hate the smell of Lavender. It used to give me headaches. Now I know why and the more I learn about herbs and people, the more I use Lavender over many other herbs.
There are many species in the Lavender genus but the ones most commonly used in herbalism are English Lavender (L. angustifolia) and French Lavender (L. dentata). You may see L. officinalis in many books but that was renamed to L. angustifolia. ‘officinalis‘ meant that it is the Lavender used in the British Pharmacopoeia, ‘angustifolia‘ means ‘narrow leaved’. ‘dentata’ means ‘toothed’, referring to the leaf margins on this species.
Lavender can be best identified by its smell – it smells of ummm Lavender. It’s such a distinctive smell that I don’t think there’s many folks in the world who haven’t experienced it. Distinctive, Lavender coloured, lipped flowers are held in clusters on upright flowering spikes. The purple calyx of the flowers is very distinctive in some species.
Lavender has grey /green , lance shaped leaves. L. dentata leaves have toothed edges and are slightly wooly. The leaves of all Lavender species are highly aromatic when crushed. Lavender stems are grey/green and angular, almost square and slightly hairy.
Medicinal uses
If I was to summarize the effects of Lavender, it would be by saying that it has an amazing effect on tension in the mind and this translates into a whole range of remedial actions. Like Lemon Balm, Lavender is cooling relaxing You may see it listed in some places as a stimulant, but I reckon that this is because it promotes the free flow of energy and blood by stimulating peripheral circulation and easing the mind, making us feel more energized in some situations.
It has a great effect on the autonomic (involuntary) nervous system and helps that to relax. I mentioned before that Lavender’s effect was on the mind. Well, (here we get a bit technical) the autonomic nervous system translates unconscious thought into physical action, so if the unconscious is relaxed, the body will be too. It opens the mind so that its contents can be moved out.
How else can Lavender help ease physical symptoms by relaxing our mind? Tension headaches and tightness in the neck and shoulders that come from anxiety and stress can be relieved. Nausea and stomach ache from stress. Lavender helps with for conditions of dizziness and fainting and Matthew Wood relates it to exhaustion from too much thinking, ruminating and meditating. We can use Lavender to help those who are perfectionists, detail oriented but whose perfectionism comes from anxiousness and too much thinking about something. It helps us sleep when our minds are too busy.
I like to think of Rosemary and Lavender as being on a continuum. Rosemary lifts energy and stimulates while Lavender soothes and sends downwards. I find that this is best seen in headaches. I use Rosemary when one’s mind is heavy and dull and there’s that dull headache that comes with extreme tiredness. Rosemary sends blood and energy upwards, stimulating the brain and blood vessels and clearing the feeling. Lavender is great for the opposite kind of headache, one caused by anxiety or overthinking, the kind that comes when the brain is racing and one’s head is full of thoughts. Lavender brings that energy downwards and clears the head that way. It has a counterpart in the Bach Flower Remedies – White Chestnut, which excels at turning off that ‘radio in our heads for a while, allowing us to rest and refocus our mind.
Lucy Jones recommends Lavender for those who haven’t experienced spontaneous joy for a while. It can open the Heart and allow the love to flow.
Lavender relaxes veins through its effect on the nervous system and the promotion of growth of new capillaries, allowing blood to flow better in areas of congestion and relieving pain and inflammation.
Lavender can help us relax, increase our energy through easing our mind and letting it flow. It also gives us energy through its effect on blood sugar, this is why it’s a bit of a contradiction when you read about it in some books, it’s both a relaxant and a stimulant. Its use as a cholagogue (to increase bile) helps provide us with better digestion, which increases our energy too. Increased bile means better lubrication in the digestive tract, reducing many complaints such as constipation and bloating. Combined with the carminative effect of its oils, Lavender soothes upset stomachs and relieves nausea, gas and colic.
Being rich in aromatics, Lavender can help us with gum infections and bad breath, coughs and respiratory congestion. Direct contact with the oil is a well known way to relieve pain (I believe it was the first oil to be ‘discovered’ by modern science and that it gave birth to the field of aromatherapy. The essential oil is an amazing analgesic when applied directly to injured areas.
Dorothy Hall says that exposure to Lavender can help people who feel like they need to fast or purge. In this sense it is similar to the Bach Remedy ‘Crabapple Both these remedies help people who feel in some way ‘unclean’.
I’ve mentioned that Lavender complements Rosemary in its effect on blood sugar. Lavender improves the conversion of sugar stored in the liver into glucose, giving rise to more energy. Rosemary has an effect more like insulin, reducing blood sugar levels when they are too high.
Preparing and using Lavender
You can use Lavender in any way that you can think of. A strong cup of Lavender tea is a traditional relaxant and an infusion (though more bitter) is better,
Bunches of Lavender placed around the home can bring ease and relaxation, in the same way, sachets of Lavender placed on or under pillows can help us unwind and sleep easily.
Lavender tincture is very effective, though quite bitter. Tincture it at a higher concentration of alcohol (>60%) for best extraction of the oils. As with Rosemary, don’t panic about the oily goo that forms when you dilute it. That is just the oils and resins precipitating out as they aren’t water soluble. If you tincture Lavender or Rosemary at lower concentrations, you won’t see this effect. You only need a teaspoonful of Lavender tincture in a cup of water to get a medicinal effect. I like to use it when I have a cold (like I have right now) and the only symptom is congestion that feels to be right at the top of my sinuses) and the headache associated with that). A dose of Lavender tincture quickly but temporarily relieved the discomfort.
I’m only new to making glycerites but, based on other herbs that I’ve prepared with this solvent, a Lavender glycerite should be just delicious! Maybe a Lavender and Rose petal glycerite…mmmm! I’d like to experiment with a Lavender Liniment too some time.
Of course, Lavender essential oil is world famous for its effects, it is also pretty cheap as essential oils go. It is also one of the very few essential oils that can be applied directly to the skin. It penetrates very well and is known for its analgesic properties. I don’t like to recommend any essential oils for internal use though.
Adding a little Lavender essential to your bath salts or directly to your bath water can transform your bathroom into an haven of relaxation. You can add bunches of Lavender leaves and flowers to the water instead to get the effect. On the topic of baths, Lavender leaves and flowers added to a foot bath can bring almost immediate relaxation and is a great way to get kids to slow down before bed and relieve irritability.
Other herb pages on Ligaya Garden
We cover a lot of ground on many herb related topics here on our website. There are whole pages devoted to different topics as well as frequent posts. Some of the links are –
