8 Benefits of Frankincense Essential Oil
Frankincense essential oil is known as the ‘King of Essential Oils’, both due to its versatility, and its power. A common phrase in the essential oils community is: “When in doubt, use Frankincense”. That’s because it has a multitude of uses, and will almost certainly be beneficial, whatever your ailment. I’m excited to share some of the many benefits of Frankincense Essential Oil with you!
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What is Frankincense Essential Oil?
Frankincense essential comes from the resin of the boswellia tree. This tree typically grows in the dry, mountainous regions of India, North Africa, and the Middle East.
During certain times of the year, the tree is cut in several places, allowing the sap to pour out. Once the sap is collected, it’s allowed to harden into a thick substance called resin. The essential oil is then collected from the resin using a process called steam distillation.
Frankincense has a beautiful, woody aroma, which has a calming and grounding effect.
History of Frankincense Essential Oil
Boswellia trees have been celebrated since ancient times. The Babylonians and Assyrians would burn the tree resin in religious ceremonies and for contemplative meditation. The ancient Egyptians used it in perfumes and salves for soothing skin. Oil from the resin has long been used in Ayurvedic and traditional Chinese health practices.
Frankincense is renowned due to the story of the Three Wise Men gifting it to the baby Jesus. They gave him the gifts of Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh, which were considered the three most valuable gifts of the time.
The many benefits of frankincense oil, along with its incredible therapeutic properties, are why it’s referred to as the king of oils.
Benefits of Frankincense Essential Oil
Frankincense oil is one of our most popular essential oils, due to its many health benefits. It is anti-bacterial, antiseptic, and an astringent.
Here are some of the benefits of Frankincense Essential Oil:
1. Frankincense Oil as an Enhancer
Frankincense essential oil is an enhancer, meaning it enhances the benefits of other essential oils when used together. When applying other essential oils topically, layer Frankincense on top.
2. Frankincense Oil for Skin
Frankincense oil is incredibly nourishing, making it one of the best oils for natural skincare. It promotes healthy cell regeneration to keep your skin cells and tissues healthy.
The main active component of frankincense essential oil, alpha-pinene, is thought to be behind its various health and anti-ageing benefits.
You can apply it neat (without dilution), or mix it with a carrier oil or an unscented lotion if you have sensitive skin. I recommend diluting it with a carrier oil before applying it, so it has more of a gentle healing effect.
My favourite carrier oil to use is Fractionated Coconut Oil.
Many cosmetic products contain frankincense oil, but you can also DIY your own!
I love to use this hydrating skin cream, which already contains frankincense essential oil.
Since frankincense also helps promote restful sleep, it’s a wonderful addition to your nighttime skincare routine.
Anti-Aging
Applying Frankincense essential oil to your face can reduce blemishes, wrinkles, fine lines, and dark spots. It’s also incredible for reducing the appearance of scars. It helps to create an even skin tone for an improved overall appearance.
As a powerful astringent, it can also reduce acne blemishes, and the appearance of large pores.
Add a few drops of frankincense oil to your favourite skin cream, or add 1-2 drops of frankincense oil with jojoba oil, and apply it on the face for anti aging benefits.
Skin Irritations
Apply Frankincense essential oil to skin irritations, such as cuts, scrapes, burns, rashes, skin tags, inflammatory skin conditions, or dry skin.
I love to combine frankincense with lavender & tea tree oil for skin irritations. All 3 are incredible oils for skin support.
Scarring
Frankincense essential oil has anti-inflammatory properties which helps in healing wounds, damaged, broken skin and even newly formed scars. It helps in reducing appearance of scars and eventually helps them to fade away.
For best results, frankincense oil should be applied frequently. At least one time per day, but 2-3 times is better.
3. Frankincense Oil for Oral Health
Due to its antiseptic properties, Frankincense oil can help support oral health. It can help to heal mouth sores reduce bad breath, and help to pull toxins out of your body.
Add 1-2 drops frankincense essential oil to a Tbsp of coconut oil, and swish for 2-3 minutes. Oil pulling helps to clean your oral cavity, and pulls toxins out of your mouth.
4. Frankincense Oil for Hair & Fingernails
Frankincense oil stimulates blood circulation to the scalp and hair follicles, which helps in promoting hair growth. It reduces the amount of hair loss, split ends, thinning of hair and tangles.
Put a drop of frankincense essential oil in your palm before adding shampoo, then massage it into your scalp to help have a healthy scalp and to promote hair growth.
Rub a drop of frankincense on your cuticles and fingernails to help strengthen them.
5. Frankincense Oil for Stress & Anxious Feelings
Frankincense is one of the best essential oils for reducing stress and anxious feelings, and also helps improve focus and concentration. It helps support your nervous system, and has comforting properties.
When diffused or applied topically, Frankincense oil provides a sense of peace, calm, and overall wellness. It also helps to promote focus and mental clarity, making it a perfect choice for meditation, studying, or anything else that requires your focus.
A great way to use Frankincense oil for stress and mood support, is by applying frankincense to your pulse points, or to put a few drops in a cold mist diffuser.
Below, I’ll share a few of my favourite diffuser blends and roller bottle recipes that use frankincense.
6. Frankincense Oil for Respiratory Support
Apply Frankincense essential oil to your chest to help support respiratory function.
You could mix it with other oils, such as Breathe, Siberian Fir, or Peppermint essential oil, to help open up those airways even more. Frankincense also helps to support a healthy heart rate.
7. Frankincense Oil for Digestive Support
Frankincense essential oil can help soothe your digestive system. A recent study show that frankincense benefits the digestive tract, due to its anti-inflammatory properties.
Either rub a drop on your abdomen, or put a drop on your tongue for internal support (always make sure your brand is safe for internal use).
8. Frankincense Oil for Body Tension
Frankincense essential oil is wonderful for helping to soothe body tension and for muscle pain.
Rub a drop on your jaw and temples when you feel head tension coming on, to help with pain relief.
Massage frankincense into sore, aching muscles and joints. Frankincense helps the body create a healthy inflammatory response.
Add a few drops of frankincense essential oil to a cup of epsom salts, and soak in a bath, for all over tension relief.
How to Use Frankincense Essential Oil
To learn more about how to use essential oils in general, I recommend checking out my Beginner’s Guide to Essential Oils.
There are 3 basic ways to use essential oils:
1. Use Frankincense Oil Aromatically
One of the simplest ways to experience the benefits of essential oils, is with an essential oils diffuser. You can create and customize your own diffuser blends, and each oil you use in that blend will offer you some benefit.
Since Frankincense is an enhancer, it will help enhance the benefits of the other oils you use in that blend.
In a standard sized diffuser, I would use a total of 3-5 drops of essential oils, then fill to the fill line with water. The higher the quality of essential oils, the less you have to use. If your bottle tells you that you need 15-20 drops of essential oil, there is a good chance it is not a pure essential oil.
Check out my review of my favourite essential oil diffusers.
Here are a few diffuser blends for you to try:
Another aromatic use of Frankincense, is by making a DIY room spray. Frankincense blends well with so many essential oils, you can really use your imagination to come up with something creative. Here are some examples of DIY room spray recipes with frankincense oil:
2. Use Frankincense Oil Topically
When applying Frankincense topically, you can either apply it neat (without dilution), or by mixing it with a carrier oil.
Before using frankincense topically, it’s a good idea to do a patch test. Find a small area of your body to apply frankincense oil, and make sure you don’t have a reaction to it. Although allergic reactions to frankincense are rare, especially when using a high quality oil like doTERRA, it’s always better to be safe than sorry.
A carrier oil is simply a neutral oil that helps ‘carry’ your essential oil. The benefits of using a carrier oil are that it helps distribute your essential oil more evenly over an area of your body, which helps your essential oils go further. It also helps reduce the risk of skin irritations, since essential oils can be very potent.
My favourite carrier oil to use is unscented, fractionated coconut oil (which is in a liquid form). But you can also use any carrier oil of your choosing, such as almond oil, jojoba oil, or even olive oil.
One of the best ways to use Frankincense for topical use, is by making a rollerbottle.
Here are some frankincense roller bottle recipes you can try:
3. Use Frankincense Oil Internally
High quality essential oils like doTERRA, are safe to use internally. You can put a drop under your tongue daily, for full-body cellular support. I like to put a drop on the roof of my mouth when I feel head tension coming on.
Frankincense Oil Precautions
Here are some tips for ensuring you are using your frankincense oil safely:
Quality
First and foremost, always ensure that you are only purchasing high quality essential oils. As frankincense is an expensive oil, there is a lot of temptation for companies to produce it cheaply, in order to make a profit.
A true, high quality frankincense oil will be potent, and will not have any fillers or additives in it. You can’t tell this from looking at the label, since the essential oil industry is unregulated, and they can put whatever they want on the label. Instead, you will need to spend some time researching the company, the ensure that the company has stringent standards for purity testing.
Keep in mind that according to the APRC (Aromatic Plant Research Centre), over 90% of essential oils on the market are adulterated in some way.
Dilution
Even when using a high quality essential oil, dilution is important, at least until you have some experience using that essential oil and know how your skin will react. See my Beginner’s Guide to Essential Oils for dilution guidelines.
A good general rule of thumb, is to use a dilution ratio of 1%. This means one drop of frankincense oil to one tsp of carrier oil.
It’s always a good idea to do a patch test on a small area of your skin, before applying to a larger area.
Once you have had some experience applying frankincense essential oil to your skin, you may find that you can apply it neat (without dilution) to small areas for short periods of time, for acute issues.
Pregnancy/Children/Pets
Extra caution should be used when applying essential oils to pregnant women, babies, children, and pets. While frankincense is a pretty mild essential oil, you may wish to dilute more heavily in these situations.
Where to Buy Frankincense Essential Oil
As you can see, frankincense oil is one of the best essential oils to support a variety of health conditions.
When using essential oils for therapeutic use, it’s important to choose a high quality brand.
Over 90% of essential oils on the market are adulterated (contaminated with artificial fragrance oils, diluted with carrier oils, or grown with the use of herbicides and pesticides). You definitely DON’T want those in your natural health products.
(Note: since essential oils are not a regulated industry, they don’t have to disclose any of these contaminants! They can write ‘100% Pure’ on the label, even if that’s not the case. Be wary of where you buy your essential oils!).
The brand of essential oils I use and trust, is dōTERRA. I’ve been using doTERRA essential oils for over 8 years, and I will never use any other brand.
In fact, I believe in them so much, that I decided to become a dōTERRA Wellness Advocate, which means I help guide others on the process of getting started with essential oils.
doTERRA Frankincense essential oil is a proprietary blend of resins from four species of Boswellia trees: Boswellia carterii, Boswellia sacra, Boswellia papyrifera, and Boswellia frereana.
Blending Frankincense oil from a variety of species of frankincense trees, helps to diversify supply pressure, and create sustainable harvesting solutions.
There are 2 ways to buy Frankincense oil:
The best way to purchase Frankincense Essential Oil is with one of our starter kits.
With a starter kit, you’ll receive a variety of high-quality essential oils, including Frankincense, which you can blend together, or use individually.
(Here’s where you can learn more about the Top 10 essential oils and how to use them).
Having a variety of essential oils at your fingertips will ensure that you will have essential oils that will help you with a variety of health conditions, without side-effects.
The starter kits are discounted, and they include a free wholesale account, which means you’ll get 25% off anything you order for the next year.
When you order your essential oil starter kit through me, you also get a free, personalized wellness consult (value $150), and you can also join our exclusive Facebook community for continuing support and education as you learn how to use essential oils to support your body in wellness.
Due to Frankincense’s versatility, you will find that it’s included in several of our starter kits.
You can browse our starter kits here:
2. Individually
Although starter kits are by far the best value for your money, if you just want to purchase Frankincense on its own, you can do that here:
Interested in Learning More Ways to Use Frankincense Essential Oil?
Download my free guide: 31 Days of Frankincense:
Other essential oil posts you might enjoy
Beginner’s Guide to Essential Oils
Best Essential Oils for Sleep
10 Ways Essential Oils Save Money
All-Purpose Cleaning Spray with Essential Oils
Deep Blue Essential Oil Uses and Benefits
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