Experiment #1: Healing a Bruise with Essential Oils

I was going to do a post on my first impressions of Young Living's Premium Starter Kit, but... I'm just too excited about the outcome of this experiment that I decided to share this first!

About 2 weeks ago, my son took a nasty fall while ice skating.  He hit his right knee hard on the ice, and it got bruised pretty badly.  His whole knee was a dark purple.  It was terrifying to look at!

So I looked up which oils could help heal a bruise, and I found some oils which were included in the PSK: lavender and frankincense.

I decided to try lavender first.  I knew that you can use lavender neat (i.e. undiluted), but I diluted it with jojoba oil (that was all I had on hand) since I was going to use it on a child.  Plus, I wanted to extend the usage of my oils.  *grin*  I massaged the oil on his knees (the left one had a tiny bruise, too) every night, and gave him a foot massage while I was at it.  (Now he asks for a foot massage every night!).  The reason why I rubbed the oil on his knees only at night was because I just didn’t have the time to do it during the day.  At this point I still hadn’t done any roller bottle mixes or anything.  I was just eyeballing how much carrier oil to 1 drop of lavender I should mix on my palm.

A few times, depending on my mood, I would mix lavender and frankincense together. It was fun to do and nice to smell!  But I think I wasn’t really expecting any dramatic result. I also massaged him with only the night light on, so I wasn’t able to observe the changes day-to-day.  So imagine my surprise when a week later, I checked and saw the bruise had almost healed!

Day 3                                                                                             Day 7

I was not able to take a photo of the bruise before I started applying the lavender, but I took one on the third day.  By then the purple area had already lessened.  By day 7, it was almost gone!  The small one on his left knee had also almost disappeared!

Since they usually heal on their own, I never really paid much attention to how long it takes for bruises to disappear.  But being a skeptic, I searched on the net on how long it usually takes.  This says that it normally takes around 2 to 4 weeks to heal.  Given that I also have a bruise of my own, on my arm, which I got while working out, and it's still black after a week, I would say that 2 to 4 weeks sounds pretty accurate.  My son's gigantic bruise took less than 2 weeks to heal with lavender!  A few days after I took that Day 7 photo, my son's bruise had completely healed.  (Only to be replaced by a new one, of course!)  

Conclusion:  Lavender does heal bruises, and fast!