Lavender: Nature's way to keep holiday stress at bay

November 18, 3:23 PMDenver Flower and Gardening ExaminerColleen Smith

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Here come the holidays, and with the festivity, the attendant frazzled states. Whether you're roasting the turkey or just purchasing a pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving, this season extending through New Year's Eve increases our already long list of demands, expectations and activities.

A perfect stress storm

Add to that the dark days prior to Winter Solstice, additional sugar (and possibly alcohol), missing our routine workouts in favor of parties and productions, family histories, plus budget concerns, and you've got the perfect storm for stress.

Here's a simple, easy, inexpensive, easy-to-use remedy: lavender essential oil.

If you're not already a lavender junkie, I hope to get you hooked. Lavender ranks as one of my favorite plants, and lavender essential oils provides relief and remedy for all sorts of maladies ranging from motion sickness to anxiety. If the holiday season tends to leave your nerves frazzled and frayed, lavender can help your days (and nights) be a little more merry and bright. 

Science behind lavender's calming effect

This is not New Age b.s. because scientists tells us that lavender contains linalool, a stress-reducing chemical that calms the brain's limbic center.  In fact, the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry conducted a study on rats and found that inhaling linalool reduced activity of more than 100 genes that get activated by stress. 

"A nice fix-it for stress is to put one drop of oil on your palm, then rub your hands together, bring them to your face, and inhale deeply," advised Boulder, Colorado, psychiatric nurse/aromatherapist Laraine Pounds in the December 2009 issue of Body and Soul magazine.

I like to put a few drops on a tissue and tuck it up my sleeve. Just sniffing the lavender infused tissue brings an instant measure of calm. There are as many uses for lavender essential oil as there are flowers on a lavender stem.

Best lavender essential oil in America

But not all lavender oils are created equal; and quality matters.

My very favorite lavender essential oil--and I've tried many--comes from an organic grower in California. Ever see the movie "Sideways" about Santa Barbara County wine country? The same area--the gorgeous and fertile Santa Inez Valley, is this grower's neck o' the woods. He has a beautiful field of lavender at the end of an allee' of aged olive trees. About five years ago,  I visited this organic lavender farm in Los Olivos, situated in California's gorgeous and fertile Santa Inez Valley. Clairmont Farm's distillation process differs from most; and  I’ve ordered all my lavender oil from Clairmont Farms ever since first trying it. Visit Clairmont Farms online to see fields of lavender and to see the laundry list of  uses for lavender oil. Just click here.

Give lavender oil a try this holiday season, and I bet you'll use it well into the new year and beyond. I swear by lavender oil for mitigating everything from nausea to headaches to minor cuts or bug bites. Not only is the stuff healing, it smells dreamy and clean.

Growing lavender commercially in Colorado?

Maybe we ought to include lavender in health care reform. It costs less than prescription drugs, creates fewer unpleasant side-effects, and is a renewable resource that could be cultivated stateside. What if we turned some of those corn fields into lavender fields? (Though my late great friend Carol, a gardener, claimed she could not grow corn in Iowa.) Might be a new cash crop for Colorado, though, and would require less irrigation that some of what we're growing here.

Lavender fields forever.

Has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?

Here's another entry I wrote about growing lavender. Just click here.

And click here for another entry about what to do with lavender blossoms.  

Take care of yourself this holiday season. Happy Thanksgiving and thanks for reading!

Colleen Smith began writing her first novel, Glass Halo, in the era of dinosaurs and typewriters.
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