Herbal oils for health and beauty 

There are many uses to herbal oils. This includes cosmetic uses like hair enhancements or solving hair problems, like falling hair, dandruff, thin hairs and other known hair problems during pregnancy and lactation.

There are other oils for skin problems like psoriasis, leukoderma. In those conditions herbal oils can be provided to patients with or without additional medicine for internal or application use, according to situation.

In rheumatic and arthritic conditions, many oils are prescribed to patients which may include a single herb or combinations of herbs prepared in Olive, Sesame, Mustard or Sunflower oils. These oils are used based on several health conditions such as presence of inflammation on the effected body parts. Sesame oil for example can be used as oil base for herbs, when inflammation is involved. Olive oil can be used with the same herbs, when there is no inflammation. There are other factors to such as allergy to certain kind of oils or herbs, in such conditions the physician has to take some complicated decisions and select through many alternative herbs.

For home preparations herbs can simply be immersed in base oil for several weeks in direct sunlight, shaking the container several times daily for good results. Another method is to boil freshly prepared herbal decoction in selected oil on low temperature till the contents are fully evaporated.

A third, more commercial use is to place herbs over a net and evaporate their oil contents by passing high temperature fumes through them and then collecting them through condensation. Of course this is a fast method and oils extracted through this technique are purer, at the same time the cost is a bit high.

Another techniques widely used is the cold press technique. Herbs and seeds with high oil contents are simple passed through pressing machines oil is collected and strained before use. Mustard, almonds, other seeds, nuts and coconut oil is extracted using this technique.