I love essential oils. Is that surprising? Surely if you know me, you know that may be an understatement. Know what else I love? Essential oil diffusers. I have a few criteria that I follow before I purchase one, the first is its safety features, the second is it needs to be attractive in some way. I get this question often, so I thought it was time to put it into a blog. Drum roll please…..here are my top 5 essential oil diffuser recommendations.
#1. ASAKUKI Essential Oil diffuser. I have never quite filled it to the rim as the reservoir is a large 700ml, but I love the clean color of this sleek white and grey diffuser. The cube shape makes it really easy to clean, it filters through 7 LED colors (I LOVE my mood lighting), and there are timer settings; a must for me. I use the one-hour setting button so that I can set it and forget it. A bonus is that it is whisper quiet.
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#2 Stadler Form Jasmine Essential Oil, in black. I love black, and it fits in my bathroom perfectly. It comes in other colors too. Love red? Steel grey? Or classic white? The timer is a bit different on this one than the first, it operates at intervals of 10 minutes on and 20 minutes off, which is perfect in a bathroom when taking a bath or shower. It does not get overwhelming because it shuts off after 10 minutes. Perfect!
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#3 Everlasting Comfort Diffuser. If safety is really important to you, perhaps this BPA free diffuser will be of interest to you. It is attractive, comes with a 7 LED light pattern with a dimming option, which is really nice if you like to sleep with a very dark room. There are four timer settings, but the one I reach for is 1 hour so I can feel safe knowing it will shut off shortly after I fall asleep.
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#4 SZTROKIA 3D Galaxy Aromatherapy Diffuser. This is definitely a diffuser purchased for the ooh’s and aah’s, over anything else. It is simply gorgeous. I have been known to run the lamp without the mister, which is a perfect function for me! The listing states it has 7 LED 3D color changing patterns, but there are colors in between the 7, making that number higher. There is no timer on this one, something to make note of, but there are 3 options for the strength of the mist. The other diffusers are made of plastic, this one is glass.
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#5 SOCKETECH Smart WiFi Essential Oil Aromatherapy Diffuser. This last choice is for those aromatherapy lovers who are also tech lovers. This beauty is Alexa & Google home compatible allowing you to utilize all Alexa and Google Home devices to command the diffuser to turn ON/OFF or change the light color by voice. There are 7 LED dimmable light patterns and three timers setting, with my requirement of a one-hour setting.
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So, you may be asking yourself, “Is the timer really that important”, or “Why a timer”? I want to make sure I cover some safety aspects here.
Our sense of smell goes through five stages, those are: detect, transmit, perceive, analyze, and store. These stages cycle remarkable quickly. Up inside our nose, inside each nostril is the beginning of our olfactory system called the olfactory epithelium. The olfactory epithelium is the size of a small postage stamp in each nostril, and has 40 million sensory neurons, capable of detecting .0000000013 of an ounce of an aroma in a single breath of air (1). We can identify a smell instantly, but it can fade just as quickly, what do I mean?
Have you ever walked into a room and smelled something very specific? It could have been pleasing or not, but if you stuck around in the room for a decent length of time, did you ever experience that scent essentially disappearing? Well it didn’t disappear; this is actually a phenomenon called habituation (make or become used to or accustomed to something). In aromatherapy this is often termed temporary sensory fatigue or olfactory adaption.
Robert Tisserand stated in his book, Essential Oil Safety, “prolonged inhalation (more than about 30 minutes) of concentrated essential oil vapors (e.g., steam inhalation or direct from a bottle) can lead to headaches, vertigo, nausea and lethargy” (2). He recommends diffusing for 30-60 minutes before taking a break, I like to be more conservative when little kids are in the home of 15 minutes of diffusing at a time.
We can begin to paint the picture here, diffusing essential oils for too long not only leaves the possibility of overload via the symptoms mentioned above, but olfactory adaption can play tricks on our senses if we cannot even smell the aroma any longer in the room. Couple this with our loved ones, sometimes too little to express that they are feeling unwell, and it can easily be seen that diffusing for hours on end is not the best choice.
For your safety and for conserving essential oils, grab one of these diffusers with a timer. Cute and practical!
Enjoy!
Leslie xo
References
(1) Peterson, D. (2012) Aroma 101. American College of Healthcare Sciences
(2) Tisserand, R., Young, R., & Williamson, E. M. (2014). Essential oil safety: a guide for health care professionals. Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone/Elsevier. (100-104, 658)
