Spotlight on Essential Oils: Spearmint
Like other essential oils, spearmint essential oil is extracted from the leaves of its source plant—mentha spicate, an herb plant that flourishes in most temperate climates—by steam distillation, a process that gently extracts and concentrates the essence of the plant’s fragrance and properties into an oil that can be used in a multitude of ways.
Spearmint is such a common and well-loved plant, you might even have a pot or patch of it in your own garden, and you’ve likely had foods, confections, or toothpaste imbued with its cooling, aromatic oil. But spearmint has more than just a nice scent and taste. It’s full of compounds that are healing and healthy for skin.
Spearmint’s cooling characteristics make spearmint essential oil a favorite ingredient for medicines, oral hygiene products, and for skin care products like salves and soaps. Its menthol content relaxes and cools achy and strained muscles, alleviates headaches, and relieves stress. Its scent is refreshing and stimulating.
The menthol in spearmint oil is a topical analgesic that helps relieve minor aches and pains, heal bruises, soothe itching, and treat minor burns. Menthol and other compounds in spearmint oil, such as myrcene and caryophyllene, also have antiseptic properties that help heal wounds and prevent infections.
Spearmint oil contains several compounds, including carvone and cis-carveol, that give it excellent antimicrobial and antifungal properties. Because of this, spearmint essential oil is often used to protect wounds from infection, treat chronic skin conditions, and remedy fungal conditions such as athlete’s food and nail fungus.
Like other mints, spearmint is an excellent insect repellent. One of its major components is limonene—also found in citrus oils—which is widely used as a safe and effective insecticide that repels flies, moths, ants, and mosquitoes.
We pair spearmint essential oil with eucalyptus essential oils to craft our Spearmint Eucalyptus goat milk soap, a fresh, uplifting strong-scented soap that’s popular with gardeners and hikers.
