Citrus Limon

Take this oil every morning to detoxify the body. It is especially useful for acute bacterial infections and can be either taken orally or diffused in the surrounding air. How do you take it orally? That’s a good question.

• For non-aggressive essential oils, from one to three drops at a time (usually) in a teaspoon of honey
• They can also be taken in the form of neutral tablets (acacia gum for example) filled with one to three drops of a single essential oil or an oil blend.
• Three drops of the EO on a lump of sugar, preferably cane sugar. If you read our post  Sugar No More and are now rid of the poison, you can skip this point.
• You can put your EO (that’s for Essential Oil, hope it was clear but I’m mentioning it now just in case) – so you put 1 to 3% of your EO in 90 degree-alcool and then you put 10 to 30 drops of that mix in warm water to be drank before the meal.

Essential Oil from Lemons are not just taken orally: I myself like to put a few drops in a water to wash my floors, it gives them a nice  fresh scent (and it’s probably cheaper than the store brand “lemon scent” product).

Also know that naturopaths help weight-loss-driven patients with that oil (not sure about the connection). It can also drain a tired lymph (more on detox here), and help if you suffer from anemia. That last point is interesting since what’s the link with between iron and lemon, except that they both rhyme?

Other Therapeutic Properties

The essential oil of Citrus Limon can be used both cutaneously (on the skin) or orally in the following cases:

Cutaneously (mix it with an oil such as almond or olive):

• acne,
• atherosclerosis,
• cellulite and
• herpes

Orally (for methods on how to take it orally, see previous paragraph)

• colic,
• slow digestion
• headaches or migraines,
• minor hepatic insufficiency
• motion sickness
• nausea, vomiting
• obesity
• phlebitis
• stress
• yellow fever

Cold Expression

This extraction method is only used for citrus fruit: oranges, limes, lemons, grapefruits, mandarins, tangerines, etc. …

The essence of these plants is contained in the fruit peel. It is extracted by mechanically breaking the scent pockets within the peel. In this way the whole essence, not just the essential oil, is directly obtained.

There are two interesting facts about this process:

•  The essence is directly accessible without any modification.
•  It consists of two parts: a volatile fraction (which is the only part obtained with an essential oil) and a non-volatile fraction. The non-volatile fraction not only makes the essence more easily utilizable, but also protects the volatile part because of its anti- oxidants.

I thought about writing on cold expression in that post since we’re dealing here with a citrus fruit and it is therefore relevant.

Other Types of Citrus Essential Oils

One has to be careful not to mix the different types of Citrus essential oils, even if they sound the same. For instance, Citrus hystrix and Citrus reticulata (mandarin) are used to treat insomnia, which is not the case of our Citrus Limon. For motion sickness, nausea and vomiting, Citrus reticulata is taken cutaneously while Citrus Limon only orally. See, if you’re a professional, and you mix up the names, your patients won’t think it’s funny. They won’t be able to sleep as predicted or they’ll feel motion sickness instead?

Chemotypes is the name (coined by Dr. Pierre Franchomme) used to describe the different types of essential oils for “identical” species. Basically, when you get confused between one name and another similar one (like all the different citruses) then you’re probably in a “chemotype” situation. Here’s what our AMCC Aromatherapy course (#358) has to say about it:

I would like to mention before closing this article that, although the list of EO contra-indicated for pregnant women is as long as my oven’s user-manual, Citrus Lemon is not part of it and can therefore be used safely.