Bergamot Essential Oil Benefits For Skin And Hair Health

The health benefits of bergamot essential oil, especially skin and hair health, are unknown to many people who regularly use products that contain bergamot extracts. Bergamot is a fruit widely known for its use within the cosmetics and food industries. The bergamot tree, which produces a citrus bergamot fruit, is a not too distant relative of the lemon tree. Bergamot is rich in essential oil which has researched bioactive compounds with strong effects that could have an influence on our health.

Oxidative stress plays a key role in the development of chronic diseases. Bergamot essential oils may have benefits for our health in reducing the oxidative stress levels in our body. Our skin is exposed to both natural and man made oxidative stresses every day. Considering rising levels of chronic inflammatory diseases, it is very important to ensure that your body is well protected from oxidative stress.

Bergamot essential oil may have benefits for our skin and hair health considering researched potential benefits from its bioactive compounds that may include anti-inflammatory or antimicrobial effects. The research on bergamot essential oil also shows that its compounds may protect us from heavy metal exposure and neurodegenerative stresses.

Here the potential health benefits of bergamot essential oil will be reviewed, with particular attention to how bergamot oil benefits the skin and hair.

How Bergamot Essential Oil Could Have Benefits For Skin And Hair

The bergamot fruit is a very rich source of essential oil. The essential oil of bergamot contains a large amount of monoterpenes. You find terpene compounds in many different fruits, but these compounds are of course more dense in some fruits than others. Monoterpenes are very bioactive and have been extensively studied. Bergamot fruits are a great example of a terpene dense fruit and contribute to a large quantity of its essential oil.

Terpenes have anti-inflammatory activity and antimicrobial effects which may contribute to the skin or hair health promoting effects from bergamot essential oil. Bergamot essential oil also contains other bioactive compounds that offer health promoting effects too.

Bergamot Essential Oil Antioxidants

Essential oil that is rich in antioxidants or anti-inflammatory plant compounds, such as those from bergamot, could have significant benefits for our skin and hair health.

The skin is our largest organ, providing an essential barrier from pollutants and protects internal organs from damage. Our skin is subject to environmental skin damage every day that causes oxidative stress in skin cells. Oxidative skin damage is an important risk factor for skin ageing and is heavily implicated in the deterioration of skin appearance. Effects of accelerated skin ageing include physical wrinkles, loss of elasticity or changes in colouration. This is when the body is unable to repair the skin as effectively.

Oxidative damage to skin cells builds up as we age, due to accumulated exposure to toxins, chemicals or other skin irritating substances. Our bodies also produce oxidative molecules naturally in energy production. Oxidative compounds change the nature of some fibrous proteins in the skin, such as collagen, which is the most important protein complex for overall structure and skin youthfulness. Skin fibroblast cells are prone to inflammation from these skin changes and resulting skin ageing.

Bergamot Essential Oil Skin Protective Effects

Protective antioxidant or anti-inflammatory compounds found in bergamot essential oil, including monoterpenes, could reduce cellular stress to human skin cells. 90% of the main bioactive compounds in bergamot essential oil include limonene, γ-terpinene, β-pinene, linalool, and linalyl acetate. These all contribute to its overall antioxidant capacity and ability to prevent oxidative damage via reactive free radical removal. Limonene, linalool and linalyl acetate are key antioxidants.

Antioxidants in bergamot essential oil may prevent skin cells from being severely damaged, while encouraging skin protein or membrane production via reduced skin cell stress. This includes important skin proteins, such as collagen, that are linked to visibly youthful looking skin. Therefore, reductions in cell stress from bergamot would encourage more optimal growth, slowed ageing and encourage skin healing. Antioxidants can also conserve other antioxidant vitamins, such as vitamin C. This would further boost skin collagen production. These effects would encourage more optimal skin health.

Bergamot Antioxidant Benefits For Hair

The antioxidant effects to skin cells are transferrable to hair cells. Antioxidants can reduce oxidative stress levels experienced by hair cells and may improve levels of essential protein production by hair cells. They could also prevent some hair cells dying off. This antiaging activity, conserving cells from oxidative damage, would help to improve hair health.

Considering that bergamot essential oil containing products are widely available is cosmetic products, adding bergamot products to our routines could be an easy way to improve our skin or hair health.

Heavy Metals And Skin Health

Our skin is exposed to environmental toxins every day, most of which are man made. We are also being increasingly exposed to heavy metals. Surprisingly, a lot of exposure to metal toxins occurs through our public water supply.

Toxins, especially heavy metal toxins, are bad because they can cause oxidative stress in the body or cell death. They are important environmental stressors to avoid. Heavy metals can impair mitochondria function, drain key protective antioxidants and this further promotes oxidative stress.

This makes the use of cosmetic products that contain bioactive compounds with detoxifying potential, including showering products, of some interest when it comes to protecting our skin. Products rich in antioxidant or detoxifying compounds could protect our skin from oxidative damage.

Bergamot Essential Oil And Heavy Metals

Bergamot essential oil has been shown to protect some cells from heavy metal caused oxidative stress. Bioactive compounds such as limonene could massively influence the risk of skin and hair cell oxidative damage from heavy metals.

Bergamot essential oil could particularly improve effects from cadmium, which is a heavy metal that can cause harmful oxidative stress in the body as a toxin.

Because of these effects, bergamot oil may be able to reduce systemic oxidative stress and also the risk of damage to nerve cells. This sort of damage could lead to inflammatory diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

Because of the potential that bergamot oil has in curving oxidative stress levels from heavy metals, this essential oil could promote antiaging within the skin. This is one important means as to how bergamot oil could have benefits for your skin.

Again, these detoxifying effects are potentially transferable to the hair and hair cells. Our hair cells are also subject to oxidative stress, especially through toxic heavy metals. Encouraging more optimal oxidative status in hair cells would support hair growth or maintenance.

Using products containing bergamot essential oil, that are rich in heavy metal detoxifying and stress reducing compounds, could support hair health.

Microbes And Skin Health

One aspect of skin health that is not often considered is the overall health of our skin microbiome. There are microbes everywhere, ones that could be helpful and those that are pathogenic or potentially harmful. Some of them live on our skin and contribute to our health without us thinking about them.

Microbial imbalances in the body are very much linked to skin health and can influence diseases such as eczema. This is because of immune system activation and systemic inflammation.

Some microbes try to disrupt our skin barrier and initiate systemic inflammatory responses in the skin. This may accelerate the ageing of skin cells and reduces the visual wellness of our skin too. Skin barrier cell invasion activates responses that could make our skin layers thinner, while greatly increasing our susceptibility to skin diseases such as eczema.

Some microbes make us more susceptible to other inflammatory skin conditions, including acne. They can do this through invasive activation of sebum production which is linked to the development or worsening of acne.

Anti-Microbial Effects Of Bergamot Essential Oil

Bergamot essential oil compounds are known to have antimicrobial properties, especially the monoterpenes which can inhibit the growth of microbes. One recent study identified bergamot essential oil as having antimicrobial activity against various pathogenic bacteria.

The antimicrobial capacity of bergamot essential oil is attributed to linalool and linalyl acetate, which disrupt bacterial cell membranes. They specifically inhibit biofilms and interfere with microbial enzymes. Bergamot essential oil may inhibit growth of Staphylococcus aureus and multi-drug-resistant bacterial strains. Bergamot essential oil may also inhibit growth of Candida.

Taken together, this means that bergamot essential oil could inhibit harmful microbes from growing on our skin and could convert into potential health benefits for our skin.

Overall, research shows that bergamot essential oil has potential benefits for complimenting skin and hair health, through reducing systemic oxidative stress and levels of skin disease promoting microbes on the skin.

Summary

Because of its rich antioxidant content, bergamot essential oil may have many potential health benefits for our skin and hair.

Oxidative stress plays a key role in the development of chronic diseases. Natural antioxidants, such as those found in bergamot essential oil, help our body to reduce oxidative stresses. Monoterpenes are very bioactive compounds found within bergamot essential oil and have been extensively studied for anti-inflammatory effects.

Inflammation is very important for skin health, with studies showing that bergamot essential oil could assist with reducing ageing of the skin. This is via antioxidant monoterpenes and other compounds found within bergamot. Limonene, linalool and linalyl acetate are key antioxidants that could help to remove free radicals. This prevents oxidative damage, which can also severely damage cells and affects hair health. Bergamot may be able to protect from heavy metal induced oxidative stress and damage to the skin.

Bergamot essential oil compounds may also have antimicrobial effects. Skin microbes are important for our wellbeing and can contribute to skin appearance. Pathogenic skin bacteria could also contribute to acne and eczema, increasing levels of oxidative stress in the skin.

Because of these properties, bergamot essential oil may have benefits for skin and hair health through antiaging oxidative stress protection, improvements in growth and collagen production.

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