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So, you are considering using rosemary oil made from rosmarinus officinalis for your hair growth. In this case, having questions is only natural. One of the most important question out of these is probably what you can expect.
After all, rosemary oil is not going to work for everyone, and there is no point in continuing to use something for months when it is doing nothing for you. This is why we’re looking at rosemary essential oil and not rosemary tea or rosemary vinegar or even rosemary extract.
So, what to expect, how long it should take to work, and some other things you might see are all important things to know about using rosemary oil. Knowing these answers may make you more or less inclined to use rosemary oil on your thinning hair.
What Rosemary Does For Your Hair
Rosemary has too many potential benefits to list them all. As for hair benefits that rosemary can give you, there are fewer of these. First, male pattern baldness is treatable using rosemary oil. Rosemary doesn’t prevent the DHT from forming, but it does prevent the DHT from attaching to your hair follicles.
This makes rosemary a far better option than medications and even herbs that affect your hormones. Next, rosemary can also help with the autoimmune diseases that cause your hair to fall out, like androgenic alopecia, though only helps minutely with this.
More than that, rosemary oil also helps fight against fungus and bacterial infections. These two things cause hair fall if not treated. The fact that rosemary essential oil also is occasionally used to ward off insects and other pests might even help keep lice and other things away from your scalp.
Rosemary oil both anti inflammatory properties and boosts circulation. Since hair growth is extremely sensitive to both of those two things, rosemary is an even bigger help thanks to these two properties. Both inflammation and a lack of blood flow essentially starve your hair follicle of the nutrients needed for your scalp health.
Aside from the hair growth benefits rosemary has, there are plenty of others. Asthma is reportedly assisted by aromatherapy of rosemary. The fact that you should get plenty of the rosemary smell when you use it on your hair is one additional benefit.
Also, anytime you put rosemary oil on your scalp for your hair, your brain should be getting some of it. Since rosemary is also used for enhancing your mental abilities, this is another added bonus of using it for your hair. And those rosemary benefits are just two of the additional benefits when using rosemary oil for your hair growth.
How Long Rosemary Might Take
How long rosemary oil might take to give you results is probably your number one question here. After all, knowing what to expect can prevent you from getting disappointed too early on. It can also ensure you don’t waste time continuing a treatment long after you should have realized it wasn’t doing anything for you.
The best way to figure out how long rosemary oil might take is looking at people who have used it. Of course, some people using rosemary oil say that they noticed results right away. Others will say negative stuff such as it made their hair oily or had no effect at all.
However, probably the most accurate information is found in studies. Fortunately, there has been a handful of medical studies done on rosemary. One of the studies done on rosemary compared it to minoxidil and used it to treat male pattern baldness.
This study, done in 2015, is probably the most pertinent to what you might be using rosemary oil for. According to the parameters they used at the time, neither the minoxidil users nor the rosemary users had discernable results in the first three months.
However, after three more months, both groups had about the same amount of new growth. It was also noted that the minoxidil group had more scalp itching, which made rosemary slightly preferable. In short, according to the study, you won’t start seeing real results for rosemary oil until the three to six month range.
That said, rosemary oil can have results more quickly than that for some. Perhaps the biggest factor in knowing how long it will take rosemary oil to give you the hair regrowth results you are looking for is going to be how, exactly, you use it.
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How You Use It
It is far more popular to use rosemary externally when using it for thinning hair. However, rosemary can also be used internally as well. Some dishes, like spaghetti, that already have some rosemary in them can stand to have a few drops of rosemary oil added to them, for example.
Using rosemary internally is good for other things besides your hair loss. However, honestly, rosemary is easier to get internally in its other forms (rosemary oil is not going to taste pleasant). Added to that, rosemary is not going to be as direct of an effect on your hair health.
In short, using rosemary oil internally, even if you find a good way to do so, is going to give far less results for your hair. When using rosemary oil internally, you may not get any results at all for your hair growth. Even if you do, it will likely take far longer than a few months and be so small as to be unnoticeable.
So, since using it externally is the way to go, let’s peek at some ways you can do this. But first, how often you use the rosemary oil is going to affect how quickly you can start seeing results. Obviously, using rosemary oil on your scalp once a month is not going to do much of anything.
Instead, rosemary oil should be applied about every other day, every day if you can manage it. However, twice a week will still give results; it will just take longer. For most, using it every time after you shower is easy to remember.
Rosemary oil can be added to other things, like your shampoo, conditioner, hair mask, or other things. However, the most benefits from rosemary oil can be gotten by applying it just with a carrier oil.
Cautions When Using Rosemary
Though using almost anything topically is not going to come with as many side effects as using something internally, rosemary still has some things you should watch out for. Then, a few possible side effects of rosemary are quite contradictory.
For example, some claim rosemary works well for treating things like seizures, liver problems, and kidney problems. On the other hand, one or two medical sites claim that rosemary causes all three of these things. So, let’s stick with more agreed upon side effects.
When you take large amounts of rosemary oil internally, there are specific side effects you can experience. For starters, ingesting too much rosemary at one sitting can cause vomiting, especially on an empty stomach.
That part won’t be something you need to worry you might experience if you stick to using rosemary oil topically. However, ingesting too much can also cause sun sensitivity and skin redness. These two side effects can carry over to when you simply apply it topically.
It is unlikely you’ll get toxicity from applying rosemary topically, even if you use it every day. A slightly less serious but more common concern is rosemary’s effects on sensitive skin. Getting rosemary oil into your eyes is something you should avoid at all costs.
This will cause burning in your eye, which should be flushed out with lots of water. Sensitive skin in general means that you should use a carrier oil. Failing to use a carrier like coconut oil or jojoba oil with your rosemary oil will cause temporary redness and slight burning.
Applying more carrier oil to these areas will usually fix the effects very quickly. Other than that, even a little too much rosemary oil will give you an oily scalp. This will only be good for those with a dry scalp.
Final Thoughts
Rosemary oil probably takes longer than you thought it would to help your hair growth. However, rosemary probably also does more for your hair loss than you thought it would. Considering the time it takes for other hair loss treatments, rosemary is comparable.
Even better, as an herb, rosemary isn’t going to have the side effects that almost any other treatment for thinning hair will. This herbal oil is, therefore, better than treatments that aren’t natural. You are far more likely to get a beneficial side effect, like fewer migraines, than a harmful one like sun sensitivity.
All in all, rosemary oil, though it takes a while to work, is well worth the time and effort to use. Remember to get a rosemary essential oil, as an essential oil is better and often more concentrated than just rosemary oil.
Rosemary is certainly a great herb for you. So, get some rosemary hair oil, try it out as a hair treatment by giving yourself a scalp massage with it, and let me know what you thought and if it helped you have healthy hair!
