Welcome back to the Scented Company Aromatherapy Series.  On select Sundays, we will post blog entries about specific natural scents and their health benefits. For our second entry, we are tackling one of our favorite fruit families, citrus. Citrus fruits, such as lemon, mandarin, neroli, and bergamot, emit zesty, refreshing aromas that can range from bitter to sweet to spicy. They have a lot of range and tons of benefits.

Let’s start with a very weekend-appropriate use: cleaning and refreshing. You may notice that many of your favorite household cleaning products, from dish soaps, disinfectant sprays, laundry detergent, and even odor-controlling garbage bags have citrus fragrances added, most commonly, lemon.  There is a good reason for that.  Citrus fruits do an amazing job at refreshing and deodorizing surfaces and atmospheres.  Beyond that, citrus enzymes are powerful at breaking down dirt and attacking bacteria. In fact, there is evidence to suggest that citrus essential oils, when blended and sprayed into the air, can help tackle airborne viruses as well. This is a great benefit during cold and flu season. Please note that at the time of this blog post, no definitive data was available on the benefits of citrus essential oils in combating COVID-19 air particles, but there is reason to believe that merely inhaling citrus oil aromas can help boost the immune system. Finally, for those who are under the weather or of advanced age, steam or heat-dispersed citrus oil fragrances can help stimulate the appetite by engaging the hypothalamus area of the brain! Powerful stuff, indeed!

Amazingly, citrus oils manage to offer all of the aforementioned sanitizing and health benefits while giving off a pleasant smell. Citrus smells are often associated with providing an energy-boost, lifting mood, easing anxiety, and reducing feelings of stress and frustration. As we mentioned at the start, citrus fruits give off a wide variety of smells, so we’d like to close by giving you some general descriptions of the types used in our products:

Citrus oils are featured in the following products: Getaway (Nature); Desert Isle (Nature); Floetry (Lifestyle); Icon (Lifestyle); and, Jam Session (Lifestyle), available in both, natural soy candles and eco-friendly, alcohol-free linen+room mists.