Recovering from the Emotional Holiday Hangover Symptoms: Essential Oils to Help You Revive You from Lingering Post-Seasonal Stress, Fatigue, Lack of Focus, Poor Sleep, and Gut Issues

Post- Holiday Hustle Depletion

The seasonal gatherings and New Year celebrations have officially ended. The holidays can be a beautiful time of reflection and enjoyable gatherings with loved ones, but the additional shopping, activities, and preparation can also leave us depleted.

Thankfully, there are natural and holistic tools, such as essential oils, to assist us in resetting and recharging from the holiday hustle. These aromatic allies can help us to re-balance our mind and body and refresh our spirit. In this way, we can resume our daily lives with more vigor.

In this video post, I will offer you my favorite essential oil recommendations to aid you in recovering from the lingering emotional holiday hangovers symptoms. Topics include:

• The emotional holiday hangover triggers
• The four post-holiday health symptoms
• Essential oils for:
  • relieving excess stress
  • aiding better sleep
  • alleviating low energy and lack of focus
  • soothing digestive distress

As always, all the references, resources, and links to studies will be available in this accompanying article.

So, let’s get started!

 

The Emotional Holiday Hangover Triggers

An “emotional holiday hangover” refers to the lingering emotional challenges people can face after the holidays. Prevalent triggers include:

• Stress
• Financial strain
• Family dynamics
• Loneliness
• Unmet expectations
• Fatigues
• Nostalgic reflections over the past year
• Seasonal Affective Disorder
• Post-holiday letdown

These factors can result in various emotional and physical symptoms. In this article, we’ll discuss four of the most typical ones and essential oils that can help to remedy them.

 

The Four Post-Holiday Health Symptoms

Our society’s quick shift from the holiday festivities to resuming the daily grind can easily make us feel off kilter. These are the four most frequent post-holiday health symptoms I’ve seen my clients suffer with at the start of the year:

• Feeling more stressed out
• Poor sleep
• Fatigue and focus problems
• Gut Issues

I’ve found that essential oils, when used along with other naturopathic and functional medicine lifestyle strategies and supplementation, have been very effective in helping my clients’ minds and bodies to restore for a more refreshed New Year. Below I will dive into the details of which oils can be used for these specific maladies.

 

1. Feeling More Stressed-Out

Feeling overwhelmed can be especially more potent during and right after the holidays. Being in this state of constant “flight and flight” makes it hard to fully regain our grounding.

Essential oils are a perfect antidote to high tension. Their aroma and chemical composition allows them to favorably alter our brain’s interpretation of stressful triggers. Simultaneously, their biological properties work in coordination to support the nervous system and balance hormones.

Essential oils can also quickly:

1. Soothe the limbic brain, immediately taming emotional and nervous system reactivity caused by stressful events
2. Modulate vagal tone, calming the nervous system
3. Support neuroplasticity in the brain, contributing to improved behavioral response patterns
4. Influence hormones, which impacts brain function and emotional balance
5. Affect the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis to promote balanced communication between the brain and endocrine system – This is through their ability to modulate cortisol (the stress hormone), hormones, neuroinflammation, and neurotransmitters.

My favorite essential oils and blends to calm stress after the holidays, or anytime, include:

• Clary Sage oil – for stress-induced hormonal and mood imbalances
• Lavender oil – to calm anxiety and help one relax
• Bergamot oil – to ease nervous system tension and brighten mood
• Stress Relief Blend – to assist with the physical symptoms of being in a state of high stress
• Parasympathetic Blend -to balance the parasympathetic (rest and digest) nervous system and aid recovery

Learn more about these oils and blends here.

 

2. Poor Sleep

Getting good sleep—which means not only falling asleep easily but also staying asleep—is essential for your well-being. It gives your body time to recharge, heal, detoxify, balance blood sugar, aid your metabolism, and restore energy.

When you don’t get enough restful sleep, you can suffer from:

• Feeling tired and lacking energy
• Poor cognition and focus
• Mood and mental health problems
• Low performance at work or school
• Compromised immune system functioning
• A decline in cellular metabolism

There are various reasons one can’t get great sleep, so addressing the root cause with an integrative doctor is important. Some examples of sleep disruptors, and potential essential oils to intervene, include:

• Blood sugar dysregulation –Cinnamon oil and the pancreas blend can help with better glucose metabolism.
• Detoxification compromise – Many oils aid detoxification based on their anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and other properties. Some examples include clove, rosemary, lemongrass, and lemon oils. Learn more here.
• Hormone issues – Some of my favorite oils for hormone health include geranium, clary sage, lavender, neroli, rose, and bergamot .
• Stress – See the suggestions above.
• Lifestyle – Lifestyle practices can help or hurt sleep. My previous post offers 11 tips for optimizing sleep.
• Circadian imbalance – The circadian rhythm blend and lavender oil can help one reset their sleep-wake times.

 

3. Lower Energy and Poor Focus

All the emotional upheaval, lack of sleep, and poor lifestyle habits can deplete our energy and make us more distracted. Essential oils can aid cognitive function through the direct interaction of their aromatic molecules with our cellular receptors. This results in:

(1) modulating hormones and brain signaling patterns

(2) shifting brain electrical activity

3) protecting the nervous system (neuroprotection) through their antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects

Through this ability of essential oils to enhance our metabolic functions, they can also increase our energy and help us focus better. Some of my favorite essential oils for increasing energy and focus include:

• Rosemary oil
• Sage oil
• Jasmine oil
• Citrus oils
• Peppermint oil

 

4. Gut Issues

When we experience emotional stress, it creates biochemical shifts that cause havoc on digestion. Specifically, it impacts the gut in several ways. Stress can:

• impair absorption
• alter the gut immune response
• damage the intestinal lining leading to “leaky gut”

On the other hand, tummy troubles can lead to emotional distress through:

• shifts in our belly bugs and their metabolites produced (altering neurotransmitters and signaling compounds)
• inflammation in the gut that goes systemic (resulting in neuroinflammation)
• changes in signals from our gut to our brain and nervous system

Several essential oils shine for their ability to alleviate gut issues. Some of the top digestive oils and their indications include:

• Peppermint oil for gut-brain imbalances and IBS (irritable bowel syndrome)
• Ginger oil for nausea and calming inflammation
• Fennel oil for easing belly discomfort and gas
• Frankincense and myrrh oils for irritable bowels

Essential oils can also enhance the microbiome and intestinal mucosal health. This is through their anti-inflammatory action, immune modulating effects, ability to stimulate circulation and lymph flow, and antimicrobial and microbe-enhancing effects.

Specific oils with these properties can be combined to benefit our gut lining. These oils include:

• Birch oil
• Cardamom oil
• Cypress oil
• Nargarmotha oil

There is a specific intestinal mucosa blend I use with my clients that contain these oils. You can learn more about it here.

 

Summarizing Post-Holiday Emotional Hangovers Symptoms and How Essential Oils Enhance Resiliency in the New Year

Although the holidays can be a beautiful time, they can also be stressful. Various triggers can cause our minds and bodies to be depleted and result in emotional hangovers. This can lead to post-seasonal symptoms that can linger in the new year and cause us to lose our vigor.

Essential oils can reinstate our balance and refresh us after the holidays. Their aromatic and biochemical properties can intercept stress at the level of the mind. Simultaneously, they positively influence our physiology and mood. As a result, these pleasant smelling allies can aid our ability to recover from stress, promote more peaceful sleep, enhance our energy and focus, and tame our upset tummies.

I hope you find this information useful and can use it for a more nourishing and nurturing new year.

Feel free to comment below.

Sending you many blessings,

Dr. Sarah