Anxiety: Is Lavender the Answer?

Lavender has long been used to help promote relaxation and reduce anxiety. As patients and providers alike look for alternatives to medications, it’s important to stay up to date on the evidence, particularly as back to school nerves ramp up for both parents and kids. So can lavender help patients find relief?

The evidence is increasingly positive – taking lavender by mouth seems to improve anxiety in some patients. The World Federation of Societies of Biological Psychiatry and Canadian Network for Mood and Anxiety Treatments Taskforce now provisionally recommend lavender essential oil at doses of 80-160 mg daily or dried lavender flower at doses of 500-1500 mg twice daily for the treatment of generalized anxiety disorder. There’s also evidence that lavender oil aromatherapy might offer similar benefits for chronic and situational anxiety when used alone or in combination with other essential oils. But the poor quality of most available research makes it difficult to determine which patients might benefit most from aromatherapy.

If adults want to give lavender a try, there aren’t major safety concerns for most patients – mild side effects or an allergic skin reaction are possible. For oral preparations, tell patients to look for essential oil capsules and standardized dried flower formulations rather than preparing a tea. As for children, lavender oil aromatherapy has been used safely in clinical research for up to 2 hours. But one notable concern is for young males who haven't yet reached puberty – applying lavender oil to the skin might have hormone-like effects that could potentially disrupt normal hormones and possibly lead to breast growth. Products that contain higher concentrations of lavender oil might be more likely to have this side effect.

Review our recently updated monograph to learn more.