True Lavender

Lavender is easy to buy and surprisingly easy to buy wrong, so the questions our naturopaths ask in store are usually about which bottle you're holding, and who it's for.

A good fit if

• Winding down in the evening is what you're after, which is where the combined evidence for breathing it in sits
• You'd rather start with something you smell than something you swallow
• You'll give the capsule weeks rather than nights, as the oral trials ran for six to ten weeks
• You read botanical names, so you'll know true lavender from lavandin and spike lavender
• You're an adult, you're not pregnant or breastfeeding, and your skin has never reacted to it

Check with us first if

• You take prescription medicine, especially anything that makes you drowsy. The review of the 80 mg oral oil reports no medicine interactions at 80 or 160 mg a day, but beyond that nothing is established either way, so ask your pharmacist.
• You want to put it on a child's skin. Twelve case reports over sixteen years link lavender and tea tree oil on the skin to early breast development in children, and a 2023 review of all the research concluded cause and effect hasn't been shown. It's unresolved, but enough reason to keep neat oils off young skin.
• Your skin reacts to fragrances or essential oils. Lavender can cause irritant and allergic skin reactions, and one Japanese study recorded rates climbing from 1.1% to 13.9% over eight years. Dilute it, and patch test first.
• You massage for a living, or work with oils all day. Exposure at work through massage and aromatherapy is the most commonly reported way people develop a lavender allergy.
• You're buying the capsule because of the trial evidence. The research can't tell us whether an Australian product gives you 80 mg of a similarly standardised oil. That's a label check, and we'll do it with you.
• You've been given spike lavender or lavandin and expected the same thing. Neither has clinical evidence in people, and lavandin oil is only permitted as a flavour or fragrance.
• If you take prescription medicines, check with your doctor, pharmacist or our naturopaths before starting.

• Oral standardised lavender oil capsule (Schedule 1 items 2972 LAVANDULA ANGUSTIFOLIA and 2975 LAVENDER OIL). Best known for: Symptoms of mild anxiety, and the only lavender form given as a measured milligram dose. Absorption: Our sources have no data on how it's absorbed. What's established is an effect at 80 mg a day, not an absorption figure. Typical use: 80 mg a day, taken for six to ten weeks. The pooled result for capsules rests on about 1,173 participants taking it for six weeks or more. Check the label to see whether an Australian capsule gives the same standardised 80 mg.
• True lavender essential oil for inhaling or diffusing (Lavandula angustifolia). Best known for: Sleep quality and disturbed sleep, and winding down before something stressful. Absorption: Not established in our sources. The dose is in drops, and nobody can standardise how much a person actually breathes in. Typical use: Trials used three drops of a 1.5% oil each night, or twenty minutes before bed. The pooled effects are positive but vary a lot, and an essential oil is very hard to hide in a trial because people can smell it.
• Lavender oil diluted in a carrier for massage. Best known for: Sleep and anxiety in clinical settings, where the oil comes with the massage. Absorption: Not established. Dilution and amount vary by practitioner and product. Typical use: The catch is obvious: the touch may be doing the work. The largest review says the available studies cannot tell whether the benefit is specific to lavender. One trial partly answers this by using an almond-oil massage as the comparison.
• Lavender oil as a bath additive. Best known for: The European traditional-use route for mild mental stress and exhaustion, and to help with sleep. Absorption: Not established. Typical use: 1 to 3 g of essential oil per full bath, at 35-38 degrees, for 10 to 20 minutes, once a day. This form also comes with a clear list of reasons not to use it, so read the cautions before you run one.
• Dried lavender flower tea (Lavandulae flos). Best known for: The traditional preparation, and the one most people have actually tasted. Absorption: Not established. Hot water draws out only some of the essential oil, and nothing on the pack states the dose you get. Typical use: 1 to 2 g of dried flower in 150 mL of boiling water, three times a day, based on traditional use. Sold as a food in Australia, it has no AUST L number and no health claims at all. No clinical trial we hold used the tea.
• Spike lavender oil (Lavandula latifolia, Schedule 1 item 4706). Best known for: A different species, much higher in camphor, with a sharper, more medicinal smell. Absorption: Not applicable. Typical use: Regulated far more tightly than true lavender: required label warnings above set camphor levels, a restricted-flow insert, sometimes a child-resistant lid, and a bottle no bigger than 25 mL. No trial we hold tested it, so none of the true lavender results carry over.
• Lavandin and lavandin oil (Lavandula x intermedia, items 2969, 2970, 2971 and 2974). Best known for: The hybrid grown for volume, with a stronger camphor smell. Absorption: Not applicable. Typical use: Lavandin oil and Lavandin Oil Grosso are allowed only as a flavour or fragrance, combined with other permitted ingredients, within set strength limits. There's no human clinical evidence for it, so a 'lavender oil' that's really lavandin cannot be presented the same way.

Reference values. There aren't any, and there can't be. Lavender is a herb, not a nutrient, so there's no nutrient reference value, RDI, deficiency or NHMRC upper level of intake. Any percentage of daily intake figure on a lavender product is meaningless.

Typical supplemental range. Oil taken by mouth is the one form with a real number behind it. The European traditional use monograph sets a daily dose of 20 to 80 mg of lavender oil, and the controlled trials settle on 80 mg a day for six to ten weeks. The traditional forms are dosed by weight instead: 1 to 2 g of dried flower in 150 mL of boiling water three times a day as tea, 2 to 4 mL of a 1:5 tincture in 50 to 60% ethanol three times a day, or 1 to 3 g of essential oil in a full bath once a day. There's no standard dose for breathing it in. Trials used three drops of a 1.5% oil each night, twenty minutes before bed, or about 1.5 g of oil in a pillow sachet, and the combined results favoured sessions of twenty minutes or less.

Upper level. Australia's permitted ingredients list (Schedule 1) has no maximum daily dose for any form of lavender, but that doesn't mean anything goes. The nearest limit is European: the traditional use monograph stops at 80 mg a day by mouth. A review of how well the oral oil is tolerated covers 80 and 160 mg a day, and nothing we've seen goes higher.

Worth knowing. How long you take it deserves as much thought as the dose, because the oral trials ran for six to ten weeks rather than a few nights. The research can't tell us whether a particular Australian capsule gives you the same standardised 80 mg the trials used, so bring the label to us. What you need depends on your age, diet and health, so talk to one of our naturopaths.

Food first, where the diet allows it.

• Culinary lavender buds, in herbes de Provence, baked goods, syrups and teas: there's no dietary requirement for lavender and no meaningful food-source table. No source we hold gives a per-serve figure, and none is needed: nothing described in this entry happens at culinary amounts

If any of these sound like you, talk to one of our naturopaths or your doctor before you start.

• Pregnancy and breastfeeding. The EMA monographs say safety hasn't been established and use isn't recommended. Don't take it.
• Children under 12. Use of the medicinal preparations hasn't been established because there isn't enough data. Don't give it.
• Undiluted oil on young children's skin. Twelve case reports since 2007 link lavender and tea tree oil on the skin to early breast development; a 2023 review found this wasn't proven to be the cause. It's unresolved, so see a practitioner.
• Sensitivity to lavender. Both the oil and the flower list this as a reason not to use them. Don't use it at all.
• Allergic and irritant skin reactions (contact dermatitis). These are documented, and one Japanese series recorded rates rising from 1.1% to 13.9% over eight years. Dilute it before any use on the skin.
• Massage therapists, aromatherapists and salon workers. Exposure at work is the most commonly reported route to lavender skin allergy.
• Full baths with lavender oil. Don't use them with open wounds, large skin injuries, acute skin diseases, high fever, severe infections, severe circulation problems or heart failure.
• Swallowing essential oil. Spike lavender oil above 2.5% camphor must carry 'Not to be taken'. The trial dose is a manufactured capsule, never drops from a bottle.
• Medicine interactions. The review of the 80 mg capsule reports no medicine interactions at 80 or 160 mg a day, and no source shows anything beyond that either way. Check with your prescriber or pharmacist.
• Lavender oil taken by mouth. Burping with a lavender taste was the most common side effect in a 498-person trial. Minor and common, but worth knowing first.
• Spike lavender and lavandin. There's no human clinical evidence for either species, and none of the true lavender results carry over to them.
• Safety reporting in this area is weak. Three separate reviews say side effects were poorly reported or not reported at all.
• If you take prescription medicines, check with your doctor, pharmacist or our naturopaths before you start.