If you were to apply essential oils such as Lavender oil, Eucalyptus oil or Rosemary oil on your affected areas then you would experience pain relief, because of the aroma of the essential oils and the absorption happening, causing the muscle to relax and the cramps to be gone. Then the anti-inflammatory and anesthesia will allow your body to become strong and relax the skin. Which results in no more cramps in the affected area.

 

What Are Body Cramps?

Body Cramps also known as “Charley horse”  is a sudden tightening up of one or many muscles. It can be very painful, therefore we take medicines to cure this, but what we don’t understand is that because of the overdose of medicine, our body tends to cramp up more. These cramps can result from intense exercise or hard work, particularly in the heat. Muscle cramps can be brought on by many disorders and medications. This results in overusing or stressing out the muscles.  Age, pregnancy, and poor conditioning play huge factors in this.  Along with physical conditions, dehydration and muscle fatigue can also cause this.  During this duration, we want the muscle to gently stretch out. Everyone has experienced this painful pull, what can we do to reduce this pain?

What are Essential Oils?

Plants are the source of essential oils, which are chemicals. The "essence," or aroma and flavour of the plant, is captured by the oils. Every essential oil has a distinct essence that comes from unique aromatic components. Essential oils can be extracted mechanically, by cold pressing, or by distillation (using steam and/or water). To make a product that is ready for use, the aromatic compounds are removed and then mixed with a carrier oil. The method of manufacturing the oils is crucial since genuine essential oils are not those that are produced chemically.

The most popular application for essential oils is in aromatherapy, where they are breathed via a variety of techniques. It is not recommended to ingest essential oils. Your body might react to the compounds in essential oils in several ways. Certain plant compounds are absorbed when applied externally Certain application techniques, such as applying with heat or to different parts of the body, may enhance absorption.

 

Responding Variable:

• The pain relief after applying the oils
• Any reaction that's based on the essential oils.

Manipulated Variable: 

• Type of oil used for each participant
•  (Lavender Oil, Peppermint Oil, Chamomile oil) 

Controlled Variable: 

• Time of Day
• Room temperature (Neutral) 
• Pain Level Scale
• Amount of oil used for the participants. (10 ml)

Procedures

Controlled Group: 3 participants (Randomly Chosen) 

Experimental Group: 3 participants (Randomly chosen)

1. Find 6 participants of any age group, race, gender etc. 
2. Get consent from the participants to carry out the experiment.
3. Randomly choose 3 participants to be in the Control group and another 3 in the experimental group and record their names.
4. For the controlled group don't apply any essential oils on the affected areas. 
5. For the experimental group apply a decent amount of essential oils to the affected areas. Each of the participants for the experimental group uses one of these: Lavender Oil, Peppermint Oil, and Chamomile Oil.)
6. By using a timer, wait 4 hours for each participant in both groups.
7. After the 4 hours ask a questionnaire/scale to rate the intensity of the essential oils (For each of the participants.)
8. Collect the data and analyze it, to see if there is any difference between the two groups. And if the oils helped at all.

 

Questionnaire: Would you use essential Oils again? And why? (Experimental Group) 

                         Would you consider taking essential oils? And why? (Controlled Group)

 

Scale: Intensity before and after the 4 hours with and without essential oils (1 being the lowest, and 10 being the highest) 

 

Observations: 

• With the essential oils, most participants seemed more calm and relaxed as opposed to the control group. Those participants were shifting around more than usual, and trying to find a comfortable seating position. 
• With the essential oil (Lavendar) one participant fell asleep, we think this is because of the pain relief or the aroma of the Lavendar and peaceful setting which caused them to fall asleep. 
• Controlled group was more verbal, during the 4 hours. (Aggressive statements.) 
• The Experimental group was not as verbal but near the start of the 4 hours the talking seemed to die down to peacefulness. 
• Participant 2, was more relaxed because of the distraction of a phone momentarily, until it was taken away causing them to become stubborn. 

(Some participants requested to not be observed for the entire 4-hour period, due to privacy reasons, We accepted their wish and only observed them for the first hour and the last hour.)

Experimental Group Results: 

Participant 1: Intensity of the Cramps before 7/10

                        ntensity of the Cramps after:   5/10

Comments: The essential oil was soothing and relaxing to breathe in.

Questionnaire: Yes I would use this Lavender one again. This helped me relax and made me forget about all the stresses I have from University. 

 

Participant 2: Intensity of the Cramps before: 4/10

                        Intensity of the Cramps after:    4/10 

Comments:  The essential Oil did not do much, it was just nice smell (Peppermint oil)

“Very christmassy”

Questionnaire: I guess I would but just for the smell not for actually making my arm soothed. 

 

Participant 3: Intensity of the Cramps before: 5/10 

                        Intensity of the Cramps After:    3/10

 

Comments:  Chamomile Oil The essential oil took away about 2% of my pain. (Chamomile OIl) 

Disgusting smell.

Questionnaire: No I would not use this essential oil, because it smells bad and has a small effect.

 

Controlled Group Results:

Participant 4: Intensity of the Cramps before: 6/10 

                        Intensity of the Cramps After:   8/10

Comments: Over the duration of 2 hours my cramps got worse. 

Questionnaire: I think I might consider using oils but time will heal everything. I look forward to the aroma of the oils,

 

Participant 5: Intensity of the Cramps before: 4/10

                           Intensity of the Cramps After:    6/10 

Comments: (Chose not to answer) 

Questionnaire: Maybe. 

Participant 6: Intensity of the Cramps before: 5/10 

                           Intensity of the Cramps After:    5/10 

Comments: I just sat around so the cramps stayed and it wasn't too bad.

Questionnaire: Yes I would try to use those essential oils.

 

Conclusion:

Based on the results observed in each group, it is clear that essential oils help to reduce the severity of body cramps, although they do not eliminate them. The majority of participants experienced decreased discomfort, demonstrating that essential oils do provide relief and aid in relaxation. The fact that the majority of participants expressed a desire to use essential oils again indicates a perceived advantage in terms of pain relief.

However, the findings only partially confirmed our initial hypothesis, which claimed that essential oils might eliminate cramp pain. While some people claimed significant relief from their symptoms, others saw just minor improvements. This shows that the efficiency of essential oils in controlling body cramps varies between individuals and may be influenced by factors such as cramp severity and individual physical traits.

To summarize, while essential oils show promise in decreasing the discomfort associated with muscle cramping and building relaxation, they may not be a solid solution for pain elimination. Further research and testing may be required to better understand the exact mechanisms of action and to improve the efficacy of essential oils in controlling cramp symptoms.

 

This experiment discovered that, yes essential oils can heal and/or get rid of cramps (both menstrual and normal crampings.) Over time it can completely get rid of the cramping, but to speed up the process we learned that applying heat can also help with the process. These results help with other families or individuals experiencing cramps, encouraging them to use these oils in order to help them. 

One source of error is human error, there could be inaccurate measurements. The amount of oil could be a little more than others, it may be a millilitre larger than the other. Another is the scale could be too vague and not specify the amount of pain the individual was experiencing. Other errors, could be the timer did not start causing the time recorded to be less or more than the usual 4-hour period.

References

“The Daily — Participation in Canadian society through sport and work.” Statistique Canada, 10 October 2023, https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/231010/dq231010b-eng.htm. Accessed 10 March 2024.

Frysh, Paul. “How To Use Essential Oils: 16 Tips for Essential Oil Safety.” WebMD, 29 September 2023, https://www.webmd.com/skin-problems-and-treatments/ss/slideshow-essential-oils. Accessed 10 March 2024.

“Muscle cramp.” Better Health Channel, https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/conditionsandtreatments/muscle-cramp. Accessed 10 March 2024.

“Muscle Cramps.” MyHealth Alberta, https://myhealth.alberta.ca/Health/pages/conditions.aspx?hwid=za1086. Accessed 10 March 2024.

“Top 8 Best Essential Oils for Menstrual Cramps | Buoy.” Buoy Health, 28 February 2024, https://www.buoyhealth.com/blog/health/best-essential-oils-menstrual-cramps. Accessed 10 March 2024.

West, Helen. “What Are Essential Oils, and Do They Work?” Healthline, 30 September 2019, https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/what-are-essential-oils#what-they-are. Accessed 10 March 2024.

 

AI was used to find a topic to research on and experiment on. 

 

(All these references were put into the citations on March 10th but accessed on different dates) 

 

The major contributor to our experiment is Riya Haror, Annie Gale. She is my partner for this experiment, however could not attend the City Science fair so major thanks to her. Others are, Ms Dool for providing time to work on this during school hours, and Ms Easton for helping in prepare us for the City Science Fair. I would like to thank my parents for providing most materials used and Riya Haror's parents for lending their time to supervise our experiment. I would like to thank my sister for helping me in organizing the materials.