And the surprising connection between stress, pain perception, and lavender
Have you ever had one of those weeks when suddenly everything hurts?
Your neck is tight. Your shoulders ache. Your jaw is clenched. Your lower back is complaining. Maybe an old injury that usually minds its own business has suddenly decided it would like some attention.
And you find yourself wondering:
What the hell did I do?
Maybe nothing.
Or at least, maybe nothing new happened to the part of your body that hurts.
Because pain isn't experienced only where you feel it. Your brain and nervous system decide how loudly that pain signal gets interpreted.
And stress can influence that volume knob.
Which makes the relationship between stress, pain, and one very familiar plant, lavender, much more interesting than the usual “lavender helps you relax” conversation.
Stress Can Change the Way You Experience Pain
First, something important:
Pain is real.
Saying that your nervous system influences pain does not mean pain is “in your head,” imaginary, or something you should be able to think your way out of.
Pain is an experience created through communication between your body, spinal cord, brain, and nervous system. And that system doesn't operate in isolation from the rest of your life.
Stress matters.
Researchers have studied something called stress-induced hyperalgesia, which essentially means that under certain circumstances, stress can increase sensitivity to pain.
And the relationship isn't completely straightforward. Depending on the type, intensity, and duration of the stressor, stress can sometimes temporarily decrease pain and other times amplify it. Chronic or repeated stress appears particularly relevant to increased pain sensitivity and changes in the pathways involved in pain processing.
In much simpler terms:
When your system is already dealing with a lot, discomfort can sometimes feel louder.
Think about what else tends to happen during a stressful stretch.
Your shoulders creep upward.
Your jaw stays clenched.
You sit at your desk without moving for hours.
You don't sleep as well.
You breathe more shallowly.
You might stop doing the little things that normally help your body feel good.
So now you may have both the physical consequences of being tense all day and a nervous system that may be processing discomfort differently.
No wonder some weeks seem to hurt more than others.
This Is Where Lavender Gets Really Interesting
Most of us have put lavender into a very specific little wellness box.
Lavender = relaxing.
Maybe sleep.
Maybe a bath.
Maybe that bottle of essential oil you've had sitting in a cabinet since approximately 2017.
But lavender has also been studied for something much more interesting:
pain perception.
And newer research is beginning to investigate why lavender aroma might influence the way pain is processed.
A 2024 study published in Cell Reports investigated what happened in the brains of mice with inflammatory pain when they inhaled lavender essential oil.
Researchers identified activity in a neural pathway connecting regions involved in olfactory processing and pain-related processing. In the experiment, lavender essential oil inhalation produced an antinociceptive effect, meaning it reduced the nervous system's response to painful stimuli.
Now, there's a gigantic caveat here that matters:
This was a mouse study.
It does not mean researchers proved that smelling lavender treats chronic pain in humans.
But what I find fascinating about the study isn't an excuse to slap a giant LAVENDER KILLS PAIN! headline on something.
It's the mechanism researchers observed.
The aroma wasn't numbing tissue where something hurt.
It was interacting with a neural circuit involved in how the painful information was processed.
And that opens up a much more interesting conversation.
Okay, But What About Actual Humans?
Thankfully, we don't have to stop with mice.
A 2025 systematic review examined 15 randomized controlled trials studying inhaled lavender aromatherapy for postoperative pain in adults.
Overall, inhaled lavender was associated with significantly lower reported postoperative pain.
However, the evidence was not strong enough to establish that lavender reduced the need for pain medication, and the researchers called for additional high-quality trials.
An earlier systematic review and meta-analysis examining aromatherapy more broadly also found reductions in reported pain, although the results were considerably stronger for acute and nociceptive pain than for chronic pain.
That's an important distinction.
This research doesn't give us evidence to say:
“Lavender treats chronic pain.”
It gives us something more nuanced and, frankly, more interesting:
Scent and pain processing may be connected, and lavender appears to be one aroma worth studying.
Lavender Isn't Numbing Your Pain
This is where I want to change something I've said in the past.
I've described lavender before by saying that it “changes how your brain reads pain.”
I still like the idea behind that explanation, but knowing what we know now, I think it's too definitive.
A more accurate way to say it is:
Research suggests lavender aroma may influence neural pathways involved in how pain is processed and perceived.
That's different from taking an analgesic medication.
And it's different from putting something on your shoulder that physically numbs the area.
Instead, we're talking about the fascinating relationship between smell, the brain, the nervous system, and our experience of discomfort.
Which brings us right back to stress.
Your Body Doesn't Experience Stress in Separate Little Boxes
We have a tendency to separate everything.
Stress goes in the mental-health box.
Muscle tension goes in the physical-health box.
Sleep goes in another box.
Pain gets another.
Digestion gets another.
But your body doesn't organize itself that way.
The woman lying awake replaying tomorrow's to-do list is attached to the same body whose jaw has been clenched for six hours.
The woman who hasn't stopped working long enough to eat lunch is attached to the shoulders that have been hovering somewhere near her ears all afternoon.
The woman who keeps saying, “I'm fine, I'm just tired,” is still carrying the physiological experience of her day into the evening.
Sometimes your body is communicating long before you consciously decide you're overwhelmed.
And sometimes the question isn't only:
“What hurts?”
It may also be worth asking:
“What else is my body carrying right now?”
So Should You Reach for Lavender Every Time Something Hurts?
No.
Pain can have countless causes, and new, severe, persistent, or unexplained pain deserves appropriate medical evaluation.
Lavender isn't a replacement for medical care, pain medication when it's needed, physical therapy, treating an injury, or figuring out why something hurts in the first place.
But could lavender aromatherapy be one tool in a larger ritual that tells an overworked body:
We're done for today. You can soften now.
I think that's a much more reasonable way to look at it.
And it's one of the reasons I continue to love lavender.
Not because I believe one plant magically fixes everything.
But because plants can give us another way to respond to what our bodies are communicating.
A Simple Lavender Wind-Down Ritual
If your body tends to carry the day into the evening, try making lavender part of the transition rather than waiting until you're already in bed wondering why you can't relax.
Dim the lights.
Put the phone down for a few minutes.
Use lavender aromatically while you take several slow breaths.
Notice your jaw.
Drop your shoulders.
Move your neck gently.
Massage your hands, feet, legs, or other areas where you tend to hold tension.
And instead of making the goal “I need to calm down,” simply notice what happens when you give your body fewer things to respond to.
That's the piece we often skip.
We tell ourselves to relax while we're still answering messages, scrolling, planning tomorrow, carrying tension and mentally solving six problems.
Sometimes the body needs an actual transition.
Why I Pair Lavender With Magnesium
This is also why lavender made sense to me when I created Lavender Siesta Magnesium Lotion.
Magnesium lotion and lavender aren't there because I believe rubbing lotion on yourself magically fixes pain or stress.
They're there because I wanted something physical to reach for.
A ritual.
Massage the lotion into your legs.
Rub it into your feet.
Work it into tired shoulders.
Breathe in the lavender.
Give yourself a few minutes in which you're not asking your body to perform, solve, produce, answer, or anticipate anything.
And maybe start paying attention to something most of us were never taught to notice:
How does stress actually show up in my body?
Because your signals aren't inconveniences to silence as quickly as possible.
Sometimes they're information.
And learning to recognize them may be the first step toward responding differently.
Ready to make your nighttime routine a little more intentional? Explore Lavender Siesta Magnesium Lotion and create your own end-of-day ritual.
