Hazelnut is more than just a popular flavoring in your overpriced coffee. Hazelnuts come from the hazel tree and its botanical name is Corylus avellana. The nuts are also called cobnuts or filbert nuts and the trees are native to several parts of the Northern Hemisphere. They grow in clusters and are the size of acorns with protective husks that cover just about the entire nut. When developing, the nuts are green but upon maturity they turn into a beautiful chocolate brown. It takes around 7 to 8 months after pollination before they are ripe and fall out of the tree. The nuts are hugely popular from making pralines to flavorings to being used in the popular Nutella. It continues to gain popularity and while it can be used in several arenas from a cooking oil to making a candy, the hazelnut oil even serves a purpose for beauty.
What is hazelnut oil?
Hazelnut oil can be cold-pressed so to not harm the flavor or the nutrition of the oil. It can also be refined, which means the roasted hazelnuts are pressed twice with the second extraction being completed through a chemical refining along with filtering. Refined hazelnut oil has less flavor along with less nutrients. Hazelnut oil contains potassium, phosphorus, calcium, magnesium, amino acids, sugars, organic acids, and vitamins. It has palmitic, palmitoleic, stearic, oleic, linoleic, linolenic, arachidic, gadoleic, and behenic fatty acids with oleic acid being a remarkably large amount.
Hazelnut oil is an excellent moisturizer because of the presence of linoleic acid, which help prevent water evaporation.
What are the benefits of hazelnut oil?
Nuts in general are considered very healthy but hazelnuts rank near the top because of its massive overload of proteins, vitamins, and fatty acids. Hazelnut oil is an excellent moisturizer because of the presence of linoleic acid, which help prevent water evaporation. It is great to add a few drops to your bath and is a natural lubricant for chapped lips, shaving, and calming the skin after the shaving. It protects against UV rays, contributes to the elasticity of the skin, and great contains vitamin E.
Hazelnut oil for hair
Hazelnut oil is a powerhouse of fatty acids, proteins, and vitamins, which can nourish your hair along with the scalp. It is a great oil for maintaining good hair growth and ideal for scalp massages to not only stimulate the hair follicles and nourish them but to also alleviate a dry scalp and protect it from the sun. Believe it or not but you can get sunburn on your scalp. Because of high composition of nutrients, minerals, flavonoids and antioxidants, this is a rejuvenating oil that has positive effects on our skin cells, combatting aging in the scalp.
Women color their hair year-round but in summer this behavior spikes. All of that coloring can cause dryness to the strands and hazelnut’s ability to soften the hair along with helping hair to retain the color makes it an ideal oil for color-treated strands. Applying this oil to your hair before shampooing is a great way to keep hair softer and keep color lasting longer but many color-treated hair products use hazelnut oil in their formulas too. Hazelnut oil also keeps dark hair shiny and beautiful by restoring your hair’s natural sheen. It will tame frizzy hair even in humid climates and will help in locking in hair’s moisture.
