Myth vs fact: castor oil packs and navel oiling

A folded cloth soaked in castor oil, laid over the stomach, an old towel on top, a warm bag on top of that, and an hour on the bed. Or the shorter version: two drops in the navel at night before sleeping. Both are everywhere at the moment, and both come attached to a very long list of promises.

We sell castor oil. We are still going to tell you that the list is not true.

What the two practices actually are

A castor oil pack is a cloth soaked in castor oil placed on the skin of the abdomen, usually on the right side, usually with warmth on top, for thirty to sixty minutes. The modern version owes its popularity largely to Edgar Cayce, an American who gave thousands of health “readings” in the first half of the twentieth century. Whatever else those readings were, they were not clinical research, and the practice did not arrive here from a laboratory.

Navel oiling, sometimes called nabhi oiling or the pechoti method, is simpler: a few drops of oil rubbed into and around the belly button at night. The claim attached to it is specific. It says the navel is connected to a very large number of veins, and that a gland behind it, called the pechoti, takes whatever you put there and distributes it around the body, reaching the eyes, the skin, the hair and the digestive system.

Why the pechoti claim does not hold

There is no pechoti gland. It does not appear in any anatomy textbook, in any dissection, or in any imaging. Anatomists and clinicians asked about it by fact checkers have said the same thing plainly: it is not a structure that exists.

The anatomy underneath is well understood, and it works against the claim rather than for it. Before birth, the umbilical vein carried blood from the placenta into the fetus, and it genuinely was a highway. Shortly after birth it closes. It becomes a fibrous cord, the round ligament of the liver. The other umbilical vessels close in the same way and become ligaments too. Nothing flows through any of them again.

What is left at the surface is the navel: puckered scar skin sitting over that closed remnant. It is skin. It absorbs what skin absorbs, in the way skin absorbs it, which is slowly, in small amounts, and mostly locally. There is no opening, no channel and no gland taking oil from your belly button into your bloodstream.

So a claim that oil in the navel reaches the eyes, or the liver, or the ovaries, is not a claim we can soften. It describes a route that closed when you were a few days old.

Then why do people say they feel better?

Because they often do feel better, and that part is honest.

Think about what a castor oil pack actually involves. Steady warmth over the abdomen for forty-five minutes. Gentle weight and pressure on the belly. Skin that is being moisturised. And, unusually for most adults, forty-five minutes lying still with the phone put down and nothing to do.

Warmth relaxes abdominal muscles. Pressure is comforting. Lying quietly is restful. Those effects are genuine, and they are entirely explained without any gland, any detoxification, and any oil crossing into the bloodstream. You would get most of them from a hot water bottle and the same forty-five minutes.

Feeling better after doing something is not evidence for the mechanism claimed for it. That distinction is the whole of this article.

What we will not tell you it does

Here is the list that circulates, and our answer to all of it: we have no evidence, and neither does the person telling you.

• It does not detoxify or cleanse the liver. Your liver and kidneys do that work, and nothing applied to skin assists them.
• It does not balance hormones.
• It does not cause weight loss or reduce belly fat.
• It does not treat period pain, fibroids, endometriosis, or anything to do with fertility.
• It does not heal the gut, improve digestion, or drain the lymphatic system.
• It does not pull toxins out through the skin. Skin does not work in that direction.
• It does not improve eyesight, and it does not do anything for hair.

One more thing, clearly. Our castor oil is labelled for external use. We do not discuss taking it internally, in any quantity, for any purpose, and nothing on this page should be read that way.

Is there any harm in it?

Mostly no, and we are not going to overstate the risk either. Used on unbroken skin, castor oil is a fairly ordinary cosmetic oil.

The honest cautions are these. Castor oil is a documented contact allergen, and some people react to it with itching, redness or a rash. It stains badly, so the cloth, your clothes and your bedsheet will all suffer. Use warmth that is comfortable rather than hot, and never a heating pad on skin with reduced sensation, because you can burn yourself without feeling it. Do not use it on broken skin, a rash, a recent scar or an unexplained lump. Do not use it in pregnancy without your doctor.

The real risk is not the oil at all. It is what people use it instead of. Abdominal pain that keeps coming back, a change in your periods, unexplained weight loss, bloating that does not settle, jaundice, a lump you can feel: these need a doctor and a diagnosis. An hour with a warm cloth is a pleasant thing to do. It is not a substitute for finding out what is wrong.

If you enjoy it, do it honestly

There is nothing wrong with a ritual that is pleasant. Do it for that reason, knowing what it is.

1. Take an old piece of cotton, folded into three or four layers, about the size of your palm spread wide. An old cotton dupatta or a worn-out kurta works.
2. Pour castor oil onto it until it is properly soaked but not dripping. This takes more oil than you expect the first time and much less on later uses.
3. Lie down and place it on the skin of your abdomen.
4. Cover it with an old towel, or a sheet of plastic you do not mind ruining, so the oil does not travel.
5. Put a warm, not hot, water bottle on top.
6. Thirty to forty-five minutes. Then take it off and wipe the skin with a dry cloth, or wash with a little soap and warm water, because castor oil does not rinse off with water alone.
7. Keep the cloth in a lidded jar and reuse it. Wash it separately from anything you care about.

For the navel version, the honest description is short: a couple of drops rubbed into and around the belly button is a small piece of skincare on a patch of skin that most people never moisturise. It feels nice. That is the whole of it.

The verdict

Pleasant, cheap, largely harmless on unbroken skin, messy, and not a treatment for anything. If you like lying under a warm cloth for forty-five minutes, that is a good enough reason to do it and you do not need a made-up gland to justify it.

We would rather sell you a bottle of castor oil for what it genuinely does. Our guides on castor oil for hair and on cracked heels overnight both stay inside what the oil can honestly be shown to do, which is the only kind of claim we are interested in making.