Introduction to Essential Oils

Martha and Peter from Simple Nourished Living decide to roll the camera and bring you an online class they’re calling Introduction to Essential Oils.

What are essential oils? (part 1)
Why use essential oils? (part 2)
Essential oils are effective (part 3)
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Our Favorite doTERRA Essential Oil products

What are essential Oils

Video Transcript:

Martha: “Hi, I’m Martha.”

Peter: “And I’m Peter.”

Martha: “We have a blog Simple-Nourished-Living.com. And a short time ago we did a video just talking a little bit about essential oils and how we got introduced to them. There was a lot of response, a lot of interest. A lot of you have expressed interest in wanting to know more about natural wellness as well as essential oils. So, we’ve done a few classes out with people.”

Peter: “In person.”

Martha: “In person, but we thought we don’t we just do a class for you, to save you the trouble of actually having to get out of your house and into a car.”

Peter: “Because that would be bad.”

Martha: “Right, and come to us. Because that’s kind of hard, we’re in Phoenix and there’s a good chance you’re not in Phoenix. So we thought, hey, let’s try it. Just to provide you with a little more information in this video and we’ll include some extra written content and screen shots and stuff to make it more real for you. So, we’re going to see how this works. It’s all just an experiment. So, welcome to our first online class on essential oils. So, essential oils are essentially nature’s oils, right.”

Peter: “Right, they’re nature’s oils.”

Martha: “And we’re just going to start by talking about how you can use them in your home for wellness. So we talked a little bit in our last video, but now we’re going to say a bit more. Essential oils are essentially nature’s defense mechanism for plants and cells. They’re pure extracts from the plants and they’re highly concentrated. So for example, with peppermint, you know we’ve all probably had peppermint tea in a tea bag – but one drop of peppermint essential oil (affiliate link) is the same as – I can never remember exact numbers (the oils are 50 to 70 times more powerful than herbs – so one drop of peppermint oil is like 28 cups of peppermint tea.”

Peter: “That’s powerful.”

Martha: “I love peppermint. In fact, some people call peppermint the Swiss army knife (I’ve heard it used this way), the Swiss army knife of essential oils because it has so many uses. I love, remember York Peppermint Patties… ‘Get the sensation’…”

York Peppermint Pattie Interlude

Martha: “…The first thing when I smell this is oh my gosh, it’s the sensation without all the calories. So just like one drop, I do this and it’s like wow. It just like wakes you up and energizes you – like the smell of really strong peppermint. Or you can just pass the bottle under your nose.”

Peter: “And after you do that, the residue that’s still on your hands (it does evaporate real quickly because it’s highly volatile), but the extra residue that’s on your hands you can rub it on the back of your neck and shoulders.”

Martha: “And what does that do?”

Peter: “It tingles a little, it gives that sort of icy-hot feeling and it really helps cool your body.”

Martha: “Yeah, so it’s really cooling. If you live in a hot climate, it’s amazingly cool. What I’ve started doing is taking a drop and putting it in a little spritz bottle with some water and spritzing myself in the heat. So it has cooling properties, it has calming properties for belly and tummy troubles. Like I said, you use peppermint tea, you know if you’ve eaten too much and your tummy feels a little upset – you can use peppermint oil the same way. And it’s funny, I’ve been sharing these oils now with some of my friends and I have one particular friend who has some kids and they were over making cookies one day and the little girl saw my whole big drawer of oils. She’s like, that’s like you gave mom! And she’s like Cade, my brother – he’s junior high school age – he loves to smell this before he does his homework. It’s like kids kind of know, instinctively. Just by sniffing this he knows that he’s more awake and he has better luck working on his homework. So I thought that was really cool.”

Peter: “To your point earlier, my favorite use for peppermint is to rub it on my belly those times when I’m just not feeling so great.”

Martha: “And I used to use it – I used to do massage – and peppermint was one of those oils I would use in that because it helps with, um it’s known to help support head tension.”

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Why Use Essential Oils

Martha: “So why do we want to explore nature’s solutions – why are we all so interested in nature’s solutions for our health and wellness these days?”

Peter: “Essential oils are very affordable. One bottle, a larger 15 mL bottle, has approximately 250 drops of oils in it and if you’re talking one drop per application (maybe two) it really comes out to pennies per application.”

Martha: “Right, pennies per application.”

Peter: “Compared to many prescriptions.”

Martha: “Or over the counter products. Also, these substances tend to address the problem and not just mask the symptom. What we have going on in our world right now is that there’s lots of medicines – both over-the-counter and prescribed that are really just addressing the symptom. They’re not getting to the root of the problem. And a lot of them come with really scary side effects. I don’t know about you, but have you ever listened to some of those commercials on tv?”

Peter: “They go on, and on, and on…”

Martha: “They go on and on and on about the side effects. Well those things don’t exist with essential oils.”

Peter: “They’re available within your home immediately – as soon as you need them.”

Why We Use doTERRA Essential Oils

Martha: “Yeah. So another great oil that I really love and one of my favorites after peppermint is lavender. And lavender oil is amazing. This is one of the first oils I ever discovered back when I was doing massage. It’s wonderful in massage because it’s very soothing and relaxing. It’s wonderful for irritated skin. And I keep it in my kitchen you know, because I do have a food blog and I’m cooking a lot. And I’m also prone to accidents. And it’s wonderfully soothing if you’ve burned yourself or cut yourself. It’s just amazingly soothing to the skin. And it supports restful sleep. We also have a bottle on our nightstand and both my husband and myself apply this to the bottoms of our feet before sleep. And he’s now a total convert to lavender.”

Martha: “Because we’re talking on video and want to share this on our website, we can’t really say the name of the company. But again, we’re happy to share that if you complete this contact form. But this particular companies essential oil plants are grown and harvested in they natural habitat. There’s a lot of variation. There’s a lot of oils popping up everywhere from little health food stores to Whole Foods to Sprouts to farmer’s markets and online. So there’s a lot of variability. And one reason why we really love these oils is because they are harvested and grown in their natural habitat. Again, it sort of like makes sense if lavender grows in Provence you want to get the lavender from Provence, not the lavender from Seattle. It’s going to be better grown in it’s natural habitat.”

Peter: “With all those other sources that you described, you don’t always know you’re getting in a bottle. But they do multiple third party tests which certifies the purity of the oil in the bottle, so you know what you’re getting. There’s no question.”

Martha: “Right. So they’re some of the purest and you want to look for therapeutic grade. And the way you’re going to know that is on the side of the bottle it’ll say supplemental facts and it will tell you the supplemental information per serving. That will tell you it’s safe for ingestion. And there’s a lot of question around that, but if you see that then you know – you always want to read your bottle because some will say do not ingest. So obviously then you wouldn’t want to do that. You always want to follow the direction on the bottle.

So another great oil, sort of a master oil, is frankincense. It’s a very pricey oil, but there’s reason for it’s priciness. It kind of makes sense, the three wise men right, brought it to baby Jesus so it had to have some power even thousands of years ago. So what else is frankincense oil (affiliate link) good for?”

Peter: “Um, when in doubt, use frankincense.”

Martha: “Yeah, a lot of people say when in doubt use frankincense because it has such a multitude of uses. It’s designed to help support healthy cellular function. You can use it topically, it’s in a lot of high-end skin care products. My sister, who is also involved with us, is an esthetician and she’s loving it – she’s using it both on her own skin and on her clients with some very positive results in that regard. It’s good for balancing your mood. And again, when in doubt or you’re not sure, get your frankincense out because it’s going to help. And that’s the really cool thing about essential oils is that because they’re plants, they’re nature, we’re nature, that they’re adaptogenic. It’s almost like by using them, they are smart enough to know what they need to do to help us, which is pretty neat.”

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Essential Oils Are Effective

Martha: “So essential oils are effective. The reason they’re effective is that they are able to work at the cellular level and protect our cells. They can actually, and this is going back to biology and we want to keep it pretty simple, but they can actually penetrate the cell and get in there and do things that a lot of things can’t. So any impurities and threats that reside on the inside – you’ve got impurities essentially in your body inside and outside your cells. For example, again I’m showing my medical background, but viruses live inside cells and bacteria live outside cells. I know, I’m getting ahead of myself.

But anyway, essential oils are smart enough to go where they need to go. That’s the bottom line. So they can fight threats inside your body in a multitude of ways and that makes them pretty cool.

Now, a lot of you have wondered, so we’ve got these oils which is kind of cool, but how do we use them? We’ve talked a lot about sniffing, smelling, ingestion – so we’re just going to take you through now how you can use these oils. The first way you can use them is aromatically – it’s aromatherapy through smell. So you can actually just take – and this is how it all started for us because it was just diffusing into the air – we smelled from the bottle and that’s powerful. And these really do cross your blood-brain barrier and just by smelling them you can start to receive the positive effects of these oils. So you can inhale them, either just directly from the bottle through your nose or there are devices…”

Peter: “Diffusers&…”

Martha: “Diffusers that you can add the oil to with a little bit of water and just is going to disperse it…”

Peter: “It creates a vapor…”

Martha: “Yeah, and that will disperse it into the air for you. So you can use them that way, aromatically.

Another way you can use the oils is – like we talked about with lavender and burns – is topically on your skin. So, they’re very powerful to use on your skin. From the bottom of your feet where they really will be absorbed and distributed throughout your body – just through your feet. And again, when you get into the oils, there are some that are really hot and there are some people who have more sensitive skin – so sometimes you don’t want to use them directly (often on your feet they’re fine because your feet are so sturdy), but you can dilute them with an carrier oil (like fractionated coconut oil), for young skin or sensitive skin, to protect you.”

Peter: “So, putting them on the bottoms of your feet would be for a general application, but you could also apply them directly to the particular area?”

Martha: “Right. So when I burn myself in the kitchen I put the lavender oil right on the affected area. You can use them on the soles of your feet for a more general use or in a particular area – like you said you sometimes rub them on your belly or on the back of your neck if you’re feeling tension in your shoulders.

And then the other way is internally. You want to make sure that you’re using therapeutic grade oils that say they’re ok for internal use. But you can add them – either a drop under your tongue, or put it in a little capsule, or you could just add a drop to water to make your own little form of tea.”

Peter: “Yeah, lemon is really good for that.”

Martha: “And I love lemon in my water.”

Peter: “There’s grapefruit.”

Martha: “Grapefruit, I love a drop of grapefruit in my water. We are lucky we’re in Arizona and it’s citrus season now, so we have citrus everywhere. But if you’re not that lucky, citrus can get very expensive, and I know a lot of people just like to start their morning with some fresh lemon juice in warm water. This can be a great alternative to that and you can keep it with you instead of always needing to have lemons you can just add a drop of lemon in your warm water. This can be a great way to cleanse and start your day.

Lemon is also great for cleaning.”

Peter: “It’s really good at getting that sticky stuff, like from price tags that you take off, if you buy new glasses or new dishes and you’ve got that sticky residue it’s amazing and it just comes right off. I was really impressed.”

Martha: “Yeah, it’s another one of those multiple use oils. So that’s really where we’re going to end our first class here with you. We hope we’ve answered some questions for you about how you use essential oils, why you’d want to use them.”

Peter: “And maybe even piqued your curiosity a little…”

Martha: “Yeah, and piqued your curiosity, so if you want to know more, if you’re interested, please fill out this wellness consultation form and let us know what you want to know more of and we’ll be happy to follow up with you either with a phone call or with an email, or if you just want to get on a list to be provided with more educational kinds of articles and information through your email – just let us know.”

Peter: “Thanks.”