Essential Oils

I did it again.  Dropped right off the face of the blogging earth.  Oh well.  It's crazy and sometimes I don't want to do it!

I'm back for today.  Talking about essential oils.



Random right?

Here's what happened.  I decided to go all "green" and plant an herb garden.  Which lead me to the benefits of herbs, which naturally lead to essential oils.  The reason I was so fascinated with all of this is that Truitt is super susceptible to croup, but the clinic won't put a permanent prescription for steroids on his file.  Which is the only way to help him.  Instead I have to ER him and pay a gazillion dollars even though I know what he needs.

So.  I'm desperate and looking for other options.  And along comes essential oils.  Truitt has not had croup since we got some of our oils, so I can't actually tell you if it works for him or not.  But what I can tell you is that the EO market is crazy.  There is a ton of evidence that it works, and a ton of strong opinions on what company to go with.

The big two are DoTerra and Young Living.  These are MLM companies (multi-level management).  Which means there are parties with people who sell them.  This jacks up the prices significantly.  But, I have a cousin who swears by DoTerra and actually sent me a bunch of oils, which I am extremely grateful for.  And I also know several people who stand firm with Young Living, especially their Thieves oil.

   

I went crazy researching, because that it what I do, and came across this 7 part series from a mom who was looking for the best company.  It's pretty fascinating.  Long, but totally worth it.  And read some of the comments too.  In the end, she picked a company that is smaller and not and MLM called Native American Nutritionals.  I ordered several oils from them.

The thing I am finding out is people are loyal to their oils, no matter the brand.  And it seems like each company has good and bad ones.  And for people, some oils and brands work and some don't.  You kind of have to experiment.

There are things to look for in a company.  Making sure they third party test and what country the oils are from; there is a whole list of things to look for here.  Scroll down a bit and you will see the list.

I also picked up two books about oils.

     
       Here                                       Here

Valerie Worwood is kind of "the person" when it comes to essential oils.  I bought the first one because it's a pretty exhaustive book on the use of oils from maladies to home use and face creams with all sorts of good concoctions.  I bought the second because you need to be careful with essential oils and small children.

I ended up buying oils from several different companies.  Cost can be a big factor in choosing companies.  More expensive doesn't mean better and cheaper doesn't mean worse quality necessarily.  I ended up buying from all of these companies:

Native American Nutritionals
Plant Therapy
Heritage Essential Oils
Eden's Gardens

I also have several DoTerra oils from my cousin.  Nothing from Young Living, but I plan to buy their Thieves oil, probably their most famous.  I have DoTerra's version, but I'd love to compare them.  I'll put it off until fall though because it's around $45 and since I already have a version that does the same thing if we should need it this summer.

All of the above companies have both negative and positive reviews.  As does anything else in life.  I'd spend some time researching some of the links I gave you and form your own opinions.  Careful though, soon enough you'll get sucked in and wonder where the time went!

I'll be back later with some of the things we are currently treating with essential oils, and diffusers which disperse the oils around the room for health by breathing them in.