depression & essential Oils
Depression (noun) – persistent feeling of sadness and loss of interest
Depression is a topic that most of us do not want to talk about, although statistics indicate that it affects one in every eight Canadians 15 years and older. There are many types of depression including clinical depression, major depression, bipolar disorder, post-partum/perinatal depression, anxiety, and seasonal affective disorder. Any type of depression can be mild to severe and can manifest in many different symptoms, including feelings of sadness, tearfulness, hopelessness, anger, irritability, loss of interest in normal activities, sleep disturbance, change in appetite, anxiety, and the list goes on. It can also manifest in physical symptoms such as fatigue, headaches, muscle aches, joint pain, chest pain, and digestive problems. If you feel as though you may be suffering from depression, you should visit your family doctor or another health professional immediately. This article is not intended to replace conventional treatment.
There are a number of essential oils that have a positive impact on your mood and help to relieve symptoms of depression:
- Lavender
- Roman Chamomile
- Melissa
- Jasmine
- Sacred Frankincense
- Frankincense
- Peppermint
- Ylang Ylang
- Rosemary
- Lemon
- Cedarwood
You may find some other oils that positively impact your mood – everyone is different. I personally like Bergamot.
Why do essential oils have an impact on your mood?
Inhaled essential oils (whether diffused or inhaled directly) stimulate the olfactory membranes in the lining of the nose which trigger electrical impulses to the olfactory center in the brain which are then transmitted to the limbic system.
Olfaction (smell) is the only sense that can have direct effects on the limbic region of the brain. Studies at the University of Vienna have shown that some essential oils…can stimulate blood flow and activity in the emotional regions of the brain.
Clinical studies at the Department of Psychiatry at the Mie University of Medicine showed that Lemon not only reduced depression, but it also reduced stress when inhaled.
~Essential Oil Desk Reference, 6th Edition
How do you use essential oils to improve your mood?
Any of these oils, alone or in a combination can be diffused. You can also put 2-3 drops in your hands and rub them together, then cup your hands over your nose and inhale. You could also put 8-10 drops of oil on a cottonball or tissue and put it in an air vent in your house or vehicle. If you are on the go and want to take the oils with you, you could also put 1-2 drops on your temples and at the back of your neck. I have made an essential oil roller that I use frequently for a mood lift, especially during the long, dark, rainy months. I am including the recipe below.
Happy rolling!
~Sue
“Uplift” Roller
- 10 drops Lavender
- 10 drops Bergamot
- 5 drops Ylang Ylang
Place essential oils in a 10 ml roller bottle and fill to the top with a carrier oil (I use fractionated coconut oil, but any other carrier oil will do).
choose your actions
With 2016 coming slowly to its end, every year I like to reflect and think about what the year has brought to us. Thinking about all the accomplishments of the year, the ups and downs of the past couple of months and take all of this in and start planning for the upcoming year.
Our family has started using Young Living essential oils in November 2015, so it’s been over an year now and all I can say is that I’m so happy I’ve chosen this path for our family. We’ve ditched all the regular chemical products in our household (soaps, shampoos, toothpastes, laundry detergent and cleaning products which were full of harmful chemicals) and started using natural products.
We have also stopped using painkillers for headaches, PMS symptoms, muscle pains and many more and started using essential oils instead.
I’ve treated burned skin and cuts with oils instead of grabbing creams from pharmacy.
Our kids never slept better before. Lavender, Cedarwood and lately Gentle baby oils are a part of their daily bedtime routine. They fall asleep much easier and don’t wake up at night, stopped tossing in bed and even their teeth grinding is gone.
We haven’t been sick during the year at all. Our kids got runny nose maybe twice this year and it was gone within two days. Once again, we just diffused essential oils at night and rubbed oils on their feet during the day. No more cough syrups and other over the counter stuff. Just plain natural treatment.
As I’ve mentioned so many times, we are a very active family and compete in road cycling, mountain biking, cyclocross, running and triathlon races. We’ve started using essential oils for improving our workouts and for speeding up our recoveries with a huge success! Even my husband is now a believer and is asking for a massage or what oil he should use after his exercise.
This year we have made own organic lip balms and hand/body lotions, bug sprays and air refresheners, candles and many more DIY projects.
Living healthy is a huge part of our family lifestyle, so it’s only natural that the main goal for my family is to invest into our wellness not just by spending time exercising and eating healthy food, but also by making the right choices about what we are putting into and onto ourselves and living non-toxic life as much as possible. I encourage you to go to your bathroom or look under your kitchen sink and read all the labels on products you are using every single day. You will be surprised how many chemicals you will find and at the same time horrified because that’s what we are using for our dear ones, our children, on ourselves. I went through this on my own as well, so I know what I’m talking about. Even though I always tried to make smart choices and go for the “natural” products, it wasn’t until I’ve started doing my own research and found out how many products in stores are just marketed totally wrong.
Every year I choose one little word which I try to live through the whole year. For 2016 it was wholehearted and I can honestly say that in the wellness area, I put all my heart in and focused on making the change in my family. For upcoming year 2017 my one little word is awaken (from dictionary: to become conscious or aware of something <awoke to the possibilities>, to make active).
And here is one of many things which I would like to be aware of more, to be more active. My goal for the next year is to help as many people as possible to find their path to wellness and healthier lives. I would like to help YOU, yes You, who is reading this post at this very moment and show you how to live more naturally. And as a gift to you from me, if you decide to join me on this journey, I would like to help you started.
From now till December 31st, 2016 (10pm PST) , if you decide to join me and sign up for Young Living with me, I am offering you $15 off of your Premium Starter kit (which includes 11 essential oils, Diffuser, hand sanitizer and many more) or your choice of one of these two oils – Cedarwood or Orange. You won’t get “just the oils”, but you will become a part of an amazing group of caring people who will support you on your journey and will provide you with tons of materials and recipes to get you started.
Just leave me a comment here or send me an email and I will show you how to start.
Let’s make the upcoming year better together and full of Energy, send all your Stresses away, live in Peace and calming state and having a Tranquil year full of Deep relief.
fighting congestion naturally
Even during the “most wonderful time of the year ” we can’t avoid the colds and coughs. One kiddo at home today with stuffed nose and feeling bleh.
I made her an inhaler to help her with the congestion.
I bought an empty inhaler in a local store for $1.25, added a few drops of R.C. and Raven essential oils and that’s it! Easy, natural, cheap and quickly made.
I love that we can deal with stuff like this naturally with just a few drops of essential oils.
Cyber Monday sale
Ditch the chemicals in your home and start your holiday season naturally.
If you have been thinking about transforming your home to more toxin free and have been on the fence to try out Young Living essential oils and their natural products and learn more about the benefits of going naturally, tonight (starting 11.01pm MST) and tomorrow November, 28th is the best time to start!! Get $20 product credit on your 100 PV order.
Using essential oils has helped my family so much! From sleeping issues, treating everyday ailments naturally and boosting our immune system to speedy recoveries after workouts. I can’t imagine my life without these magical bottles anymore!
Please let me know if you have any questions and I would be happy to show you how to go more natural.
when the bottle is empty
Once you finished a bottle of your essential oil, you have been probably wondering what to do with it. Here is a little tip – make a bath salt.
This is a very easy project to do. Get a glass container, fill it up with Epsom salt (you can get it in your nearby health store, drug store, even in your regular grocery store) and turn your empty bottles upside down. Once the very last drop is out, simply stir the mixture and enjoy.
You can use your now completely empty bottles as containers for roll-ons with the roll on attachment. Or you can use them as sample bottles to give out to your friends or mix your own blends at home. The possibilities are endless. These would make perfect Christmas gifts!
Depending on your needs, you can make different kinds of bath salts:
- use lavender or cedarwood for a calming / relaxing bath
- panaway for pain relief
- stress relief for releasing your stress
- or any other oil suitable for your current need
These baths are amazing for relaxing and also for detoxifying your body. You can read more about benefits of Epsom salt baths here.
As my personal preference, I use Young Living essential oils for my DIY projects. I trust in quality of these high quality essential oils. You can read more information about the Seed to Seal process here.
If you have any question and are interested in the benefits of essential oils, please don’t hesitate to contact me. I would be happy to answer any question.
peaceful nights
Wishing you all a peaceful and relaxing Labour Day spent with your dear ones!
Let’s talk about peaceful nights today, shall we?
With school starting tomorrow, it can be sometimes quite challenging to get kids back on a regular schedule and make sure they are getting enough sleep. In my family, we diffuse essential oils for an easy bedtime and good sleep. Our kids have each their own diffuser in their rooms and are able to get it ready by themselves for a smooth bedtime.
Peace & Calming is one of our favourite blends. This blend promotes relaxation and deep sense of peace and emotional well-being, helping to dampen tensions and uplifts spirits. When massaged on the bottoms of feet, it can be a wonderful prelude to a peaceful night’s rest. It may calm overactive and hard-to-manage children. It might also reduce depression, anxiety, , stress and insomnia.
This blend is made of:
- Tangerine – which contains esters and aldehydes that are sedating and calming, helping to combat anxiety and nervousness.
- Orange – is elevating to the mind and body and brings joy and peace. A Brazilian university evaluated the potential anxiolytic effect of Citrus sinensis essential oil and found in a placebo-controlled study that aroma of sweet orange oil was acutely anxiolytic, giving support to its calming use as a tranquilizer
- Ylang Ylang – increases relaxation and balances male and female energies, restoring confidence and equilibrium
- Patchouli – is very high in sesquiterpenes that stimulate the limbic center of the brain. It re-establishes mental and emotional equilibrium and energizes the mind. It promotes grounding, and helps center the emotions to clarify thoughts, allowing the mind to relax and let go of jealousies, obsessions and insecurities.
- Blue Tansy – helps cleanse the liver and lymphatic system and combats anger and negative emotions.
Thieves got it | part 3: around the house
People in general spend a lot of time in their homes. Home should be the safe place for everyone. Not just for the feeling of being safe, but also being safe what we touch, the air we breath and the products we use.
Essential oils have been used since the beginning of time for many different applications and in the last couple of years they are more often used in the modern world as well. If you start reading labels, you will be astounded at how many products contain essential oils. Now you can protect yourself and your family from harmful bacteria, naturally.
Thieves products provide a natural, safe, and highly effective defense against germs that can make us sick. All-natural Thieves household products contain the proven antibacterial properties of Thieves essential oil blend, other complementary essential oils, and plant-based ingredients.
Thieves Household Cleaner is a staple in our home.
Thieves Household Cleaner offers nontoxic, biodegradable, all-purpose cleaning solution using therapeutic-grade essential oils as emulsifiers, and germ killers. Containing Thieves essential oil blend, proven in a 1997 Weber State University (Ogden, Utah) study to kill over 99.96 percent of bacteria like Pseudonomas aeroginoss, this cleaner is fully biodegradable and complies with EPA standards.
How we use it around the house? In our kitchen and every bathroom I have a glass spray bottle filled with water and 1 cup (the tiny black top from the cleaner bottle) of Thieves cleaner and use it for:
- kitchen and bathroom counters
- stainless steel appliances
- mirrors
- cleaning floors and tiles (I add 1 cupful into bucket full of water)
- soft scrub (the BEST thing ever! – as mentioned here and here + a recipe) – I use it for our stainless steel sinks, shower glass, cleaning showers, toilets, bathroom sinks
- carpet cleaning
- car seats
- getting rid of build up from mesh under microwave
And many many more! I use one bottle for everything! It’s safe even for the little hands to use it without gloves and there are no headaches afterwards as you don’t inhale any toxic fumes. LOVE, love, love this little magic bottle.
A new product we have just been trying for the first time is this little Thieves Spray pictured below. It is an all-natural, petrochemical-free antiseptic spray ideal for purifying small surfaces like doorknobs, handles, toilet seats and more. Ideal for traveling and staying away from the germs in public places.
Everyone I’ve shown this Thieves Household Cleaner has fallen in love with it because of its natural ingredients and amazing smell.
If you have any questions, don’t be afraid to send me a message or contact me through the Contact me form. I would be more than happy to introduce you to this amazing and natural oily world.
Thieves got it | part 2: supporting the immune system
As I mentioned yesterday in my Thieves got it | part 1 post, we use Thieves essential oil everywhere around the house. This blend is highly effective in supporting the immune system and good health so naturally now, with back-to-school time of the year and cold and rainy weather coming up, it’s the best time to jump on the thieves wagon and start using it even more.
How do we use this blend at home? We make homemade roll-ons. I buy 10ml roll-on glass bottles, put 10-15 drops of Thieves oil on the bottom and then fill up the bottle with a carrier oil (I use V-6 from Young Living but you can use almond oil, grapeseed, jojoba). That’s it! It’s super easy and so effective. We apply the mix on bottoms of feet before going to bed.
Another way how you can boost up your immunity is to diffuse thieves for 15–30 minutes in your home to help eliminate airborne bacteria. For more uses of this amazing blend check out the tips on the YL blog.
I just love how we can help to strengthen our wellness in natural ways!
Let me know if you have any question, I would be happy to answer it! And stay tuned for more thieves posts.
Thieves got it | part 1
I think I can honestly say that a product made with thieves oil, is in every single room in our house. We use Thieves oil in our hand foaming soaps, in air sprays, we brush our teeth with thieves, fighting against colds with homemade roll-ons and of course, we diffuse it.
We do laundry with thieves, use it for washing the dishes, cleaning around the house, while traveling… I can’t imagine our everyday life without thieves any more!
Especially now with back-to-school being just behind the corner, we are embracing on boosting our immunity and getting ready to fight the germs in a natural way. As I mentioned several times already, last winter was our first full winter using Young Living essential oils and we avoided being sick, didn’t have to use any over-the-counter cough/cold/fever medicine and we even skipped the cough syrup. It was our healthiest winter ever! And I really believe that’s because we went natural and started using YL oils and products.
So what is so special about this blend and why is it so awesome? Thieves is the most amazing blend of highly antiviral, antiseptic, antibacterial and anti-infectious essential oils.
It was created from research based on legends about a group of 15th-century thieves who rubbed oils on themselves to avoid contracting the plague while they robbed the bodies of the dead and dying. When apprehended, the thieves were forced to tell what their secret was and disclosed the formula of the herbs, spices, and oil they used to protect themselves in exchange for more lenient punishment.
The Thieves blend is a mix of clove, lemon, cinnamon bark, eucalyptus radiata and rosemary. It really smells amazing!
In the upcoming posts I will show you how we use this blend in our everyday life and around the house. If you have any question, please don’t hesitate to send me a message or comment on this post.
healing naturally
Two days ago I went through gum grafting surgery. Nothing fun, let me tell you. My gums have started receding after wearing braces a few years ago and unfortunately it got to the point when something had to be fixed. I was very nervous and didn’t know what to expect from this whole procedure. The only thing I knew beforehand was that I wanted to avoid as many pills as possible after the surgery and go through my recovery more naturally. My dentist gave me some painkillers before she even started the surgery to ease up the recovery process, which definitely helped, but I still wanted to go off the painkillers as soon as possible. I took Advil 6 hours after the surgery and then decided to skip the dose and use Clove essential oil instead. I wasn’t sure if it would help or not but I did some research on Clove and it looked like a perfect oil for what I needed so I went for it. I use Young Living essential oils, it’s just my personal preference because I trust this brand for many reasons.
Here are some facts about Clove – healers in China and India have used clove buds since ancient times as part of their treatments. Eugenol, clove’s principal constituent, was used in the dental industry for years to numb gums.
Clove has been used for numbing all types of pain, infections, toothache and many more. Inflammation is an important part of the body’s natural defense system, promoting healing after exposure to toxins or following an injury. Typical signs of inflammation include swelling, redness and pain at the affected site. Clove is one of the essential oils which is renowned for its anti-inflammatory properties and it many cases, you will find out it’s not necessary to take drugs, since these oils are capable of providing effective relief from inflammation – without the addition of toxic chemicals. (as per Essential Oils – Natural Remedies by Althea Press).
As everything is still “fresh” and I didn’t want to touch any of the many stitches, I have in my mouth, I prepared a simple “mouth wash”. I put filtered water into a small glass, added about 3 drops of clove essential oil and diluted it with a few drops of V-6 and just rinsed my mouth for 30 seconds or so. To my surprise the pain in my gums was gone within few minutes and there is a very minimum of swelling. So this method really works for me and I’m very happy that I can get a pain relief without using pain killers. I use this method about two times a day.
Please note that this post is just about my own experience. I’m not a doctor, neither I recommend how to treat diseases. This post is simply about sharing what works for me and I recommend to do your own research before you start experimenting with essential oils. If you have question, please don’t hesitate to contact me, I would be more than happy to answer it or direct you to a proper source.
