Dear essential oil users:
I mentioned in my previous post that I am pissed! I am indeed in the medical field and when I heard that my local Young Living consultants were going to have a former RN as one of the speakers, I was thrilled. I, being in the nursing field, felt good about choosing to follow a company who even had nurses as their consultants. At the meeting, of course she told her personal life changing experience of replacing all her medications that she was taking at a young age with lifesaving essential oils; but this is the interesting part, she said how her consultant who had introduced her to oils pushed her to sell the oils within a few days of using oils herself. My whole perception of her story was that she was pushed to sell, however she could, Young Living essential oils and went on to explain all different ways to sell essential oils. It is very upsetting to me that a fellow medical provider takes these little potent gems so lightly as to tell us to sell them, even though we knew nothing about how to safely use them, much less how to safely “sell them”. She mentioned that it does not matter whether we know anything about how to use the essential oils that we just have to follow the guide books (picture bellow) that were present at the meeting.
My point is that even if you have a healthcare provider, whether she is a doctor, chiropractor, nurse, nurse practitioner; she does not necessarily have aromatherapy knowledge or hold an aromatherapy license. Right after, I went to a license aromatherapist, I set up an appointment with a well-known holistic doctor in the Tampa Bay area. I had used several essential oils on my 2 year old daughter to relieve “asthma like symptoms” and I further wanted to see how I could help her symptoms in a more holistic way. The doctor told me that he had very little knowledge about essential oils therefore could not advice on any of the oils or their use. These is an example that not even a holistic doctor knows of the use or properties of essential oils.
Furthermore, some of the essential oil guides that the Young Living nurse consultant mentioned were: Quick Reference Guide for Using Essential Oils by Connie and Alan Higley, Gentle Babies by Debra Raybern, Essential Oil Pocket Reference by Life Science Publishing that I mentioned on the last blog, and Essential Oils Desk Reference also by Life Science Publishing. The two most user friendly guides for me were Quick Reference Guide for Using Essential Oils and Gentle Babies.
After many months reading these two guides and using their recommendations many, many times; my husband (who is also in the medical field) mentioned to me, as he was glancing (very skeptically) through the Quick Reference Guide, that some of the actual medical information that the book mentioned were not accurate at all (the picture bellow shows you how there is an accurate definition of Candida and next to it on the gray box is not an accurate description of Candida) My husband has not one bit of knowledge about essential oils, but he does have plenty of medical knowledge. The Quick Reference Guide book gives definitions of diseases and a few facts about the diseases and then goes on about telling you what essential oils to use. When I research a little bit more about the authors, I came to find out that the main two authors are two moms who compiled information of essential oils from lectures and seminars of D. Gary Young (founder of Young Living) and product information. The third person involve in helping them make this book I could not find much information about. I was just looking for the word Aromatherapist with years of experience but those words were never to be found.
The book Gentle Babies is a guide to essential oils and Natural Remedies for pregnancy, childbirth, infants and Young Children. This book was written by Debra Raybern who is certified in various holistic modalities including Aromatherapy, but what worries me about her book is that she lists the oils that are safe to use in children yet throughout her book she has these “gray boxes” of testimonials of what Young Living essential oils people have used to heal their families and these testimonies contradict her recommendations. They used blends with essential oils not recommended for children and with high concentrations and not correctly diluted. When I used this book I would try essential oils from her recommendations and from the “testimonies” thinking that if it was in the book it most somehow be OK even though it contradicted her recommendations. Why, why would you write a book that has testimonies that don’t follow your safety recommendations!!!!!! WHY people? I cringed now just thinking how dangerous it was for me to be applying all these essential oils to my kids (I am screaming inside!)
The picture bellow shows a list of safe oils that she recommends for children. The gray box testimony talks about Thieves, a blend that has: Clove (Syzygium aromaticum) bud oil, Lemon (Citrus limon) peel oil, Cinnamon (Cinnamomum verum) bark oil, Eucalyptus (Eucalyptus radiata)leaf oil, Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis) leaf oil. The R.C. blends has: Eucalyptus globulus leaf oil, Myrtus communis (Myrtle) oil, Origanum majorana (Marjoram) leaf oil, Pinus sylvestris (Pine) leaf oil, Eucalyptus radiata leaf oil, Eucalyptus citriodora oil, Lavandula angustifolia (Lavender) oil, Cupressus sempervirens (Cypress) leaf/nut/stem oil, Picea mariana (Black spruce) leaf oil, Menthe piperita (Peppermint) oil.
Clove, cinnamon, any eucalyptus, myrtle, pine, black spruce and peppermint are not on the safety list that she published. I understand that some of these oils might be in small quantities and some of them are safe for children after a certain age, but my point is that without knowing that, without the author explaining further, how can we safely make a decision. Not only that, but this testimony is about using all these oils on a five week old baby, a very sensitive nervous and respiratory system at this point. Reading that, made me believe that it was safe to use these oils on my kids, but it was clearly not safe.
Essential Oils are considered natural products. Just because they are natural does not mean they are harmless or even appropriate (good) for human beings. Poison ivy is natural but also very caustic to us, and so are quite a few venomous plants. In other words, I am not against essential oils, on the contrary; but I am against people marketing them as natural as it cannot harm you (which they can if they are used inappropriately ) I also mentioned on my previous blog that Sylla Sheppard-Hanger LMT founder/director of Atlantic Institute of Aromatherapy is the only one (that I know of) that actually maintains and encourages essential oil users to report adverse effects of essential oils of any brand. Because I think this is very, very important I am putting a link to her blog about the worst essential oil adverse effects reported by essential oils users like you and I who are not adequately guided: Part 1 and Part 2 of Top Worst Injuries from Essential Oils 2014 from Sylla ‘Sheppard-Hanger blog of February 2015.
Among some of these very bad and life threatening adverse effects were: nasty irritations to skin using undiluted essential oils, trips to ER for ingesting oils in an inadequate way and dangerous amounts, chronic digestive issues, breathing problems on a baby after applying essential oils, seizures in kids, etc. These adverse effects are serious and plain darn scary!!
Knowledge is power, be safe dear essential oil users!
Con amor,
Wendy
The Minimal Sisters 