To INGEST or NOT to Ingest Essential Oils

To ingest or not to ingest - that is the question! Although for some it doesn't take much thought. DO IT! Or DON'T DO IT! Certified Clinical Aromatherapist Lea Jacobson is here to settle the debate with you once and for all answering the following questions: Is it safe to add essential oils to water? Is it ever safe to ingest essential oils? What about the "flu bomb?" What about those who say they've done it for. Years and are just fine? And the two essential oils I'd ever recommend ingesting, how, and why.

Hey, everyone! I'm Lea Jacobson, And if you use essential oils, you come to the right place. As a certified clinical aroma therapist with over a decade of experience. I'll be guiding you with practical information without learning complicated chemistry. This will ensure that you and your family stay safe while enjoying the benefits of essential oils.

Enjoy Season 4 of the podcast as we read through my latest book, Using Essential Oils Safely.

This is Lea Jacobson, empowering you to use essential oils safely. I hope you learned something new! Tell a friend about our podcast so they can learn, too. All episodes are available at LeaJacobson.com/podcast

To get a signed copy of my book, or to access the course which contains even more information, jump on over to my website LeaJacobson.com/BOOK or /COURSE

Transcript

Podcast Intro: 0:26

Hey everyone! Do you use essential oils or maybe you're just curious about using them and you want to make sure you know how to use them before you get started? Then you have come to the right place! My name is Lea Jacobson, a Certified Clinical Aromatherapist, essential oil educator, speaker, author- and all of that good stuff- but most importantly, I am your go-to when you have a question about how to use essential oils safely- no matter which brand you use. Now, let's get started on today's podcast.

Lea Jacobson: 0:59

Okay, so here we are. I am both live on my Lea Jacobson, CCA[Facebook] page and recording this podcast. I know it's been a few weeks since I've recorded my podcast or recorded any podcast for you guys. It's been absolutely crazy wrapping up the blending class as well as getting the recipe book written and all of that. Super excited. Well yesterday there was a comment that was brought up in one of the groups that I'm in about ingesting essential oils, and of course it's always a hot topic. So I posted on my Lea Jacobson CCA[Facebook] Page about the topic, and as always I'm always surprised on the number of comments that we have, not understanding that adding essential oils to your water is really not a great thing. So I'm going to begin by reading for you the post that I shared in our Using Essential Oils Safely group originally posted on my Lea Jacobson CCA[Facebok] Page. So here's the post..."Regarding adding lemon essential oil to water: The essential oil will not mix with the water, which means when you consume it, it will be in concentrated form against your insides. This can cause irritation, redness, or even ulcers if done longterm. The other concern is the damage to the liver. Our bodies are amazing and can take a lot of stuff that we do to it that isn't good, but eventually it will have enough. Consider the long-term effects of cigarette smoking. People will say they smoked for years and it doesn't hurt them, but we all know that it can eventually cause problems. Whenever ingestion is going to be beneficial, it is always when added to a carrier oil and placed in a capsule. This protects the insides from the damage of the concentrated oil. Your liver still has to process it, though. Incidentally, lemon essential oil is never going to be recommended to ingest in this form(adding essential oils to water). There are only two other essential oils that I would ever recommend ingesting for two very specific issues and lemon is not one of them. This is regardless of brands as the most high quality brands are going to be the most potent and most apt to cause adverse reactions." Now, I just shared this really to summarize a bunch of information about ingesting, particularly adding essential oils to water- and there were so many comments on my page, so many comments within the group, as well over 200 shares in not even 24 hours- so I know this is a topic that every time we talk about can sometimes get out of control. There's a lot of people that are wanting to defend what they're doing, um, and a lot of people that are on the flip side saying,"Yes, I agree, don't do that. I did that and I had problems." So this podcast is going to cover lots of different little sub topics on this. So let me read through some of the things that we are going to be covering. We are going to cover, is it safe to add essential oils to water? Are there risks? Is it ever safe to ingest essential oils like in food or in a capsule? Are there ways to ingest with minimal harm? What about the"flu bomb?" What about taking Oregano internally? What do essential oil companies have to say about ingestion? What do Certified Aromatherapists have to say about ingestion? What do consumers say about ingestion? The,"I've done it for years and I'm fine" comments. And finally, the only two essential oils that I would ever recommend ingesting and how and for what? So keep listening. Okay, so let's get started. So what if I asked you to chop up five lemons and add them, all of them, to a glass of water and drink them. Would you do it? Probably not because that's just overkill, right? Well, that is a visual for what you are doing when you add just one drop of essential oil to your water(sort of). Lemon essential oil is made by cold pressing. It's also made by steam distillation, but most of the time it is cold pressed. Depending on the size of the distillery, hundreds of pounds, sometimes tons of lemon rinds(yes, the part exposed to pesticides) are agitated with water. In past history, you would wait for the oils to float on the top and then siphon them off, but in modern times, centrifical force is used to pull the oils off and collect them to be sold as lemon essential oil. Needless to say, the essential oils are very concentrated. One drop of lemon essential oil can contain all the oil soluble properties from several lemons. If you've ever used lemon essential oil in your homemade cleaning spray or soft scrub, you know how powerful it is at stripping grease. If you've ever had some drip down your bottle and ruined the varnish on your table, or in my case, the paint on my essential oil fridge, you don't need to be told they are concentrated. Now, are lemons bad? No, of course not. Lemon juice is very cleansing, but it's the juice, not the rind. The rind on citrus fruit, even therapeutic grade citrus, alone is concentrated enough to cause severe burns when exposed to the sun. Now, if you don't believe me, Google"Margarita burn" sometime. The essential oil is even more concentrated. Now let's talk about what happens when you drink water that has essential oils in them, whether it's lemon, the"flu bomb," or your favorite anti-germ blend. Now we all learned in grade school that water and oil don't mix. Yes, Virginia, this also applies to essential oils. So when you take that swig of water, essential oils are hitting your insides at full concentration, the back of your mouth, inside of your throat, down your esophagus. It's all being coated with highly concentrated essential oils. Some of you have commented irritation and burning sensation when trying this for the first(and sometimes last) time. Some have you felt nauseated when you swallowed it and it just didn't sit right in your stomach. Others have verified with their doctor the strain this puts on the liver whose job it is to process everything we consume. A few of you were able to compare liver enzyme reports before and after your physical where the only thing that changed was adding essential oils to your water. So the risks immediately you have irritation burning for some people, upset stomach and diarrhea right away. Although some of you may not have digestive digestive issues until you've used this method of ingesting essential oils for a longer period of time. Now, over time, your body will start to show signs that it's not happy with what you are doing until your liver is in distress. Your kidneys are not functioning properly and you have ulcers in your esophagus and stomach. Yes, there are real cases out there that have been verified that this can happen. Now you may be asking yourself, does this apply to the"flu bomb?" And what about Oregano essential oil? Is it just to do with lemon essential oil, or what about other essential oils as well? Now, regardless of the essential oils, they're still concentrated! They still pose the risk of adverse reactions, and did I mention that most of the essential oils consumed will be destroyed right in the stomach? So any benefit is extremely low with the risks being high and like everything in life, we need to balance risk versus benefits. So if you want to flavor your water, add real lemon. I know this seems highly illogical, but I've done it many times. What I like to do is slice up a lemon, preferably organic because of the pesticides on the rinds, cut the slices into quarters and freeze. I will grab a quarter of a slice of lemon(you can grab two pieces if you'd like to) and toss it in your water. Now, within 15 to 20 minutes I can taste the lemon right in my water, but over the course of the day, that flavor is going to get more intense. Now, to go back to the"flu bomb" and the risks, because everything in life is about risk versus benefit. When I googled"flu bomb," I was hit up with a ton of different variants, but all of them contained some of the riskiest essential oils, Oregano, anti-germ blends like Thieves and OnGuard, Wintergreen, and yes, of course, Lemon. So let me run through some of the safety issues with those essential oils so that you can see where I'm coming from. So I'm just, just for ease, I'm going to just grab my book, Essential Oil Profiles, and I'm going to read for you some of the safety concerns with Oregano essential oil. So oregano essential oil is safe for anyone to inhale, um, at least age wise, but topically you want to avoid using under age two. However, it's not safe to use during pregnancy(it's embryotoxic) and it's not safe for use during breastfeeding. So if it's not safe for topical use, yeah, I'm going to go ahead and say it's not safe to ingest either. Not Safe to use around your dogs not safe to use around your cats. Now, even when using topically say you aren't pregnant, you aren't breastfeeding, you are over the age of two, you still have to follow the topical max dilution of just 1.1%. This is based on thymol and carvacrol content and using more than the topical max cause irritation or sensitization, so when you are applying this super concentrated essential oil to the inside of your body(your mucous membranes which are more sensitive) just imagine what that's going to feel like and what that's going to do inside. Now, there are some drug interactions when it comes to using Oregano essential oil, and this is even when using topically on the skin and when you use essential oils internally, the adverse reactions go up a lot. So if you are using aspirin, if you have bleeding disorders before and after surgery, it is anticoagulant, which means it inhibits blood clotting and this is something you want to avoid. Avoid even inhaling. So again, if you are going to ingest this, your chances of adverse reactions are going to go up that much more Oregano essential oil is never recommended to use topically if your skin is damaged or broken, and again it does have drug interactions as I mentioned a moment ago with aspirin as well as other blood thinners and if you are using diabetes medication. That's just Oregano. Now, if we're considering anti-germ blends that I've mentioned, they all generally seemed to contain the same four basic essential oils and then either lemon or orange. So let's go with Cinnamon Bark and Clove. So I'm just going to flip[in my book] because I don't want to miss anything at all. Cinnamon Bark and Clove have very similar safety issues. Um, they, like Oregano are not recommended to use if you are on blood thinners, if you are taking aspirin before and after surgery as they also are anticoagulant, which means they inhibit blood clotting. Now, like Oregano, Cinnamon Bark is not recommended to use if you are pregnant or if you are breastfeeding around dogs and around cats. The topical max dilution for Cinnamon Bark, and again this is for the outside of the skin, which definitely can handle a lot more than the inside of your skin, your mucous membranes, max topical dilution for Cinnamon Bark is 0.01%. That is a very low dilution- Clove essential oil 0.5%- still a very low dilution. So when you are adding these very highly sensitizing essential oils to your water and they are floating on the surface of the water, they are not mixing. Remember, water and oil do not mix. They are hitting your insides at full concentration. Your mucous membranes, your, your mouth, your throat, your esophagus, and they are largely being absorbed there before they really get fully ingested or fully digested or reach the stomach itself. Either way, the liver still has to process these essential oils. Now the other essential oils that are commonly used in the anti-germ blends are Rosemary and Eucalyptus, which do have a concern with breathing issues with young children but are generally not, you know, that horrible as far as using topically on the skin. It's mostly the Cinnamon Bark and the Clove in those anti-germ blends that are going to be the most concerning. Wintergreen essential oil on the other hand is quite the concern. It is probably, I don't know if I want to say it's probably the riskiest essential oil that that exists that is a more common one to use. Obviously things like Pennyroyal are just downright poisonous and should not be even put up for sale really, but Wintergreen and Oregano are are the two most commonly used essential oils that have the highest risk. Now where Oregano was fine for any age to inhale and over age two to apply topically, Wintergreen essential oil is not recommended either topically or to inhale for anyone under the age of 10. It also is not recommended touse during pregnancy or during breastfeeding. Um, it can have the ability to cause malformations to a baby growing in utero. So this is pretty serious, not recommended for use around dogs or cats. And the max topical dilution-2.4%. Now this like Oregano, like Cinnamon Bark, like Clove does also have some drug interactions. So if you are even taking aspirin, it is not recommended that you inhale that you apply this topically and most certainly that you do not ingest the essential oils. If you have bleeding disorders before and after surgery as this, too, is anticoagulant, it inhibits blood clotting and if you have a salicylate sensitivit, ADD or ADHD, it is recommended you avoid Wintergreen. So if it can be so important for you to not even inhale these essential oils for the various reasons described, how much more important is it that you avoid ingesting these essential oils? That is just for regular aromatherapy use like inhaling and applying topically. When you ingest the essential oils, the chances of adverse reactions go up because 100 percent of it is be ingested. Much of it being absorbed in the mouth and the digestive tract and being destroyed in the stomach. Now, much of the concern that I've shared with you about ingesting has been when adding to water. Now, what if you added it to honey and what if you added it to your food? Now, this is a much better risk versus benefit ratio in favor of less risk. Can you add a drop of lemon essential oil to a teaspoon of honey that is then add it to your tea? Now it's less risky, but again, why not real lemon? Can you add a drop of peppermint essential oil to replace a teaspoon of peppermint extract in a batch of brownies? You could in a pinch. Say you promised your in laws, you're going to have those mint brownies that they loved and they were going to be there an hour and you looked in your pantry and realized you had no peppermint extract. You know it might be okay in that sense to go ahead and use the drop of peppermint essential oil instead of your peppermint extract as you are ordering your peppermint extract on, you know, instacart or Amazon, but I highly recommend that you don't make a habit of this. Now, there is a lot of fat. There are carriers essentially in the recipe, so the damage to the insides is going to be fairly low, but I would still urge you to use peppermint extract as it is formulated for consumption. Now you have heard what I have to say. As a trained Certified Clinical Aromatherapist. What are the essential oil companies saying? Now, I'm sure you can guess their marketing departments are fully staffed and trained to get you to buy, buy, buy their essential oils. If you have used them safely or if you were to use them safely, diffusing a few drops a day, diluting and a carrier your bottles would last for months. However, if you add a few drops to your glass a few times per day, you are probably going to run out by the end of the month and keep their revenue flowing. Now, granted, there are companies out there who do care about safety and not just sales, but they likely aren't the ones that you are seeing all over Instagram and Pinterest as a business. Essential oil companies are in it to make money. Adverse reactions? They have legal departments for that. The number of cases settled out of court for millions as long as the injured party doesn't spill the beans would surprise you- or maybe not. Now, what about you? What are everyday people like you experiencing? Now, I've cut and pasted a couple of comments from my facebook group Using Essential Oils Safely where earlier today we asked for those of you who have had an adverse reaction to ingesting essential oils to share your experience. Now I've cut and pasted it right here, and then I'm actually going to click my tab and go over there and see what other comments were left. Now, Michelle left a comment. She said, I suffered severe heartburn and pain after ingesting an allergy cure suggested by an mlm. Three oils added to a shot of water, and I drank it every morning. After about a week, I almost went to the emergency room for the pain. Never again. Lisa says, Amen. Lea. I have a friend who was drinking lemon oil and water. She developed a hard mass on the back of her throat and tongue. It affected her speech. She spits when she talks. Bunch of tests later, they have no idea. I suspect the lemon essential oil. My biologist/chemist sister, explained that when your body senses a toxin it attacks it with cells and can easily form a hard mass like scar tissue while defending the area and that old saying oils and water do not mix, just doesn't sink in. So I'm going to go over here now and see just randomly what other comments were here from people who had an adverse reaction to essential oils. So let me scroll. I thought I had it right there and it was the wrong spot. So give me one moment please. I appreciate your patience. Okay, here we go. So there's quite a few comments already on this thread. Elizabeth is saying still not sure if they were related, but I used to teach redirect with no carrier to a pimple under my lip. Within an hour I had bell's palsy, Bell's Palsy. That started my mouth drooping. Now granted, everybody's reactions are going to be different, right? They're going to be some people that are going to be more sensitive to essential oils in general or more sensitive to specific essential oils, especially if you have allergies to trees. You may be allergic to pine or spruce or fir, um, but these are some adverse reactions that people have experienced. Gram has a comment here. I have autoimmune issues. I was advised by an mlm advocate to ingest the protective blend and Copaiba plus vitamins to get healthy. Pretty soon I started having issues with my liver enzymes and other blood work. Then gastrointestinal issues started. I had a colonoscopy and an EGD and found ulcerations plus an oil slick on lining. Dr. couldn't believe how much was being ingested. He could smell the fennel. I felt better, so when the new copaiba gel caps came out, which they said were better, I tried them. Within a month, Bam, right back where I was. Plus, have to take antibiotics for bacterial infection in my intestines. I am still healing. I had to leave all those groups. The advice they give is downright dangerous. My neurologist is oil friendly and has even given me suggestions in oil use. He's always said, just tell me what you're using. The last appointment I had in January, my gastroenterologist said he seen seeing more cases of oil burns. He asked me if I was still an oiler Yup. But just potions and lotions, I've learned the hard way about ingesting. That is really sad and very serious. So you can go over here as well. Join our group Using Essential Oils Safely and you can find a bunch of people's reactions. Um, maybe you have some reactions of your own that you can add to the thread. It's, it's really, it's really sad to see these, um, because we try so hard in this group and all my social media to warn people against the concerns that there are out there with ingesting essential oils and unfortunately people don't see them or people don't really listen and some people just learn the hard way or they. That's what brings them to our group is, you know, googling why is this happening to me? And then finding out, oh, I knew that wasn't right. I mean, all of this stuff happened, so these are not abnormal reactions. We do ask this question, you know, maybe a couple of times of year and we get a pile of people on these threads sharing their essential oil scares. Now, this is strictly for awareness purposes. Sometimes it's not until someone you know or even yourself has a bad reaction that you truly understand what all the cautions are about. Now, can you ever ingest without a horrible reaction? Yes, there are also those of you out there who say you've added essential oils to your water for weeks or months or even years and are just fine. I don't know, but it reminds me of a smoker who feels just fine and doesn't connect the fact that they get winded quickly or have occasional deeper rattling cough and they don't understand the connection or that it's a problem or make the link. Then one day seemingly out of the blue, they are diagnosed with cancer[or emphysema] and they just can't figure it out until serious things happen. Now it is a risk and the benefit is what? What could be so important about adding those essential oils to your water that you have to risk your insides in some cases kind of eaten away with ulcers and your liver been damaged? Now, let me help you to use those essential oils safely. You want to take the flu bomb to kill germs, diffuse them. You want to flavor your water, use food flavorings and real fruit. There are other safer ways to use your essential oils that are not only safe, but also way more effective. Now, let me read some of your brains right now. Now of course I don't have to read your brains because I get your feedback every single day in this group and I've at least I feel like I've heard it all until I hear something new and then I really heard it all, but some of you out there are probably thinking,"but my company's FDA approved." Let me tell you, and if you don't believe me, call the FDA yourself. The FDA is not in the business of approving or disapproving essential oils. There is no governing body out there that has this power. The FDA is concerned about labeling, so your company may be in compliance with the FDA for labeling, meaning they are jumping through all the hoops to go ahead and make sure that they have a supplement facts label on the bottle because they're recommending ingesting. This does not mean the essential oil is not going to cause harm. This means as far as the FDA is concerned, the labeling is sound. Now you might be thinking,"I would rather take advice from my company as they know our essential oils and are better prepared to speak about them." Look, my job is to educate. I don't get paid if you use essential oils safely or if you don't, but your company has a vested interest and not only convincing you theirs is the only brand worth paying attention to, but that common sense doesn't pertain to their essential oils. They might have degrees and are highly educated in business and even science, but I guarantee you they do not have the training it takes to get to the level of a Certified Clinical Aromatherapist, which is what I am. I'm just saying just because you have degrees is not mean you should be the one operating on my appendix, right? We all have degrees and we are educated in different ways and having a degree in chiropractic experience is not the same as being able to tell people how to use essential oils safely. It's just not the same. Now, if you're thinking,"well, my company has a line meant for ingestion." This goes back to the labels. It is labeled for ingestion as per FDA guidelines for internal use, but it's the same essential oils as the non-meant for ingestion essential oils. Same stuff, different label. Now if you are thinking that some essential oils are safe to ingest via the GRAS, the generally recognized as safe list that is on the FDA website, those are approved as a food flavor in trace amounts like that scenario above where, or earlier, where I gave you where you can add a drop of peppermint essential oil in a batch of brownies. That is not the same as adding several drops to water that is not the same as adding a drop directly under your tongue. It's a whole different ballgame. We're talking trace amounts. Now, I told you in the beginning of this podcast that I would share with you the two essential oils that I would ever recommend ingesting and how and for what? So here we go. One is Lavender for anxiety. There is a product out there based on the scientific research showing the ingestion of Lavender essential oil to be useful for anxiety. Now like any time you would ingest essential oils, this would not necessarily be the first thing that I would recommend for anxiety, but I have a blogger friend of mine whose husband was having severe anxiety issues and they tried everything. They tried all the natural remedies. I suggested this and this was working for them. This worked. So if you've ever tried other things and they have not worked in your doctor, okays it. There is a product out there that utilizes a lavender essential oil in tablet form. You can make it yourself by adding one or two drops. Try just one drop at first, Okay, of Lavender essential oil along with a carrier in a capsule and ingest as needed, as needed. Meaning, there may be plenty of days you don't need to ingest. There may be the occasional day where you made need to take one capsule. Some of you may need to take one daily. Some may need to take one twice a day. This is for you to work out between you, your doctor, your naturopath, whoever helps you. The other one is Peppermint for IBS, irritable bowel syndrome. You need an enteric capsule for this though as it does need to get past the stomach and reach the intestines, so one or two drops of peppermint essential oil. Start with one with a carrier in the entire capsule and you can use as needed. Again, there may be days where you need this. There may be days where you don't. You mean need to ingest this a couple of times a day, but these are two instances where I personally feel that there is enough research out there upon researching this where the risk versus benefit I'm comfortable with and you can be comfortable with if you've tried other things, sometimes this is what you need. Now, there may be questions out there about the oil of Oregano capsules that are out there, and let me tell you, ingesting Oregano essential oil is not the same as ingesting the already made oil of Oregano oil capsules which contain no more than five percent essential oil, so they are mostly carrier oil and they are diluted and much of the time it is going to be an infused Oregano and not the essential oil, so that can be okay if you have severe gastrointestinal issues, if you have parasites or whatever. Again, run this by your doctor. Okay? Make sure that you know he knows your health and can verify that that is something that you can do because for some people they can tolerate that. Their bodies can tolerate that and other people can't. So I hope you enjoyed this podcast. I'm sure I will get a ton of emails, a ton of posts about this. This is always something that kinda goes viral every time that I talk about it, but I hope you learned something. I hope you found this information valuable, and if you have, please share this with a friend. Please share this with people out there who do use essential oils, who either may be ingesting, may think it, it might not be okay for them, aren't really sure, but anybody that uses essential oils can use this information because you never know the people out there who aren't aware that there are true concerns. So whether you are hearing this on the podcast or on my page, please share this information because you could be saving your friend from, you know, liver damage from ulcers, from a lot of doctor bills, so do yourself a favor. And for Esophagus' everywhere out there, Use Real Lemon! Did you learn something today? I hope so. You can learn more information about the topics in this podcast and download a transcript over on my website at UsingEOsSsafely.com/004.

Podcast Outtro: 33:02

Thanks for listening to this week's podcast. If you'd like more information about using essential oils safely, you can visit my website over at UsingEOsSafely.com. Have a suggestion for another podcast episode or have a question for me about using essential oils? Go ahead and shoot me an email. My personal email is Lea@UsingEOsSafely.com.