What's So "Essential" About Essential Oils?

In this episode of Crunchy Stewardship, cousins Chrissy Rombach and Katie Jones explore the significance and uses of essential oils from both a biblical and practical perspective. They discuss the origins of essential oils, their historical and spiritual context, and provide a list of oils mentioned in the Bible. The hosts share their personal experiences and the medicinal benefits of various essential oils like lavender and peppermint for stress relief, migraines, and treating fevers. They also emphasize the importance of choosing high-quality oils and avoiding synthetic products. Practical applications of essential oils in daily life, from personal care routines to household cleaning, are highlighted, along with recommendations for reputable essential oil brands. The episode concludes with an invite to their Facebook group, 'Crunchy Christian Mamas on a Budget,' for further discussion and resources.

Episode Takeaway: 

Essential oils, far from being a modern "alternative" trend, have a deep-rooted history in human health, biblical practices, and natural healing. When sourced for purity and quality, they offer a versatile and biblically-aligned approach to stewarding one's health and home, providing effective natural solutions for common ailments, personal care, and household cleaning, while emphasizing the importance of understanding their true potency compared to synthetic fragrances.

Books/Authors:

• Dr. Josh Axe's book "Essential Oils": https://amzn.to/4kt94uh 

Biblical References/Concepts:

• Frankincense and Myrrh: Mentioned as two of the most highly revered oils in the Bible, brought to Jesus as gifts.
• Spikenard: Mentioned as the oil Mary (sister of Martha) poured on Jesus' feet.
  • Matthew, Mark, and Luke: The gospels where the anointing with spikenard is mentioned (though the event where Mary anoints Jesus' feet with costly perfume made of pure nard is specifically found in John 12:1-8, and a similar anointing is found in Matthew 26:6-13, Mark 14:3-9, and Luke 7:36-50 with different contexts). It would be best to link to the relevant biblical passages.
• Moses giving instructions for anointing leaders: General reference to oils being used in the wilderness.
• Anointing the altar in the tabernacle: General reference to oils and incense in biblical rituals.
• Esther bathing in Myrrh: Reference to Esther's purification ritual before presenting herself to the king.

Products/Substances:

• Epsom Salt: Mentioned for baths for detoxification and fever reduction.
• Coconut Oil / Olive Oil: Mentioned as carrier oils to dilute essential oils for topical application.
• Vinegar and Baking Soda: Mentioned as natural cleaning agents.
• Dr. Bronner's Castile Soap: Highly recommended as an 18-in-1, non-toxic, concentrated soap with essential oils. https://amzn.to/4kt9q45 
• Dryer Balls: Mentioned as an alternative to dryer sheets for laundry, with essential oils added for scent. https://amzn.to/43Jzd0M 

Essential Oils (specific mentions):

• Lavender: For relaxation, stress reduction, sleep, and baths.
• Eucalyptus: For relaxation, diffusing with lavender, and a good antimicrobial for cleaning.
• Peppermint: For migraines (on temples and behind earlobes), for colds (in diffusers), fever reduction (in baths), draining sinuses (in showers), and for calming the digestive system/healing ulcerative colitis (ingested).
• Lime essential oil: For fever reduction in baths with epsom salt. 
• Oregano oil: Super effective antimicrobial for cleaning, more effective than most antibiotics.
• Lemon essential oil: For laundry (on dryer balls) and diffusing for a clean scent.

Transcript

Chrissy: 0:05

Hello and welcome to Crunchy Stewardship. My name is Chrissy Rombach.

Katie: 0:09

And my name is Katie Jones. We are two cousins who are passionate about learning and sharing knowledge to equip others to steward their spiritual, mental, emotional, financial, and physical health in order to honor God in every aspect of their lives.

Chrissy: 0:24

In this podcast, we are taking a deep dive into what it means to steward our lives as God originally intended for us. With the resources that God has given us, we are gonna look, at topics like food, medicine, finances, mental health and tons more through a natural lens with a biblical foundation. So without further ado, let's dive into today's episode. Today we are gonna be talking all about essential oils. Now, I genuinely don't know why they're called essential oils. I don't. I don't know where they came up with the essential piece of it. Katie, do you know why they're called essential oils?

Katie: 1:04

That's a really great question. I maybe have my theories, but they're not rooted in anything that I have specifically studied or picked up on, but I don't know why they're essential. I do know that, and it's actually really fascinating when you start learning more about essential oils and where they came from. A lot of people consider them as like an alternative medicine or an alternative way of healing. When really it's the more traditional way of healing because they were around far beyond when we have what we now call our traditional medicine, which is the conventional stuff at the hospital and at your doctor's office and everything. So I, I'd say they're essential because it was like the form of medicine that they basically had since Adam and Eve, because essential oils come from plants. They're derived from herbs and things, which I guess are plants. But plants were around since day three of God creating the world. Like so you think about it. Essential oils were around kind of even for Adam and Eve if they were doing that kind of stuff. So, yeah, I don't know. Do you have any theories as to why they are essential?

Chrissy: 2:25

I mean. If we're going off of the idea that essential oils were like the first healthcare, you know, and that like the first medicine and healing, then it, I guess would be completely essential for health and wellbeing.'cause you know, within not long after the earth was created, sin entered the world and suddenly we were no longer able to walk in unity with God. And so that's when diseases and health issues started also playing a role in the lives of humans. And so. I wonder if that is like, the point when essential oils really, truly became essential is after the fall, because that's when humanity started actually having health problems and they needed ways to heal, and so God gave them these oils as a means of healing. And actually in the Bible it talks a lot about essential oils and how they were used throughout biblical history. I think in the Bible it mentions specific oils and aromatic oils 33 times, which is actually really phenomenal. and then it also mentions incense, specifically 68 times, which incense is a, it's actually derived out of frankincense. So incense is like the, the stick that you'd burn during rituals and things like that. And it's, it comes from frankincense, which is the oil. So.

Katie: 3:58

Yeah, I'm actually, I'm looking it up right now because, so. Ironically, I went to the library yesterday and I was like, I'm gonna just see if there are any books here on essential oils. And I literally go there and type into their little search computer and say, essential oils. And it shows that they have a book by one of our favorite authors. You and I both kind of have. This guy has one of our favorites who talks a lot about health and wellness. We've, I think we've mentioned him here on this podcast, but it's Dr. Josh Axe, A-X-E, and he literally has a book called Essential Oils. And one thing that I love about this guy is that he's also a really strong believer and a follower of Jesus. And so in all of his books, he talks about. Jesus. He talks about the Bible and how a lot of our, again, the quote unquote alternative medicines, how they're actually rooted in a biblical foundation because they were around before our now traditional medicines, and it was probably what Jesus himself was doing. I mean, we, again, like you said, tons of references to essential oils and, and I think. Yeah. Frankincense and Myrrh. I actually, I don't know about you. This is kind of silly. Frankincense and myrrh, I did not know growing up were oils. I, because I think like when you think of gold, it's like a rock or whatever, I

Chrissy: 5:26

Oh yeah.

Katie: 5:27

so I just kind of assumed it was also something like that

Chrissy: 5:30

You're referring to when the, the three wise men bring gold, myrrh and frankincense to Jesus when he's born

Katie: 5:36

yes, to Jesus as his baby presents.

Chrissy: 5:40

I think of the little cartoons, you know, you have the little pile of gold bars and then I wonder if the cartoons, like, they were always little sacks and I always just assumed they were like sacks of money or something like that. They were, they were holding like little jewelry bags, so to say, in the cartoons.

Katie: 5:57

Exactly. So here I, I found the list in his book. So he talks about 12 oils that were revered. Like the most highly in the Bible. So it's kind of like they were talked about the most often. The, the top two are frankincense and myrrh. And then it goes on to talk about cinnamon cedarwood, spikenard, which I learned. Spikenard is the oil that Mary poured on Jesus' feet. Um, in, I guess it's in Matthew, Mark and Luke. I, I believe it's mentioned in all three of them

Chrissy: 6:35

Yes, this is Mary, the sister of Martha, not Mary Magdalene and not Mary Jesus' mother.

Katie: 6:41

Exactly, so many Mary's. Yes. So she pours Spikenard on Jesus' feet, which, so this is, that's number five. Then there's Hyssop, Cassia Sandalwood, which is also known as aloes. He uses aloes in quotes. Cyprus, um, I don't know this one. Galbanum, not familiar with that. Rose of Sharon. And then Calamus. So those are the ones that I guess are mentioned the most often throughout the Bible, but there are of other different ones that were used. Um, Juniper Berry, I guess is another one that didn't make the top 12, but was also mentioned in his book. But, they clearly had very high importance in Jesus' time and even before Jesus was around because you even hear incense and oils and things being mentioned before, because actually it was kind of interesting. He talks about a bunch of the other references, like Moses giving the instructions for when they were supposed to anoint leaders in the wilderness and everything, they would use oils like frankincense and, other things. So yeah

Chrissy: 7:56

Also, in anointing the altar inside the tabernacle, they would anoint the altar with oils and burn incense, I believe, inside of there. Yeah, so very interesting.

Katie: 8:10

Yeah, for me, in my journey with essential oils, I. Honestly, I always thought they were kind of woowoo. Like, I was like, oh, why would you burn, like, or not even burn, but why would you put them in a diffuser and have these scents going in your house, and why wouldn't you just spray something like Febreeze or whatever

Chrissy: 8:31

Oh boy.

Katie: 8:33

Not, I know it's kind of funny. Now, now looking back, I, kind of chuckle at myself as I've learned more about how essential oils are actually decently biblical too. They have, they're rooted in scripture and, with something that's been used forever. I always just kind of had this weird feeling about them

Chrissy: 8:54

Yeah.

Katie: 8:54

I don't really know why and, now I've started using them. What about you, Chrissy?

Chrissy: 9:00

I feel like I've started to dip my toe into essential oils, and I do love them. At first, when I was in high school, I babysat for a woman who used essential oils all the time, and I would always love the way her home smelled like walking into her home. It always smelled so nice, but my nose became so used to the smell so quickly that I was not able to actually continue enjoying the smell. Little did I know that she was probably actually diffusing essential oils for more medicinal purposes rather than merely just making her house smell good. But now I realize like actually diffusing certain essential oils that are focused more on relaxation, like lavender or eucalyptus, can help you fall asleep quicker. It can help you focus and decrease that stress and anxiety that gets built up, in your life. So.

Katie: 9:51

Yeah. Lavender is one of those oils for me that I felt like growing up, I always kind of knew Lavender helps you relax and, and helps make you less stressed and, helps you kind of calm down. And lavender's actually one of my favorite scents ever. And so I had a lot of lavender scented things, but now what I'm starting to understand is that there's a really big difference between. Essential oils and then like the synthetic version of these smells that we have. And so lavender is a really good example of this

Chrissy: 10:33

Yeah.

Katie: 10:33

because it is so popular. And same thing with something like rose. You know, you think about all the rose scented things, it's not actually made from roses. It's typically something that's processed in a lab and and made to smell exactly like the stuff that you want it to smell like,

Chrissy: 10:52

I think also I don't know for sure about the rose scent, but at least with the lavender scent, I found it very easy to distinguish between the synthetic lavender fragrance and like the essential oils lavender fragrance, because essential oils, lavender, it smells like almost earthy, you know? And then the synthetic lavender, every time I smell it, I just think of Johnson and Johnson's baby lotion. every single time. And so it's, it's such a different, smell, and one brings about that healing the soothing, restful state, and the other one definitely does not.

Katie: 11:35

Definitely. Yeah, and that's kind of what I've learned is that if you have something that smells like the essential oil, it doesn't do the same thing for you as the actual essential oil would. And so you need to have really good quality, high quality oils in order to receive any of the benefits. Before we kind of dive into that a little bit more, I think it would be good to explain maybe some of the benefits of essential oils and maybe how we're both using them in our lives. Now, I mean, lavender, I think for both of us is a good example of, it's just really calming and, and can help you relax at the end of the night. And I love diffusing it in our house, especially when it feels like we've had a really crazy day and it just kind of helps. Bring the mood down a little bit, but Chrissy, what about you? Have you been using them, or I guess you said that you have been using them a little bit more. How have you been incorporating them into your life?

Chrissy: 12:35

Yeah, so I definitely do do the lavender quite frequently. Especially at the end of a stressful day, I will take a lavender essential oil bath, with some Epsom salt and just three drops of lavender oil in the entire bathtub. And the Epsom salt has magnesium in it, which helps to detox your body and take out all the toxins that your body has built up throughout the day, including some of that stress and then the essential oil. The lavender helps to decrease that stress also, but so that's one that has been beneficial for me. Another way that I actually just discovered last week was for treatment of migraines. So I recently have started developing some more migraines just related to, stress. You know, like the day after super stressful days at work, I usually often get a headache from the adrenaline crash or, the day after increased screen time, things like that. I'll get a headache just from like the strain of my eyes, and so I learned that if you get the high quality peppermint oil and you put it on your temples and right behind your ear lobes, then those are two very thin points of skin on your body where there's actually a major blood vessel that runs right underneath the skin right there. And so the essential oils can seep through your skin and into your bloodstream very quickly in those two spots. And so within 20 minutes of putting the peppermint oil on my temples and right behind my ear lobes, my migraine had actually gone away. And it was one of those mornings where I woke up and I had a lot of things to do that day, and I genuinely thought I wasn't going to be able to do anything because of this migraine that I had. And I didn't wanna take Excedrin because, that just has a lot of other problems in and of itself in terms of your gut health and things like that. And so I tried the essential oils and it worked, and it was great. I was able to go work out that day and run a bunch of errands, and I had significantly more energy than normal. So, yeah. What about you, Katie? How have you been using those essential oils in your life?

Katie: 14:52

Yeah, I've heard the same thing about peppermint. I know Wes tried it for a headache or some sort of pain, and we had him do it on the back of his neck. I have heard, I don't know exactly if like how important this is, but I have heard that when you use essential oils directly on your skin, you should put something like a, another oil base because the, essential oils itself are so concentrated that it's more beneficial to put it with like a coconut oil, like kind of mix it together and then do it. I don't know. I did make Wes do that. I don't know if that changes the effectiveness or potency or something of it, but that's just kind of. That was like something I read at some point somewhere. I don't know. But it was also, it might've been something I Googled and it was like, be careful, but it might've been one of those warnings, so that way someone doesn't hurt themselves.

Chrissy: 15:54

Potentially

Katie: 15:55

So anyway, I don't know if it's super necessary or not, but maybe just as a warning for anybody trying it, it might be beneficial to, to mix it with like an olive oil or a coconut oil before putting it on your skin. I, again, I'm not a doctor myself. Chrissy's more the doctor here than

Chrissy: 16:13

I don't know about that.

Katie: 16:16

at least you have a degree in, in some form of medicine. And here I am just reading a lot of books and Google stuff, one of the ways. We've been using essential oils. Yes, we've been doing lavender. We actually, I love lavender and eucalyptus

Chrissy: 16:34

Oh, yes.

Katie: 16:35

in the diffuser. I also love, when Malachi gets little colds, I'll do either like eucalyptus and peppermint in a diffuser in his room, but also when he gets a fever. Instead of doing like baby Tylenol or something like that, we've been doing similar to you. Like we've been doing a, bath with the Epsom salt, so the magnesium that helps to detoxify and you know, it's a lukewarm bath that helps the fever run its course because generally speaking, fevers aren't necessarily bad. It's just your body trying to fight the infection that's inside of it. And so it's trying to push everything out. So you don't necessarily want to suppress it

Chrissy: 17:17

The, the fascinating thing about fevers is the bacteria loves to thrive in our core body temperature 98 degrees environment. And so that is one of our body's mechanisms to kill the bacteria, is to increase the temperature and make the environment unsuitable for the bacteria to continue to live. And so it, it is beneficial for our body to go through the fever because it weakens the bacteria to allow our own white blood cells and our own immune system to attack the bacteria more effectively and kill it.

Katie: 17:57

It's, see, it's things like that that we're often taught that we need to cool our bodies down and to get the temperature down, which, yes, at a certain point, high temperatures can be dangerous, but at the same time, yeah, your body's trying to fight it, and you want it to work through that process so you, you do a lukewarm bath to kind of keep the sweat happening in your body to sweat it out and then again, because the Epsom salt is detoxifying, like helping draw out the bad stuff. Then you put in the bathtub, a few drops of peppermint oil. And then I've, I've done eucalyptus. The peppermint oil also really helps to drain the sinuses.

Chrissy: 18:40

Oh, yes.

Katie: 18:40

so even if you are like really stuffy yourself and just dropping a few drops of like peppermint oil in your shower to help like the sinuses clear up, like Malachi's nose literally will drain so much when he is taking these baths, but. So I'd been doing that. Recently, one of my wonderful crunchy mama friends in my underground crunchy mamas chat group who she knows who she is, if she's listening to this, actually recommended to me that even better so when a kiddo or anybody has like a fever, you take about two cups worth of Epsom salt put some drops of lime essential oil into the Epsom salt. Soak it for a little bit, then dump that in the bath

Chrissy: 19:28

Hmm.

Katie: 19:28

and let your body kind of do its job as well. And I also put a few drops of peppermint into the bath itself, but I don't know specifically what the Lime essential oil does, but I can say that it has effectively worked twice when Malachi has had a 102.5 degree fever and he was able to break that fever within like a couple hours after that. And it was, I, I, mean, I'm never gonna go back to using something like a Tylenol or anything like that. I mean, even when we were traveling and he had a tiny fever, we didn't have our oils with us or Epsom salt. And even just putting him in the bath like a nice lukewarm bath, like letting him play in there just really helped to also like like when I have fevers, my body gets so achy and so I can imagine like for him too, he might be feeling those aches and pains from the fever. And so just soaking in the bath alone is like really. Relaxing for your muscles. So that's been super helpful

Chrissy: 20:28

I also think it's important to hit on the note of like, at what point do fevers actually become dangerous to the point of needing to go to the hospital? Now we are referring to using essential oils for the treatment of mild fevers. Before they get to the dangerous point. So we're talking in children, you know, less than 104 degrees. As soon as you kind of hit over that 104.5, that's when you wanna start looking at potentially going out to the hospital, depending on the kid's symptoms and really symptom management is gonna be the thing that would make a parent want to bring their child to the hospital, you know if a kid starts having like a febrile seizure or if you start seeing changes in like your child's cognitive function or their ability to communicate things like that, that are different from normal, then it would probably be more important to bring your child to a hospital sooner. But, using these essential oils can be incredibly beneficial in keeping you out of the hospital before you

Katie: 21:30

Mm-hmm.

Chrissy: 21:30

get to that point, before the fever gets too high to keep it low, while also giving the body the ability to fight the infection effectively so that you don't have to go to the hospital. You know what I mean? So

Katie: 21:46

Definitely,

Chrissy: 21:47

yeah.

Katie: 21:48

There's a lot of medicinal benefits to essential oils but yeah, modern medicine, especially in like traumatic situations is, is very important. But I think what's really cool is, again, like going back to biblical times and even like ancient Egypt or ancient China, like they were using these oils to help cure and reverse a lot of issues. So in this book, I was learning a little bit more about some of the other medicational purposes that you can use essential oils for, I have not used them for these things, but some of the other like benefits that they were saying that essential oils can help with are reducing toxicity, balancing hormones, improving digestion, boosting energy, improving brain function, reducing emotional stress, producing radiant skin fighting infections and alleviating aches and pains. And not only that, like these kind of seem almost more superficial stuff, like some of the like different ailments that we might be dealing with on a day-to-day basis, but. The three gentlemen who wrote this book together all have testimonies of using essential oils in like helping treat and cure cancer cases and things like that. So they all, it wasn't the only thing they did, and they don't claim that essential oils was the only thing that cured these cancer patients but it was a part of the regimen that they used while fighting off things like cancer. And so I find it so incredible when you learn about this because so many of the essential oils have like antibacterial properties to it. And so he even gives like an example of Esther, um, in the Bible who. Before she presented herself to the king, she actually went and bathed herself in Myrrh for, I forget what it was like, several weeks I think it said and and it's like you think about the process of like detoxifying and getting off all the bad stuff, but also the benefits of it probably made her look beautiful, like just the radiance that her skin received from these oils

Chrissy: 24:04

Also fun fact about that, year long ritual of purifying yourself with the essential oils. Also act as a form of contraception and so that the king did not suddenly have 300 children.

Katie: 24:20

That is so interesting That would make sense

Chrissy: 24:22

That would be really unfortunate.

Katie: 24:23

yeah, if you think about antibacterial. Yeah. Oh my gosh. I didn't even consider that part of it too.

Chrissy: 24:29

Exactly. And you know, you mentioned that these three authors, use the essential oils for healing cancers and things like that. It made me think back, I remember we've mentioned before about my mom healing her ulcerative colitis through, alternative means with diet and things like that. And peppermint oil was actually a big piece of her healing her ulcerative colitis. She would put peppermint oil on her abdomen and she would put one drop in her water each day. And so she would drink it. Peppermint oil is one of those that is safe for ingestion. Not all of the essential oils are safe to be ingested, but peppermint oil you can. And so just one drop in her water each day, and that helped to like calm her entire digestive system and heal it and give it the ability to heal itself.

Katie: 25:21

So cool. I, the skin is so fascinating because it's this giant organ that really takes in everything that touches it, which is for better and for worse. Because if we're putting these synthetic versions of these scents onto our skin, it's being absorbed into our bloodstream essentially. In fact, Wes and I had a conversation this morning because I've gone through the process and have changed out a lot of my personal care, but I have yet to tackle a lot of his own personal care stuff, and I had asked him for permission yesterday if I could now switch out his deodorant because it has some bad stuff. It does not have aluminum. We learned, which was good to know, but I know which is typically the thing that you want to completely avoid. But it does have like blue dye number one and it has like natural fragrances and things like that, which you natural fragrances that's like a code word for bad stuff. Like you don't want anything that says fragrance or perfume in your personal care products because even if it says natural, it can still be derived from not great things like beaver butt, which is like one of the things, you Google it literally, there's like beaver butt in like these natural, because it's quote unquote a natural thing in the environment. It's not produced in the lab, but it's still like, that's not something I want to be in my body. That's disgusting. So anyway, we were having that conversation of like. Deodorant specifically is so important to change, to have essential oils in it because your armpits are also very sensitive and have like the pores there are much larger and you think about your armpits sweat a lot, but that means your pores are open and so they're also absorbing a lot more into your body. So if you think about the areas in your body that like sweat more often, you just have to be really sensitive about what you're putting there because it's it's just almost like a direct line to your bloodstream, and so you think about when you're working out and everything, your body's absorbing all of that, and so it's so important, to switch your personal care products for that reason.

Chrissy: 27:31

For sure. For sure.

Katie: 27:32

So we talked a little bit about kind of of the medicinal benefits for daily uses, and now I've kind of touched on some personal care stuff. Like we could use it to, you know, benefit our personal care routines even in just switching our day-to-day scents, whether it's through lotion or perfumes or colognes or different body sprays, we can switch those to the more natural essential oils versus the synthetic stuff. Chrissy, do you use essential oils in any other area of your home or personal life?

Chrissy: 28:07

Yes, actually I have learned that essential oils is also incredibly effective in cleaning, one oil in particular that I have. Learned that is a super effective antimicrobial in general is oregano oil. It's actually more effective than most antibiotics in terms of killing bacteria and fungus and, things like that. So yeah, oregano oil is like nearly as effective as rubbing alcohol or iodine at killing microbes that you don't want around. So that can be beneficial for cleaning. Eucalyptus oil is also a good antimicrobial that is very beneficial, for cleaning, and makes your house smell really yummy. I sometimes will put like, sometimes my, you know, vacuum cleaners don't always smell the best, especially if you like forget to empty them one time, then it just always doesn't smell great afterwards. So I'll take, a little bit of eucalyptus oil and put a drop on a cotton ball and stick it in the canister of my vacuum cleaner. So when I vacuum my whole house, then smells like eucalyptus oil.

Katie: 29:18

that's a great idea

Chrissy: 29:20

And so it's kind of like a replacement of that Febreeze, you know?'Cause Febreeze, the whole idea is to make your house smell clean without actually cleaning your home. And so if you put essential oils in a vacuum cleaner or something like that, or in a diffuser, but this, in this vacuum cleaner situation, you're actually cleaning. Then you really do make your whole home smell cleaner, you know, things like that. I also have heard that like putting it in your floor cleaners is very good. There are some brands, actually, I do believe Dr. Bronner's is one of them. That actually puts pure essential oils in their cleaning products. And that's how they make the scents of their cleaning products. So that's how you know that it's actually, good for you, non-toxic things like that. And the beauty of Dr. Bronner's is their Castile soap is an 18 and one soap. And so it can be used for like body wash, face wash, cleaning the floors, dishes, laundry, like it is effective for all of them. And you just dilute it in different ways because it's a very concentrated soap. And so obviously you're gonna want a stronger concentration for your floors than you do for your dishes, than you do for your face, you know? So, you just dilute it in different ways and it works for literally cleaning everything.

Katie: 30:45

I love that. So, we do dryer balls in our dryer instead of doing the sheets, but I really do miss like the scent that comes with the dryer sheets and stuff. And so I learned that if you put drops of essential oils onto the actual dryer balls. It essentially does the same thing and it kind of like bumps around the oils into the clothes. And I do, I, I'll kind of do either like lavender or eucalyptus or lemon, and it's. It's just, it's like just as effective and it is great. And then I know that it's not laced with all of the bad endocrine disrupting chemicals and stuff. And same thing like, when I want our house to smell fresh and clean, especially like if we have cleaned all day and if we haven't used any of the really strong, smelly stuff, which we don't really have in our house anymore

Chrissy: 31:36

like cleaning all day with vinegar, and then your whole house smells like vinegar.

Katie: 31:40

Exactly, yeah. When I have like a nice deep scrub day of my showers especially, and it's like vinegar and baking soda and it's so pungent and I'll, at the end of all of that, we'll go into our diffuser and I love putting lemon in it because lemon is in a lot of those really toxic cleaning products in general. And so it already is kind of nostalgic in that sense, if you could say that about cleaning products. But I just remember like growing up our house kind of smelling like that lemony, almost like pine-sol-y kind of smell, which smells really clean, but it's really toxic when it comes in those versions. And so putting in it the lemon essential oil into the diffuser is just as effective.

Chrissy: 32:24

And this could also be a great, swap if you're somebody who loves to use like the little plugin, like Gain smelly things or Febreeze plugins. Those are incredibly toxic. And so essential oils are a fantastic easy swap that you can use. To keep your home smelling great, but also without the endocrine disruption that comes from those plugins. So, yeah. So Katie, you mentioned earlier that it's really important to make sure that you get the higher quality essential oils because some of the oils in their production can be mixed with synthetics, or they can be diluted with olive oil or avocado oil and things like that. And so, unfortunately because essential oils are not as regulated, it's really hard to figure out exactly which ones are good for you and which ones are not good for you. So, Katie and I decided that we are just gonna talk about the good ones and just to make it easy for our listeners, so you guys don't really have to go out and do all the research. You know, the research has already been done. We'll give you tips on things that are good to look for if you do wanna go out and do your own research on good quality essential oils, but also, we're gonna just give you a couple brands that are good to use that have proven through, scientific trials and things like that, and studies of them that they are actually effective and that their concentrations are worth the penny because. Unfortunately with good quality essential oils, you are going to be paying for the quality. So, first off, I wanted to actually talk about some of the things that are really important to look for when you're looking for a good quality essential oils. And often the high quality, essential oils are going to be incredibly transparent about the ingredients they use, the process that they use to create their oils, the concentrations of their oils, and the effectiveness of them. If you're trying to look for an oil and their website is not super transparent about the process or other additives, and it's hard to figure it out, then likelihood is you're probably not looking at a good quality essential oil. So the first thing that you really want to look for is purity and quality. So it's important to have 100% pure undiluted essential oils. So that's referring to some of them are diluted with olive oil or avocado oil or whatever other oils that they can be diluted with, and so they're not gonna be as effective. Another thing is, sourcing and sustainability. So this refers to how the plants are actually grown that create the essential oils. So a lot of the very reputable brands will make sure that their plants are grown without use of pesticides. That's avoiding that glyphosate, that could sneakily get its way into your essential oils, which would not be good, you know, diffusing glyphosate throughout your house doesn't sound ideal to me. The third thing you should really focus on is third party testing. So, if the essential oils have only been tested by their own people, then likelihood is that they might be trying to hide something or they're covering something up. And so you always want there to be a third party testing somebody who's uninterested in the economic gain of the essential oil company to actually go through and test it. And, one of the things that they provide is a certificate of analysis, which, is one way that you can ensure that your essential oils have been tested by a third party, and you should be able to actually view those testings from the third party people. The next one is variety and availability. So you wanna make sure that they have a wide variety of oils. Oftentimes the really good brands have a lot of options because they are focused on more so the healing aspect of things. And then also for your own personal priorities, you should look at the price range. Like I said earlier, high quality, essential oils are a little bit higher priced because of their purity that they have. And so if you find an essential oil at the grocery store that's$5 or$6 an ounce, you're probably not getting that high quality that you would want in your essential oil. And so, you can also look at like bulk purchases by buying them in larger bottles, making sure that they're still 100% pure. But that is one way that you can save money while also using those essential oils. So there's just things that you should look for when you're deciding what brand of essential oils to use. And so lucky for you, multiple people have already done all the work to look through all of those things. So I looked at a couple different resources. And figured out a top four list of high quality essential oils that you can confidently and easily acquire and use, without being concerned that they are mixed with other oils or that they're diluted in any way. And you can be sure that they're actually going to work for the medicinal purposes that you want. So the four brands are doTERRA, Young Living, RMO, and Eden's Garden. And so those are four that, have proven to be very effective. They've all had third party testing and they have very sustainable practices in terms of how they grow the plants to create their essential oils. And I have personal experience with both doTERRA and Young Living Essential Oils. Actually, and RMO, the only one I haven't used is Eden's Garden, and I can tell you those three are definitely more effective than the cheaper synthetic versions that I would've bought from the grocery store. And you can even like smell the difference, when I smell the cheaper, the$6 peppermint oil that I bought from the grocery store versus the doTERRA 100% pure peppermint oil. Like there is a very clear difference between the smell of them and, just how I feel after just one little sniff. That sounds a little not great, but you know what I mean.

Katie: 39:23

The, the things that I just wanted to mention, I actually have not purchased essential oils from I think any of those companies. The few things that I have learned, and I'm still pretty new to my journey with essential oils is sure that they are organic. Again, Chrisy mentioned the chemical pesticides and things that could be laced into the oil if it's non-organic. So that's a big one for me, is just always looking for an organic version. But also looking and checking to see if they, if the bottle uses the scientific name for the plant. And so they should have usually in parentheses, either on the front of it or in the in ingredient list, which should be only one item, and it should be maybe like lavender oil, and then the scientific name and parentheses with it. And then the last thing is just. How they extract the oil from the plant because they can use chemicals in that process if you're not aware of it. And so you want to look for things like whether it's cold pressed, which is probably the optimal way of having it, which is just like the grinding it out, you know, pressing it down. You think of like that idea of like a mortar and pestle kind of a thing. The way they would probably have done it in Jesus' time is like really pressing it for a long time. So that's cold pressing, or this one probably isn't as good, but is still considered a natural version, which is, steam distillation, which does bring in the process of high heat to the plant. And then, I would say the, the reason I try not to do as much of the steam distillation is because does bring in water to the process. And ideally they would allow time for the oil and the water to separate, because, you know, oil and water don't mix, and so they should separate. But there is just that chance for water to kind of slightly dilute the, oil itself. And so I think cold pressing is typically the best option if you can find it, but steam distillation is probably the second best if you can find it. But if you ever see like any kind of like solvent or CO2 extraction, that usually means they've used some kind of high heat, chemical processed kind of way of getting the oil out. So just be aware of those and that's not the, really pure good stuff that you want, But, yeah. Well, I think that about covers it for this episode. Chrissy, I feel like we kind of did a decent job exploring this topic. I know that for me, I still have plenty to learn, but I'm really excited about learning more about essential oils, especially after picking up this book from the library and diving deeper into all of the specifics. I will add a link in the show notes to this book if you're interested in either buying it for yourself or going to see if your library has it, and I'd love to know. If you've read it or if you have any other resources for us to continue our own journey. So join us over on our Facebook group. It's Crunchy Christian Mamas on a Budget, and let us know they're in the group, what resources you like or if there's any specific brands of essential oils that you use, and even if there's like a cool way that you've used essential oils to help you treat or cure or do something with that we didn't talk about. I love kind of collecting this information in my own little arsenal of ways to use the quote unquote traditional, right? Because these are the traditional ways of doing medicine rather than the alternative ways of doing medicine. And so, yeah, share with us in the Facebook group. Join us over there. And yeah, I think that about wraps it up. Any other thoughts, Chrissy?

Chrissy: 43:20

No, I think we pretty much covered it. But yeah, so we pray for each and every one of you guys. And we hope that these episodes can be helpful in your journey to becoming a better steward of your body, your mind, your soul, your spirit, your finances, and your families. And we're praying that this episode was helpful for you and we will see you next time.

Katie: 43:43

time.