Getting Started - Essential Oils Guide

Good morning! My name is Adryan Dupre, I’m a stay at home mom for my two BEAUTIFUL girls, and I’m a very strong advocate for and educator on Essential Oils and their place in our personal health care system.  My background is in Chemical Engineering, which I studied at University of Texas at Austin (go horns!) and which has helped me quite a bit in understanding the science behind why essential oils are so effective at treating our common ailments, and cleansing our environment. But most of all, I just want to do what’s best for my family, and even without understanding the chemistry, I see the effectiveness with my own two eyes every time I turn to my oils as a first line of defense. I’ve found I almost never need my old standby pharmaceuticals anymore, and our visits to the pediatricians office are very few, and far between.

Lemon, Lavender, and Peppermint are arguably the three most versatile essential oils available to us as natural alternatives to the current syntheticnorm. They also happen to be three of my personal favorites. For my daughters, 2 years old and 9 months, at least one of these oils makes its way out of the box to come to our rescue on a daily basis. Setting a goal of incorporating these three oils into your daily routine is both a GREAT way for newcomers to get started with essential oils, and for seasoned natural remedy veterans to recommit to a more natural lifestyle. So let’s talk a little bit about how each of these oils can be used on a daily basis to improve the health and wellness of our families.

 

Lavender:

Lavender has innumerable applications, and therapeutic. That said, for the purposes of this blog I’m going to focus on some practical application, rather than the somewhat dry details about the chemical constituents that make each oil so beneficial. So! Here are my favorite everyday uses of Lavender:

·         Bath time with my girls. I put a few drops in the bathwater to help them start winding down for bed. Lavender is very calming, and has a sedative and soothing effect, which is especially good for children when they need their rest.

·         Massages for any and all of my family. For the same reason that I put it in the bath water, we also apply it directly to the skin to relieve tension, stress, as well as pain from sore muscles. Great to use for a couples massage when you and your husband just need a little one-on-one time after the kiddos have gone to bed.

·         A sleep aid. I put a drop or so on my children’s lovies and blankets that they sleep with. Not only does the aroma therapy of the lavender help them sleep, I’m also creating a conditioned response for them by associating the smell of lavender with safety, security, and rest. My hope is that as adults, they will have a tool to help them battle nights of insomnia or restlessness and stress both biochemically, and emotionally.

·         Lastly, I love lavender for sunburns. It has pain killing properties, as well as great skin healing properties that are a great combination when it comes to pesky sunburns. I put about 10 drops in a 4 oz. glass spray bottle, and fill the rest with water. When I need to apply, I shake it up and spray it on my girls skin where they got a little too much sun. Be careful with all essential oils not to get it in your or your children’s eyes!

Lemon:

Once again, the therapeutic properties of lemon are astonishing, but focusing on more specific application, here are my favorite uses for lemon!

·         Digestive aid. A drop of lemon in a cup of cold water in the morning is a great way to kick start your digestive tract for the day in a healthy, beneficial way.

·         Foot odor. My husband is a runner. A runner who often can’t find a pair of socks, for some baffling reason, and leaves the house with just his tennis shoes on to sweat profusely in the 100+ degree Houston summer heat. You can see where I’m going with this. A couple drops of lemon in his shoes works WONDERS against persistent foot odor.

·         Goo-be-gone. Lemon oil works amazingly well to get pesky stickers and gluey substances off of hard surfaces. I use it regularly for this purpose, and I can vouch for its effectiveness!

·         Fruit/Veggie freshness extender. You can put a drop of lemon in a LARGE bowl of water, and rinse your apple slices, or other fruits and veggies in it to help prolong their edibility. A little goes a long way for this!

 

 

Peppermint:

Last but not least, we come to peppermint. My essential oil brand of choice is doTERRA®, for many reasons. One of which deals with the fact that they source their oils from the parts of the plant with the most therapeutic value, and ONLY those parts of the plant. Peppermint oil, therefore, is extracted from the LEAVES of the peppermint plant only, rather than the entire plant. For that reason, doTERRA® peppermint oil smells and tastes very sweet, rather than earthy as you find with many other brands. This makes their peppermint oil unique, and useful in even more ways.

·         Headaches. You will be AMAZED at how effective peppermint can be on a headache. Apply a drop to your fingers, and rub it into your temples, and you’ll feel instant cooling, and almost immediately start to feel your headache pain diminishing. This is my first medicine I reach for when I feel a headache coming on.

·         Cooling mist. A few drops in a spray bottle with water makes a great cooling mist for the summers. It has a very cooling effect on skin, similar to the Icy Hot type muscle relievers. For my children in the summertime, this is a great tool to have in my purse for when they start to get overheated running around like little hellions. J

·         Breath Freshener. You won’t get much fresher than this, and there’s no sugar to worry about rotting your teeth like with breath mints. That same cooling mist bottle I use for my kids, is perfect for this purpose as well. Just remember, once again, to make sure that the oil doesn’t get in to you or your children’s eyes! Also make sure that the brand of oil you choose is safe to be taken internally, like doTERRA®.

·         Baking. I’m a big baker J I mean, I bake a lot, not that I’m severely overweight… though the baking I’m sure isn’t helping me with this stubborn post-pregnancy weight. sigh. Anyway, because the doTERRA® peppermint is so sweet, it makes a great addition to candy, and chocolate in the kitchen. Not too much, as one drop of their peppermint oil is equivalent to 28 cups of herbal tea. It’s VERY potent. But very tasty as well.

There are so many other reasons to use these three oils, and countless other ways to incorporate them into your daily routine, but I hope that this will at least give you a starting point! Don’t be intimidated to jump right in, you’ll be so happy you did. And I’m always available to offer any information or help I have with questions or concerns. My fondness for these oils led me to decide to pursue an opportunity to educate and spread the word about essential oil use and application, and for that reason I decided to start supporting my favorite brand, and if you have any questions for me as to WHY I chose doTERRA®, I’d be more than happy to answer them. To contact me, my email address is Adryan.dupre@doterragoodness.com. If you are interested in purchasing any oils, my website is www.mydoterra.com/adupre. Finally, I offer classes at the Katy Birth Center in Katy, TX every 2^ndThursday of the month. All are welcome to join, the more the merrier! Hope I’ll see you there J

Adryan Dupre