What Are Essential Oils? (Full Details)

Considering Essential Oils? 

If you’ve been around the blog for a while–you know that I’ve started looking at a more organic/natural lifestyle. There is a big reason for this.. that I will get into in a later post. One part of my all-natural journey is to figure out what are essential oils! Through the recommendation of a friend and lots of research… I decided to take the plunge and try these oils.

Have you dipped your toe in the ocean of essential oils or jumped in headfirst? Essential oils have quickly become a go-to item for many, and while it may seem like its a new trend truly they have been around for a long time- as far back as ancient Egypt.  Essential oils like Frankincense, Myrrh, Cinnamon, Lavender, and Cedarwood were given as gifts to kings and other high ranking officials. Essential oils were valuable and treasured- for very good reason! Used for everything like bathing, embalming, aromatherapy, cosmetics, medicine, beauty treatments, and massage they were a staple of life even back then. Essential oils give life to your skin.

What can essential oils be used for today?

• Beauty and skin products- face and body cleansers, shampoos, lotions, bath salts, toothpaste, massage oils, sugar scrubs, and more.
• Medicinally- For head and toothaches, ear pain, sore muscles, nausea, building up your family’s immunity and on and on. The essential oils will keep your health condition in check.
• Cooking- Add peppermint to your tea, lavender to lemonade, basil in pasta dishes,  lemon over fish, nutmeg to cocoa or to your other favorite dishes and beverages for a delightful flavor.
• Cleaning- Many essential oils are natural and contain antiseptic, antiviral, antibacterial, disinfecting, and deodorizing properties without toxic side effects! Aromatherapy, not to mention essential oils smell 10 times better than their chemical-laden counterparts.
• I have a couple of posts on natural cleaning products that I’ve incorporated with essential oils. Check them out HERE

How do you use essential oils?

First of all, I recommend you use a 100% Therapeutic Grade oil like Young Living. These are proven safe to use orally, topically, or aromatically.

• Topically- applied to your body for a variety of internal and external ailments, or just prevention. Got an ache or pain? Young Living has an oil for that! Some are meant to be added to a carrier oil such as almond or coconut and some are ok to apply directly.
• Aromatherapy- Use single essential oils or a combination to diffuse throughout your home to relax, uplift, or purify. People also inhale them directly from the bottle or add to the collar of clothing.
• Internally- Essential oils can also be used in cooking, homemade medicinal concoctions, oral problems, and more. Use caution and do your research some essential oils should not be ingested.

Where should I start with oils?

Young Living was the only company (probably because they were the pioneers in the therapeutic essential oils market) that has their own farms, can absolutely guarantee that no pesticides or herbicides were used in the growing of any of their oils (they use essential oils for pest control and they do all of the weddings by hand), has their own testing equipment (they do both in-house and 3rd party testing), only uses the first distillation of oils instead of adding chemicals to get more out of the plant, and basically answered all of my 8 questions in a way that I felt comfortable with.

Young Living also was the only company that was directly in charge of essential oil farming operations. Every other company I researched goes through some kind of an “oil broker” to buy their oils. They have to trust the oil broker that the farmers that he/she buys the oils from can be trusted to do what they are saying they are doing. That they do not use chemicals on the plants.

With Young Living, you just have to trust one company instead of several.

I also loved that I could just sign up and get the member discount (24%!) and not have to sell anything to anyone (after my Mary Kay days I told myself I would never  sign up to be a distributor of anything ever again….) All I had to do to keep getting my discount was to buy $50 worth of products per year. Which is what I was spending per year anyways!

I bought the premium starter kit and I’m so glad that I did!  Here are just a few of the ways that I’m using the oils in the starter kit.  My medicine cabinet and cleaning supplies closet have gotten a huge makeover!

• Lavender essential oil – minor burns, rashes/hives, sunburn relief, bruises.
• Thieves essential oil blend – colds/flu, sore throat (one drop usually knocks a sore throat out for me), headaches, toothaches, cleaning products (germ killer)
• Peppermint essential oil – headaches, fever, congestion, nausea, migraines.
• Valor essential oil blend – neck/muscle pain (again, mostly from a computer job), stress.

There are SO many ways that you can use just the oils in the starter kit. (click the image to make it larger)

What I really love is that there is absolutely no obligation to sell anything when you become a wholesale member. I felt totally comfortable signing up with Young Living.  It really is a laid back atmosphere with no pressure at all.

You have the option to sell, but it’s in no way a requirement, and many people become wholesale members just to get the awesome 24% discount on Young Living oils as long as you spend $50.00 per year on oils.

How to know the difference between essential oil companies:

1. Can this company guarantee that the land used to grow their plants & herbs is free of residual herbicides, pesticides, & chemicals?
2. Does this company own its own lab plant to test an oil’s composition?
3. Does this company ever purchase oils from outside suppliers? If so, does the company visit the oil distillers and farms with plants and herbs? Does it observe the process and make sure that there are no added chemicals to the distillation of the oils and that the herbs and plants are grown completely free from contamination with herbicides, pesticides, and chemical fertilizers?
4. Does this company only use plants that were harvested at their peak time? And if so, does the grower test to make sure that the plant is at its peak time for harvesting?
5. Does this company continuously monitor the process of distillation to make sure that the oils produced from the distillation contain all of the correct therapeutic components?
6. Can this company guarantee that oils are discarded and not sold if mistakes were made during the distillation process that affects the quality of the oils?
7. Does this company’s oil suppliers use extra solvents during the distillation process to extract extra oil from the plants?
8. Can this company guarantee that nothing is added to the oils during bottling?

Here’s a little rundown of the different starter kits available:

You’ll likely want to choose the wholesale member option when you sign up so that you’ll get the 24% discount (if you just choose “Customer” then the prices are retail prices).  You will need to enter either your social security number or your EIN – which you can grab here if you don’t have one & don’t want to use your SSN.

Once you fill out your information you will need to pick an enrollment kit.

Here is how you sign up to get essential oil products at wholesale:

1. Head over to the Young Living page here and fill out your information.
2. Be sure the “Wholesale Member” option is checked so that you don’t end up paying retail prices.
3. Be sure the “sponsor ID” and “enroller id” say 2609465
4. If you do not feel comfortable putting in your social security number (this is only for tax purposes if you decide to turn this into a business) then you can get an EIN from the IRS in just a few seconds here and use that number instead (the IRS just needs to be able to connect some number with you for tax purposes).
5. Select which essential oil starter kit you want to get. My recommendation would be the Premium Starter Kit. Those are the essential oils that I will help you get started with your cleaning supplies! But if you order any of the essential oil starter kits that are $150 then I’ll send you the free essential oil reference guide book.
6. Skip Step 3 (Optional) part of the sign-up process.
7. Look for an email from me with more information about how to join the great Facebook groups available for learning more about essential oils!

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