Essential oils – essential to life?
Over the last week my love and awe for essential oils have grown along with my understanding of how these pieces of nature can support various parts of our life.
So what is an essential oil? These are naturally occurring compounds that are found in seeds, stems, bark, roots and flowers and provide aromatic, beautiful and powerful fragrances. Essential oils have long been used for food preparation, beauty treatment, and health-care practices, and over the last few years have begun to make their way into homes being used by the likes of you and me to encourage both physical and mental wellbeing.
The internet is saturated with many essential oils products; however, it is important that you look out for CPTG Certified Pure Therapeutic Grade® quality oils. These superior quality standard are naturally safe, purely effective therapeutic-grade and provide a more natural product. For most, anything that is labelled as 100% will be believed to be a true product and will be snapped up due to their low pricing. However, when you are purchasing essential oils, as with most things in life, you get exactly what you pay for – and as my husband frequently says ‘buy cheap, buy twice’. Any superior quality essential oils at a cheap price is simply not possible because producing them is very labour intensive. Therefore, they are likely to have some form of synthetic chemical component included.
One company I have found which provides CPTG oils is doTERRA. The mission at doTERRA is “We at dōTERRA are committed to share the life-enhancing benefits of therapeutic-grade essential oils with the world.”
As I said at the start, this week my love for essential oils has grown. One reason is due to the change in my eldest sons sleep activity at night. After a 2 weeks of my 3 year old son waking up 4-5 times a night (when he used to sleep all through the night – blessed I know). l decided to try an essential oil sleep blend in my diffuser. I used 5 drops of lavender, 3 drops of peppermint & 2 drops of eucalyptus mixed with 200ml of water and placed on a timer for 6 hours. As I was woken by the regular “mummy it’s morning”, I look at the clock and I am astonished - he slept all night and not only that, he had a full 13 hours sleep!! I was dumbfounded and impressed that such a small change could have such an effect.
I have also noticed my moods have changed this week too, I feel a lot more relaxed and calm irrespective of my week being as manic as usual. I have also tried a congestion free recipe to try and get rid of the cold my two little monkeys have. This recipe consisted of: 5 drops of Eucalyptus, 3 drops of Peppermint and 2 drops of Lavender. Even though it made their noses run non-stop and many tissues were used – it allowed for the germs to escape my two pride of joys bodies.
I continue to be in awe of how quick a few drops of these oils work and I am looking forward to expanding my knowledge so that they become an even greater part of my family’s day to day life.
If any of you have any questions about oils or are looking to be introduced to them – please send me an email or click on the below link :)
I will now sign off and enjoy a peppermint soothing aroma in the peace and quiet whilst the boys are tucked up in bed.