Essential Oils and Skin with Dr. Lindsey Elmore

Transcript for Essential Oils and Skin

Dr. Cates: Hi there. I’m Dr. Trevor Cates. Welcome to The Spa Dr. Podcast. On today’s podcast we’re talking about essential oils for your skin. Before we dive in to today’s topic, I want to thank those of you that have been leaving reviews about The Spa Dr. Podcast on iTunes and various places and I want to call out this one review we received on iTunes and she says, recommend to anyone. I love how humble she is. She’s talking without hiding anything. Wow. Today people do not tell you the truth about their skin, but she is straight too you. Love listening to her, keep going. Love from California. Thank you for this review and it’s true. I’m bringing to you and the most authentic way possible about information about your skin. I’ve been there with my own personal journey with my skin and I’ve been helping patients in the last 20 years finding out what’s truly the root causes behind their skin issues and getting rid of the toxic ingredients in skin care products, bringing you the best and the cleanest, most natural options for your health and your skin.

Dr. Cates: So I thank you for that review. And I do want you all to know that I’m doing my best to also bring you guests that help you find clean skin, vibrant health, and that confidence that we all want to have. So we’re talking about essential oils and skin today. Now there’s some confusion around what exactly essential oils are. So I want to explain what they are first. Essential oils are plant extracts made by steaming or pressing flowers, bark, leaves or fruits of plants to capture the compounds that produce fragrance. They’re typically very fragrant oils and they’re the essence of the real plant or herb. And it’s a very concentrated form. It takes several pounds of a plant to produce a single bottle of essential oils and they’re known to be very fragrant and often use in natural personal care products and aroma therapy. And they also have very therapeutic benefits.

Dr. Cates:  So that’s why I wanted to talk about them today. At the same time, it’s important to understand the word essential in front of essential oils. Sometimes be a little misleading because if you think about the word essential, it implies necessary and it is a different meaning than something like essential fatty acids or essential amino acids that the body needs from a food source because a body can’t make their own. So it’s different that we don’t need essential oils for our bodies to function properly, but they do provide great therapeutic benefit. And the word essential really comes from the word essence, the essence of the plant. So because essential oils can be a great alternative to synthetic fragrance and they have great therapeutic benefits for skin. I asked today’s guest to come on to talk about the safe and effective use of essential oils.

Dr. Cates: My guest is Dr. Lindsey Elmore, who is a chemist and clinical pharmacist. She’s also a speaker, author and travels the world educating audiences about natural wellness. Dr. Elmore has spoken to audiences and more than 30 countries. Her educational materials have been translated into more than 25 different languages. She’s the author of Essentials 75 Answers To Common Questions About Essential Oils and Supplements And The Clean Slate Cleanse, cookbook and workbook series. She’s published in a wide variety of pharmacy and medical journals has been quoted in numerous major media such as Bustle Readers Digest Yahoo News, Woman’s World and has appeared on a lot of TV shows like ABC, NBC, Fox, and the Daily Buzz. Today we talk about exactly how and when to use essential oils for various skin and beauty needs. She dispels myths around safety concerns and explains how to effectively and safely use essential oils. So please enjoy this interview.

Dr. Cates: Lindsey welcome to The Spa Dr. Podcast. It’s great to have you. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, so we’re talking about essential oils today, which I love because with the all the concerns about synthetic fragrance in personal care products and the concerns about the safety, the hormone disrupting chemicals that are in synthetic fragrance and fragrance is in so many of the products we use. A lot of the personal care products we use as well as cleaning products and a lot of things that we come into contact with, absolutely, I always tell people about essential oils, that they’re a great alternative to those fragrances. And so looking for products with essential oils and starting to use essential oils yourself. So I’m so glad to have your expertise on today.

Dr. Elmore: Oh thank you. And I completely agree with you. We are exposed to so many synthetic fragrances in everything. Everything from candles to cleaning products to even things that even personal care products that we’re placing on our skin. We have ways of heating up essential oils as well as synthetic fragrances, which arguably even makes them more toxic with the plugin devices. So I’m so glad to hear that you are steering your patients towards using essential oils, which is a natural option that gets around a lot of the problems with synthetic fragrances.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, absolutely. And so we, love them in skin care products of course I use them in The Spa. Dr. skin care products in some of our products we essential oils. And so what are some of your favorite essential oils to use in skin care products? Just just for the experience. Like what do you find are the most popular ones?

Dr. Elmore: Well I think it depends on what’s going on with your skin. And so if you are someone who maybe has teenage skin or who has oily skin, you may want to go for something like a tea tree essential oil. If you’re someone who is concerned about aging gracefully and are maybe looking to reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles, you may want to go for something that is more like a frankincense or a sandalwood. You have many different options, but when it comes to applying essential oils to the skin, the big thing is is that we want to use our gentle essential oils. There are some essential oils that are very assertive on the skin and so you’d want to use some caution before you just start putting rosemary or oregano on your skin.

Dr. Elmore: But we do have throughout history, so many examples of frankincense, sandalwood, myrrh, copaiba, tons of different essential oils that are just beautiful to use on the skin on a daily basis. And really I think the base, most basic of all of them is just the simple lavender. So again, it depends on what’s going on with your skin, which ones I like to use. If you’re looking for something cooling, maybe in the summer, it’s time to get out that peppermint oil. If you’re looking for an essential oil that can help with recovery after exercise or maybe you’ve been out walking around with your children too much, you may want to go for a wintergreen. All of them work for the skin and they also have systemic effects when applied to the skin.

Dr. Cates: All right, so you just mentioned a few of the cooling essential oils. Are there any that were, you know, we’re going into winter now, so any tips on essential oils that kinda hope during that time?

Dr. Elmore: Yeah, so there’s a big spectrum when it comes to essential oils. Some of them feel very, very cold on the skin. These are going to be your essential oils that are highly concentrated in menthol. At the other end of the spectrum, we have essential oils that are high in what we call hot chemical constituents. So we have things like cinnamaldehyde highly concentrated in cinnamon essential oil as well as cassia essential oil. We have things like eugenol warm on the skin that is going to be found in things like our oregano essential oil. 1,8-cineole warming on the skin, going to be found in our basil essential oils. And then you also have some essential oils that just have a really, it’s difficult to describe because it’s not hot on the skin, but it’s very penetrating through the skin.

Dr. Elmore: So I think that things like lemon grass that we also have to use some caution with when we apply it to the skin. So if you’ve never applied an essential oil to the skin, I highly recommend starting with a patch test. So a patch test is simply where you take a small amount of your essential oil, apply it to a sensitive area of skin. I like the forearm, because it’s sensitive enough, but it’s not as sensitive as behind the ears or under the arms or on private parts, et cetera. It’s a little bit thicker, but it’s also a little bit thinner than the bottoms of your feet or the palms of your hands. So apply a tiny bit of your essential oil and observe that area for any redness, any itching, any irritation that could be signs of sensitivity. And as always, if you’re going to use an essential oil, critically important to get a 100% pure essential oil and avoid all those synthetics because otherwise you’re still in that synthetic fragrance zone.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, absolutely. I’m so glad you’re talking about the safety of it because some people do react to essential oils even though they are natural. And I think that the first thing is when people react to essential oils, I want to ask them is it truly is a truly a clean essential oil. First of all, you’ve got to remove all of the possible cause there are a lot of products out there that are called essential oils, but they’re not a hundred percent pure. Maybe they’re not, you know, organic or you know, whatever. There might be some impurities in there that they might be reacting to.

Dr. Elmore: Absolutely. And you know there’s one type of extraction method called solvent extraction and it’s used when the essential oils are trapped within very delicate plant material. So if you think about a rose oil or a jasmine oil, those flowers are so fragile that you actually have to use a solvent to dissolve the plant material to release the essential oil. Well, if you don’t have someone who really understands how to do solvent recovery, you could end up with some potentially toxic solvents left behind in the essential oil. And it is a tough marketplace for consumers because the FDA ultimately does not regulate essential oils. They do not regulate the claims made by essential oil companies unless they get kind of out of the realm of what is normal. And so you can head to the grocery store or to your local pharmacy, think you’re picking up a pure essential oil when really you’re not.

Dr. Elmore: A couple of things that you can do to make sure that you are selecting in an essential oil with care. Trust your nose. Last week somebody brought me an essential oil that they had picked up and they said, smell this, what is this? And I said, that’s eucalyptus. It had a label for rosemary on it and it was just a completely mislabeled bottle. If the essential oil smells too sweet, like if you get a bottle of peppermint and it smells like a peppermint candy, or if you get a bottle of wintergreen and it smells like, if it smells like a wintergreen candy, it’s not a pure essential oil. It has had chemical constituents pumped up within it to make it have this other aroma. So it’s really important to do some research on the company that you are working with because it’s not only that the essential oils can be synthetic or adulterated. It also takes a lot of plant material to produce essential oils, so there are ecological concerns. It also takes a lot of human labor. So there’s human rights concerns when it comes to picking essential oils. And last but not least, there are very strict laws about how to move plant material and essential oils across state barriers, let alone international boundaries and barriers. So you have to be sure that you’re working with a company that’s dedicated to having good replanting practices, treating their workers fairly and abiding by the laws.

Dr. Cates: Well, I’m really glad you’re bringing up all of this because it’s so easy to pick up a bottle of essential oil in a store and not know everything that goes into it. I mean you think about all of the amount of plant and plants and labor and travel and everything that goes into that one little bottle. Yes. I think the price makes a difference too. I mean some people will say, you know, price compare. You know, I don’t want to spend that much. And there’s some essential oils that if they’re, if it’s really pure they’re very expensive. They can be extremely expensive.

Dr. Elmore: If you are buying your essential oils from the 99 cent rack at your local store, you can be assured that you are going to get a 99 cent experience with your essential oil. There are essential oils that are extremely expensive. You look at rose oil. Rose oil can easily be an excess of a hundred possibly even $200 a bottle simply for five milliliters, but it reflects the amount of plant material that it took to get that oil out of it. If you get an essential oil, it’s also important to know what the viscosity, so how thick is that oil supposed to be? If you get a rose essential oil and it flows straight and freely out of the bottle, guaranteed it is not a true rose essential oil. So essential oils come in a wide variety of the viscosity as well as colors and certainly in different aromas.

Dr. Elmore: But if you know that you’re working with an essential oil that’s supposed to be very thin, something like a citrus essential oil or a lavender essential oil, if you get it and it’s heavy, it’s cut with something. If you get an essential oil that is supposed to be thick and resinous, something like myrrh, something like copaiba and it’s thin, you can be assured that it has something cut with it. So trust your nose and also trust your knowledge of how thick is this oil supposed to be. I encourage all people who buy essential oils do not buy essential oils in bottles over about 15 milliliters. Number one, it’s going to evaporate, it’s going to get lost, it’s going to rise up into the air or it is going to further concentrate. So the lighter of the essential oil, the more likely it is to rise up into the air, the thicker the essential oil. If you buy a giant bottle of it, it is just going to get so thick, you’re not going to be able to get it out of the bottle. So small amounts of essential oil, not only in purchasing but also in your daily practice. As we’ve said, essential oils take a lot of plant material and distill it down into small, tiny amounts. You do not need a lot of essential oil to make a huge difference. You know, Americans are so bad at, if a little is good, a lot must be way, way better. This is not the case with essential oils. And this is honestly when essential oils can become more risky is when you use way too much of them.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, absolutely. And I definitely want to talk about dosing, but I really want to emphasize this idea of trust your nose. Because when you, when you smell a field of lavender or a bouquet of lavender or you smell fresh cut roses and what that fresh rose smells like, that’s what essential oils should smell like. I’m going, how many times have you picked up a lotion that’s rose lotion and it just smells, it doesn’t even smell like a rose. It smells so synthetic and it’s almost ruined people’s love for using rose sometimes in products. And same thing with lavender because it smells so fake. And that can get you into some trouble. I mean, I know that we, so we have a Pearl and Rose Petal Facial Exfoliant and the smell, it smells like fresh roses. Yes. But a lot of people are hesitant. I mean, not a lot of people, but some people are hesitant at first to try something rose because there’ve been ruined by a lot of the products out there. But when they actually try it, oh my god, who doesn’t love the smell of roses? Real roses.

Dr. Elmore: Absolutely. And I honestly think that the adulteration and the synthesis of essential oils may lead to some of the adverse reactions. If you have been out in the blogosphere in the past couple of years, you may have read that lavender essential oil can cause breast swelling in young boys. Or lavender essential oil causes thearchy in young girls and it’s like, wait a minute, take a step back and let’s look at how was this data obtained. And I find that much of the data related to essential oils does not reflect how people actually use oils. Because if you look at most animal data, you know, people say, oh my gosh, you can’t use clary sage while you’re pregnant because it causes uterine contractions.

Dr. Elmore: Well, the studies that show that what they did was they took uterine muscle cells in a petri dish, dropped essential oil onto it and said, oh no, they contracted. That does not reflect how we actually use things. And to your point, if we think about this data about these young boys who had breast swelling, the authors of the paper did not break down all of the other ingredients that were in these lotions and these colognes that these young boys were using. They said, oh, they have this one thing in common and it’s lavender essential oil. Therefore it must cause this problem. But they did not look at were there any phthalates were there other plasticizers that are endocrine disruptors? They also did not do gold standard testing to find out these answers. I also encourage people when it comes to essential oils, think about it.

Dr. Elmore: Think about even if these boys suffered from breast swelling, if you think about the number of case reports of true harm with essential oils versus the number of people that are using them on a daily basis, I get it. If it’s your child that has breast swelling and you think it’s because of a lavender essential oil, that’s not great, that’s not good for you and your family. But on an epidemiological basis we’re not doing that bad. We are having much more problems with standard over the counter medicines, with all different kinds of toxic cleaners in our house. All of those things are more likely to do harm than essential oils. But as you and I were talking about, the essential oil market place is a contentious place. People have very strong opinions and there are a lot of people who just say, you know what?

Dr. Elmore: They do not work. You are crazy. They don’t work and that’s okay. All we have to do is keep in perspective how many people are using this oil, how many people have actually suffered harm, and on the grand scheme of things, I conclude that essential oils are exceedingly safe when you use them in small amounts. Can they be toxic? Can they be deadly? Yes. If you ingest an entire bottle of wintergreen, you are getting an absolutely massive dose of methyl salicylate. And we have seen evidence of methyl salicylate toxicity even from over the counter medications over the counter pain, topical ointments and treatments, children have died from over exposure. And so small amounts of essential oil are all that we need on a daily basis.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. So I was just pulling up some of these studies that you just mentioned. I was pulling them up on pubmed and you know there was this recent one that you talked about. This was from November, 2019 and the journal of clinical endocrinology and metabolism and it talks about lavender products associated with premature malarkey and prepubertal. So basically early breast development, early puberty in young girls and boys. Yes. And, and it’s based upon three girls and one boy. First of all, this is this, any, drug, I mean like this is not even a study,

Dr. Elmore: Right? Nobody. If you said, Hey, we’ve got this new statin drug and we’ve tested it on four people, you would be laughed off of the stage. Nobody would pay any attention to that. Yes, the numbers are so small that again, if it’s your child, bless, I’m so sorry it happened to your child. But on the grand scheme of things, as you said, this would never even be considered valid data.

Dr. Cates: Right. And then it’s also exposure to lavender containing fragrances. So that’s, it doesn’t even say essential oils. And so that most likely there’re a lot of synthetic ingredients in that. And we know that synthetic ingredients has hormone disrupting chemicals in it. Yes. And we know that parabens and many, a lot of that common ingredients like preservatives and things in skincare products also have hormone disrupting effects. So for anyone to pin point this on lavender essential oils is, I mean, and hey, you know what, if they want to do a larger study and focus it just on lavender essential oil and that, you know, that I’m good with that, but we can’t make any conclusion based upon this entirely. And if you look at the history of lavender essential oils and how they’ve been used throughout time and for a number of health issues and you know, relaxation and all kinds of things, there are so many benefits that I just, I’m afraid to tell people don’t use it, avoid it. But we always want to be careful and cautious of essential oil. So like you tell some of things we want to be careful with. So let’s talk about dose and how much to actually use that. This is safe. So let’s talk about how to safely use them.

Dr. Elmore: Okay. So the first thing about safely using essential oils is to understand that every person is different. If you come to me and you say, you know, hey Lindsey, I have terrible atopic dermatitis. I am allergic to everything, have been since I was a child, I am going to give you a very different set of safety precautions versus if you say I have the toughest skin around, not even poison ivy bothers me, you know, that’s going to be a very different set of things. The other thing is to know on the spectrum of completely mild and gentle, I would have confidence to even put it on a little kid all the way to wow, I’m really experienced with essential oils and this still is hot on my skin. We have to divide where we are. So here are some key safety points for anyone who is brand new to using essential oils.

Dr. Elmore: We’ve already covered one, which is a patch test. Place it on your arm, observe the area if you have any redness, irritation or itching, that’s okay because now we get to our safety point number two which is always leverage and use your carrier oils. So carrier oils are any kind of fatty oil that you have. So while essential oils are oils, they are distinctly different from our cooking oils or our coconut oils or almond oils because they’re not fatty. This is actually another way that you can check for the authenticity of your oils. Take a white sheet of paper. If you drop a drop of lavender and it says it’s 100% pure lavender, but it leaves an oily spot on your sheet of paper. It is not a pure lavender. If you place an essential oil on your skin and it is slick on the skin, it’s not, it’s got a carrier oil in it.

Dr. Elmore: That doesn’t make it bad. It just means that that carrier oil needs to be on the label. If you ever have an essential oil that is irritating on the skin, if you ever have any redness, any itching, any irritation at all, simply add carrier oil. You can use any carrier oil that you want. Anything from an olive oil, joboba oil, rosehip oil. Some people even use goats milk, full fat cows, milk and mothers swear by diluting essential oils in human milk in order to bathe a baby in it, which I can see some benefits. You know you’ve got some good probiotics, you’ve got some other things that would be really good for the skin. The important thing is if an essential oil is ever painful on the skin, never attempt to dilute with water, oil and water do not mix. If you put water on top of an uncomfortable essential oil, it’s actually gonna drive that essential oil further into the skin.

Dr. Elmore: This is critically important too, if you happen to accidentally get essential oils into your eyes. I try very hard not to get into the always boat and not to get into the never boat because as you know, in natural medicine, there are so many pieces of gray area, never put essential oils directly into your eyes. It is not a smart thing to do. If you want to be bold and put them around your eye, be sure that you are very well versed in the use of that oil. Be sure that you’ve not only done a patch test on your arm, but on your neck, even on your cheek and still dilute the essential oil or simply apply it to the palm of your hand. Pick up just a small amount with that, that ring finger that is so delicate and you can pat, pat, pat around the eye.

Dr. Elmore: But just be aware, you may still get some of those fumes in your eye. If you ever accidentally get essential oil into your eye, online databases will tell you flush with water. That’s what we’re always told. But this is actually very dangerous advice when it comes to essential oils. So if you get essential oil into your eye, pour a palm full of a liquid carrier oil, place it over the eye and blink, blink, blink, blink, blink to help move that essential oil out of the eye and into, you know, just down your cheeks and then all the other places. Don’t want to put essential oils directly into the ear either. You know. And then you want to be cautious about where you’re applying it on your skin. The most vulnerable population when it comes to applying essential oils to the skin are premature infants.

Dr. Elmore: There are many differences of opinions about at what age you should start putting essential oils on infants. If it were my child and my child were premature, especially if you can visibly see that the skin barrier is not well-defined. Let’s wait a few minutes mamas, let’s wait a few minutes before we started putting the essential oils on. And when it comes to using essential oils on infants, I encourage you to always dilute, dilute your essential oils. You can always use more later in life, but the worst thing that could happen is if you put an essential oil onto a child and it’s too hot, too cold, irritating, whatever it is, and then you’re backtracking so much easier just to take one drop of lavender, take 10 drops of a carrier oil, mix it in your hands and start by applying it to baby’s feet. You can then start applying it onto the belly.

Dr. Elmore: Very young children have been shown to have some adverse effects from applying essential oils to the face, especially around the nose and mouth. It can cause an adverse reaction where the child kind of like stops breathing for a minute. Well, I mean that’s terrifying for a parent. Let’s not do that. And so use some caution if you’re putting essential oils onto the chest or the face. The next thing that we have to consider is that skin changes as we age and we go through dramatic changes as we approach older age, our skin gets thinner, it loses its elasticity and I have had so many people reach out to me and say, Lindsey, I have been using lavender essential oil for 15 years and now all of a sudden I break out in a rash. That is a completely normal thing to happen over time.

Dr. Elmore: It’s not that the essential oil has changed, it’s that our body chemistry changes as we get older. So use some caution as skin ages and I feel like so many people want to, when you’re in the essential oil realm, so many people want to apologize and say, you know, oh, I had this adverse reaction. Guys, it is not a personal failure on your part if you use a product and you decide that you don’t like it. Just honor the fact that your body is communicating to you. Your body does not lie about what it needs and what it wants to stay well. So the third group that I would also exercise additional caution with is people who have any type of broken skin or wounds. We do have some good evidence that essential oils can help in wound healing. However, you’re not going to be dropping a nutmeg essential oil or an oregano essential oil onto an open wound.

Dr. Elmore: Go with your more gentle essential oils applied around the wounds. So things like our lavender, our cubeba, frankincense versus the more assertive essential oils, which can just be downright painful for sure. And then last but not least, while we do have some good evidence that essential oils can help when applied topically to private areas. So like if you have someone who has a urinary tract infection, they may put essential oils directly downstairs, but we have to be cautious because the skin is so much thinner and the skin is more vulnerable in private parts, inside the mouth, under the arms, behind the ears, et cetera.

Dr. Cates: Okay, great. Fantastic. All great safety tips. At the same time, there are great ways to use essential oils that are safe. It just, it’s good for us to talk about all of those, you know, conditions, but as long as we’re using them safely, they can be a powerful tool. What are your favorite carrier oils?

Dr. Elmore: So when I choose. And what you mean by that too? Okay. So carrier oils are your fatty oils. They are any kind of fatty oil that you have around your home. It could be olive oil, coconut oil, jojoba oil. I really like grape seed oil because it’s so neutral. A carrier oil is anything that we would cook with or that we would moisturize the skin with. You have two different options. People also use full fat milk’s as carrier oils because they have a bunch of fat in them and they hope to disperse the essential oil. So the function of a carrier oil is either to dilute the essential oil and disperse it among the medium of the carrier oil. This is a strategy that you would use if you are using essential oils on a child. You’re gonna want to dilute them first. You also can use your carrier oils. If you apply an essential oil to your skin and then go ouch that is red or it’s irritated or it’s itching, put your carrier oil on top of your essential oil because it’s going to help to pull the essential oil away from the skin. And again, it disperses it in that oily medium so that it does not go as quickly into the oily medium that is your skin.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. So you mentioned some of your favorites and really I guess it depends upon as like a jojoba oil I think is better for especially for the face for acne prone skin, oily skin types. And then coconut oil of course, is going to be the opposite extreme of that because it’s so dense and rich that straight coconut oil in the face is going to be pretty rough for somebody with, with acne prone skin.

Dr. Elmore: Well except that I have a paper published in the Natural Medicines Journal, which it seems so counterintuitive that you would put coconut oil on to acne prone skin because for many people it does not work. But we do have very clear evidence that coconut oil kills propionibacterium acnes so it might be one of those things that you test it out. The thing that I think is both beautiful as well as frustrating about essential oils is that every single person reacts differently to them. And the same thing I think happens with carrier oils and so we have on that spectrum, yes, jojoba oil, great for acne prone skin. You may find that the coconut oil might work for you too, but you also might have your experience, which is, oh no, that might break me out. You also can consider carrier oils that are traditionally used in the hair. Things like argon oil is having a serious moment right now. And so if you wanted essential oils that are lighter for moisturizing the hair, that could be another option as well.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, and you know what I’ve noticed with coconut oil is if it’s blended with other things and it’s pure coconut oil that actually can be great for acne prone skin. We actually have coconut, a little bit of coconut oil in our cleanser and, and people with, with mild acne they, you know, they say that it’s great. People with moderate to severe acne of course needs something that’s specifically made for acne. But yeah, you know, like you said, everybody’s different. And with dilution, with carrier oils, you’ve mentioned you gave an example with lavender of basically a 10 to 1, so 10 drops of the carrier oil to one drop of the essential oil. Is that what you typically recommend or does it, I mean it probably depends a lot on the oil and the person, right?

Dr. Elmore: It depends a lot on the oil, the person, it depends on the age. It depends on the structure and the strength of the skin. And I also think it just depends on their history of how long have you used essential oils. Like I know my tolerance level to putting cinnamon oil on my skin. That is going to be a dramatically different tolerance level to a one month old child who has just reached gestational age. This is going to be a dramatically different thing. The great news is we have the opportunity to just dilute our essential oils as much as we think we need to. Here’s my advice to moms who might be worried or also caregivers who might be taking care of older people who may have skin wounds or skin infections. Test the product on yourself first and you may start out simply by wearing essential oil on your own skin, wearing an essential oil on your clothing.

Dr. Elmore: Turn on a diffuser to get your essential oil going before you necessarily apply it to the skin. The good thing is if you undershoot and you say, you know what, I’ve been using that diluted lavender for three weeks, now I’m ready to put that lavender essential oil directly onto my skin because you can apply essential oils without any carrier oil. I do it every single day. If that happens and you see any redness, you see any irritation, you see any kind of itching, whatever, put more carrier oil on it. You can never go wrong by adding carrier oil when you have any type of irritation on the skin. So there’s no true dilution ratio that is 100% universal because you get an oil, like copaiba you could probably put 10 milliliters of copaiba all over my body and I would never even feel it. Versus if you tried to do that with a clove essential oil, I’m gonna be feeling the heat. So it, it really depends. It really does.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. Okay. I know that’s a question I get often. So I figured you’d have that response, but I just wanted to make sure otherwise we’ll get it in the comment section, right?

Dr. Elmore: Yes. So I mean, I cover it in my book. If you’re interested in reading more about dilution ratios and essential oils in general, I have a book 75 Answers to Common Questions. And my theory about essential oils is there’s so much fearmongering on the internet telling people how dangerous they are. But when you really get into the data, they are not dangerous unless you consume them in milliliters upon milliliters, quantity, don’t do that. Friends, do not let friends drink an entire bottle of essential oil.

Dr. Elmore: It is not a thing. Can I tell you one other thing that I think is very important to people when they’re using essential oils on their skin. We’ve talked a lot about redness and irritation and itching. That’s a type one allergic reaction. It’s a sensitivity to the essential oil. We also can have what are called type four allergic reactions, and these are very, very common and can be very severe. So use some caution if you are applying any kind of citrus essential oils to your skin before you go out into the sun. So citrus essential oils, especially bergamot, lemon and lime and orange and grapefruit are kind of in the middle. And then we also have another class of plants called our rutaceae plants. So these are essential oils like rue and angelica and cumin. All of these, our citrus oils as well as our rue, angelica and cumin increase the risks of photo sensitivity.

Dr. Elmore: And they do it because they have a chemical constituent in there called FCs or furanocoumarins. Furanocoumarins you find in lots of different personal care products and you also find them within essential oils. And so what happens is these furanocoumarins, if you think about your DNA, like a ladder that’s now twisted on itself. And so you’ve got this helix in between that ladder you have rungs and the rungs of the ladder are built with two different pieces. The furanocoumarins squeeze in between those two base pairs, those two pieces that are bringing that rung of the ladder. What then happens is that causes a strand break and the DNA can then shift or just reconnect in the wrong spot, get twisted the wrong way. This our body perceives as a foreign invader and it mounts an allergic reaction to our own DNA that has been intercalated.

Dr. Elmore: That is where those furanocoumarins squeeze in between those ladder rungs known as base pairs. So what we then perceive is why is my skin so red? Why am I so sunburned? The crazy thing about this reaction is that it can actually take up to 72 hours to manifest. So if you spend a full day out in the sun with lemon essential oil on your chest, and then all of a sudden, three days later, you have a sunburn, it may make no sense, but it actually is exactly what the science tells us may happen. So you have two different options to protect yourself and make sure that you are not having any type of adverse reactions. Number one, if you’re going to use your citrus oils, use them under your clothing or use them not at times when you plan to go out into the sun.

Dr. Elmore: You can look for products, personal care products. Many of them have furanocoumarin free additions, like you know, your orange and your grapefruit. And so you can avoid those furanocoumarins in that way. And the other thing is you can actually exploit this for your own benefit by applying something like a little lemon essential oil to the hair to get some natural highlights in the summer. So you can use it either to your benefit or to your detriment. But if you’re at home making your own DIY sunscreen, you know you got your zinc oxide and you’ve got whatever essential oils that you want to put in their orange, lemon, lime, especially bergamot. Bergamot is your biggest offender when it comes to photo sensitivity. So use some caution if you’re wearing those oils outside in the summer.

Dr. Cates: Right. Well thank you for pointing that out. And just for anybody that uses The Spa Dr. face products, the Daily Essentials, we use FC free nice oil. So you don’t have to worry about that with this. So before we wrap up, I know you mentioned a tea tree oil as good for more of the acne prone skin. Are there any other essential oils cause it, you know, acne being the number one skin issue. Are there any other essential oils that people that struggle with acne breakouts that you would recommend?

Dr. Elmore: Well, when I think about our acne, acne is a bacterial infection on the skin. And so we have to look at what is going to be great to help kill some of these bacteria. So when I think about about acne prone skin, tea tree immediately comes to mind. But so too does rosemary essential oil. So too do soothing essential oils because not only is it a bacterial infection, we then have an overlying inflammation that happens. And so I think about a roman chamomile essential oil, frankincense. I think about soothing essential oils like geranium. And I also believe it or not, think about some of the citrus oils, which I know I just went on this whole thing about, you know, using caution when we’re putting citrus oils onto our skin. But when used appropriately, we have great essential oil benefit from orange and lemon and even some more dense essential oils that have some strong antibacterial properties. Things like our patchouli. And if you really, really, have problems with the skin, you can bring in the big guns, but you’re going to have to dilute it and you’re gonna have to be used to it if you want to bring in some really strong antibacterial oils. But rosemary on the skin, there’s some beautiful oils that you can place onto the skin for acne, for acne prone skin.

Dr. Cates: Awesome. Thank you. And I’m sure you’ve got more of that kind of information if people want to go to your website or get book, they can find out more. Because if we could just go on and on about essential oils for different skin conditions.

Dr. Elmore: Oh my gosh, yes, absolutely. So there’s tons of blog content over at lindseyelmore.com, and if your listeners would like to get a free download of the first five chapters of my book, please just come over at lindseyelmore.com and you can download the first five chapters and just start getting acquainted with what essential oils are.

Dr. Cates: Perfect. Awesome. Thank you Lindsey for coming on talking with us about essential oils.

Dr. Elmore: Hey, thank you so much.

Dr. Cates: I hope you enjoyed this interview today with Dr. Lindsey Elmore and I know it can be overwhelming to hear all this information about essential oils. There are lots of resources out there and if you want to find out more about Lindsey and all the valuable tools that she has, you can go to thespadr.com, go to the podcast page with her interview and you’ll find all the information and links there. And while you’re there I invite you to join The Spa Dr. Community so you don’t miss your upcoming shows. We always love to hear your reviews as well so you can hop over to iTunes and leave a review there. And if you haven’t taken the skin quiz you can go theskinquiz.com it’s a free online quiz that helps you find out what messages your skin’s trying to tell you about your health and what you can do about it. Just go to theskinquiz.com and I invite you to also join me on social media @ The Spa Dr. on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and YouTube. Join the conversation there and I’ll see you next time on The Spa Dr. Podcast.