Essential Oils for DIY Self-Care with Dr. Eric Zielinski

Essential Oils for DIY Self-Care with Dr. Eric Zielinski

Dr. Trevor Cates: Welcome to The Spa Dr. Podcast. I am Dr. Trevor Cates. On today’s episode of the podcast, we are covering essential oils for your skin with a focus on DIY self care. My guest is Dr. Eric Zielinski who is the author of the national bestseller, The Healing power of Essential Oils and The Essential Oils diet. Dr Z is trained as an aromatherapist, public health researcher, and chiropractor and he started his website Natural Living Family in 2014 with his wife to help people learn how to use natural remedies like essential oils safely and effectively. His website is now visited by more than 5 million natural health seekers every year. In today’s interview, Dr. Z is back on The Spa Dr. podcast to give us an essential oils update since his last interview and share his favorite essential oils to use in DIY recipes and how to use them safely and effectively at home. You will also learn more about his latest essential oils revolution summit, so please enjoy this interview,

Dr. Trevor Cates: Dr. Z. It is so great to have you back on The Spa Dr. Podcast. Welcome.

Dr. Z: Well, thanks for having me. I am really excited to be sharing about this. It is like our fifth year anniversary since we first met, and everything is five years for me right now it seems.

Dr. Trevor Cates: I know. I was on your essential oil summit five years ago and a lot has come up since then, in the essential oils world and health overall. There is certainly a lot that has been changing. So I wanted to get you back on and get an update on what has been going on in the last five years with the essential oils.

Dr. Z: When I had this idea for the essential oils revolution in 2015, it was because at the time I was a medical writer, I was a research writer, writing for clients that commissioned me to write a series of public health reports on how essential oils affect different physiological measures of the body, blood glucose, blood pressure. It’s potential relationship with cancer. I was doing a lot of research and I found online that quite frankly everything online was biased. Biased in so far as everyone talking about essential oils then had a link to click to buy theirs or buy one that they promoted. As a public health researcher, that is financial bias one O one. A lot of the research was funded by the companies that were even manufacturing and selling the product. How do you find the truth about this stuff? And that is what started it. I wanted to create an event where people didn’t talk about brands. At the very least it was neutral and so it took off.

It was nuts. There were 165,000 people attending that event, and I will tell you after five years we are in the same situation. I really think and I am surprised because at the time there were several of folks in my situation, I am like the last guy standing, like every single person out there that I see talking about essential oil education in aromatherapist, a chemist, a researcher, they are all tied with a company. I find that it is very interesting that the market has necessitated that there has been that sort of relationship. And I want to stress one thing though, bless your heart if you are a network marketer, bless your heart if you promote a company, that’s great. It is. I mean, we need you to continue the grassroots movement. I love it. I love affiliate marketing, all that stuff. But when you want unbiased information on how to use something for your health, where do you go?

And so that has been the wild thing, I can’t keep up with the demand of information. I am writing my third book on how to use essential oils for chronic disease. And we will talk a little bit about the gut microbiome and leaky skin. Some things that are cutting edge right now. But the thing that has been really interesting though is also in the last five years, there has been an exponential demand for essential oils, which is great. Thank God for network marketing and that grassroots effort to get the message out. And because of that, tens of millions of people are using them. And so marketing experts predict exponential growth for the next 10 years. So what we see now, you go to bath and body works and they are claiming they have essential oil based products.

And with that though comes a two edged sword because you have roughly 80 to 90% of these products online you can buy that are adulterated. And so what does that mean? That means they are fake or they are mixed with or contaminated with something that is not pure and natural. And when it comes down to it, the more fanfare and fame essential oils get, the more potentially dangerous and confusing the market is, which is why I wanted to relaunch our essential oils revolution event. And then I included other things that we did and we will talk a little about that in a minute, but it is kind of the best of the best of everything we have done in the last five and a half, six years. It has been a wonderful journey and I am so grateful for all the researchers that are continuing to try to prove the things that we see and the claims that are being made online, because that is really what is happening because of the fanfare, because of the millions of people using essential oils, there are claims of everything from curing cancer to whatever and now researchers are testing that. So that has really been the last 5 years has been this Renaissance of efficacy.

Dr. Trevor Cates: Yeah. And another thing that is happening right now is that people are doing a lot of self care, DIY and I definitely want to be talking about that too because I think it’s important for people to know how to use essential oils safely. Is there anything in particular that you want to talk about with research? For me, I love the microbiome and that is near and dear to me, especially skin microbiome but also the gut microbiome and how it connects to the skin.

Dr. Z: One thing that is becoming more, and now I can’t even say mainstream because even leaky gut is still denied by the medical community. There is this faction in the medical community that even denies its existence. You are seeing the same thing with leaky skin. That has been groundbreaking for me, and like you, you and I have a passion for what we do when it comes to helping people maintain the integrity of their skin. And you know, a side effect is looking nice, beautiful anti-aging, glowing skin. See these are side effects to having healthy skin, but from my perspective, the purpose, the direct purpose of having intact skin is to protect your immune system. And I go back to immunology one 0 one your first barrier. Your first line of defense to your immunity is your skin. And I get what we are dealing with right now and I deal with outbreaks and we talk about all these things and people are more focused about inside.

We need to be focusing on the outside. We have this concept, intestinal permeability. Which we now know as leaky gut. Well, the same exact thing can happen on the skin, called leaky skin. Now dermatologists are claiming more and more that leaky skin is the primary cause of eczema and there is a connection between leaky gut and leaky skin to produce these rashes and outbreaks. If you know much, and I am sure your listeners do, the concept of intestinal permeability where the micro Villa and intestines just have little micro slits that let a lot of proteins and chemicals to seep into the bloodstream that causes rampant inflammation. The same concept happens on your skin. When you are putting something on your skin, like a product and your skin should be protecting you from chemicals, you are going to get those chemicals into your bloodstream.

We already know that happens anyway. We already know that the skin will absorb, and I have seen various reports anywhere from 20 to 60% of the chemicals that we put on our skin will absorb. I don’t think we will ever truly test that and be able to determine the exact number, but it’s a considerable amount. But when you have leaky skin, it is not just the chemicals that you are putting on, on purpose, but what about the things that are by happenstance? What about what is in the air? Airborne particles. What about those dangerous, volatile organic compounds? What about whatever it might be? Viruses, bacteria, fungi? And so if your skin is not intact, that is going to make you more susceptible to disease. That is going to make your immune system compromised. And some things that we have been noticing too in the people that we have been helping with, that we have observed, and also it is something that we reported in our essential oils diet book last year was the metabolic burden that’s happening because of this. Our metabolism is here to keep us alive, our metabolism or some processes of energy are required energy to maintain life.

Metabolism isn’t just about burning fat, it’s a big part of it, but it’s not all of it. But when your metabolism is compromised because your body’s being inundated by chemicals, by toxins, it is causing you to gain weight. So things that we have done, like fun experiments, are challenging people. Okay, stop toxic body care products just for a week or two, see what happens. Just use olive oil, use your own. We refer people to The Spa Dr. to get some good stuff. And we are finding that people are starting to lose weight. Now I am not talking about 15 or 20 pounds, I am talking a couple of pounds, like two, three. Imagine if you do nothing but stop your conventional body care products. And you lose five pounds in a month, not even changing your diet, not changing exercise. What happens if you then stop your aerosols or the fragrances that are in your wall plugins or your chemical laced cleaning products.

The whole concept here is creating a revolution. It is why I love the essential oils revolution. It is creating this revolution of mindset that we are this holistic being. When it comes to the integrity of the skin, we need to be careful that our skin isn’t over dry. I love to hear your perspective on this because a lot of the body care products, the first ingredient usually is water. And then that evaporates. And it can dry the skin and there’s alcohol and there’s these chemical drying properties that essentially create these micro slits in your skin, leaky skin. I would love to hear a little bit about you and some of your moisturizing techniques. Then I can share a couple of the little things that I have done with oils.

Dr. Trevor Cates: Yes, and you know that we are big fans of essential oils, at The Spa Dr. We have essential oils in some of our products and certainly love them and look for the purest forms of organic versions. Leaky skin I think is so fascinating and I have been studying this a lot and of course a lot of what you said is our skin providing this barrier function and when that barrier function gets broken down, that is what leads to leaky skin. And yes we are concerned about are we going to be absorbing more toxic ingredients from our skin care products? Certainly that is a concern. When that leaky skin happens, people are more predisposed to developing skin issues like eczema, and acne and rosacea, a number of skin problems we are concerned about because that barrier function isn’t doing what it’s supposed to and then it just leads down to more problems with the skin microbiome and until somebody can get that function back in place.

Yes, it has certainly been an issue. I don’t know about the weight loss that you mentioned and reducing toxic skin care ingredients. I have not seen any studies on that. What I would say is that definitely within my community and certainly even The Spa Dr. team, people have mentioned losing weight, but usually they are following my clean skin from within the program in addition to using my skincare products. I am not sure about giving you feedback on that part, but very interesting. I am curious to hear about that because certainly, we have these endocrine disrupting chemicals that are in so many skincare products and we know the endocrine disrupting chemicals can interfere with the hormones associated with weight gain or weight loss.

It can create issues with that. The skin barrier function and leaky skin, a lot of it has to do with the pH of the skin and the oils that we are using on the skin. I think it is really important to look at ingredients. Now we do have water in some of our skincare products because we use dried aloe and it is the best form that we can find. In order to activate the aole, we need water, but we carefully pH balance our products towards mild acidity, and we also add hydrating ingredients. So you don’t have to worry about compromising the skin barrier function.

Dr. Z: Yeah, water is not a bad thing. I will challenge people to go to Walmart and look at body care products, and just look at the ingredients and look at the lack of moisturizing ingredients when the basis is water in and of itself. And it’s like, well, I didn’t realize that. There is this mentality where, and I want to debunk something because essential oils are antimicrobial. They kill viruses and fungi and bacteria. That is what they do. They are nature’s defense. And so the argument is, if we see that oregano, for example, can kill Mrsa, which it can, and lemongrass and thyme, then we can only lend to believe that it is going to kill the good bacteria. The interesting thing is you will see everything from studies on boiler chickens like meat manufacturing facilities are using essential oils because antibiotics, they have hit a wall and we know that they are antibiotic resistant bacteria like Mrsa and others that they need to come up with a solution because they are losing livestock.

And so essential oils have been more and more tested and evaluated. They are adding essential oils to feed, to protect the animals. And what they are finding is there is something known as self selectivity. The essential oil, because it is natural, it is not synthetic made in a lab because it’s based on nature that there is this innate component of cells. It is actually known as cell selectivity, where the essential oils will literally target and kill the pathogenic microbes and leave the healthy ones alone. It is pretty profound when you think of it. So that goes into the gut. So we will see studies, like SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, how peppermint can help and even oregano going back has shown to help repair leaky gut and pig studies. And we will see other essential oils when you use them safely, effectively. But when it comes to the skin, it’s the same exact thing.

We don’t have to worry about killing the positive. The microbiome. We don’t have to worry about killing, but we need to worry about damaging our skin if we don’t use essential oils properly. And that is where dilution has to happen. So people can unknowingly damage their skin, essentially cause leaky skin by putting oils on their skin undiluted. You always need to dilute unless it is emergency medicine, which I get because when you go back to world war one and world war II, essential oils were in your medics case to help fight infection. They didn’t have the antibiotic back then. So what do you think they did? They had lavender, they had cloves, they had tea tree in the war. So if you have an emergency, like your medicine cabinet should have essential oils in there, that’s fine.

But for people that are using oils day in and day out like we do and we use moisturizer on our kids and we want to enhance our mood and get better sleep, you always want to dilute and you follow and thank God for Google and how easy it is to find stuff. Go type up dilution chart, essential oil dilution chart and you will get umpteen amounts of different charts you can print out. We offer them for people that sign up for our upcoming event, they get one for free. It’s super easy. It’s just a couple drops of essential oil with some carrier oil, like ho ho ba oil, sweet almond, olive oil. You don’t have to spend a lot of money. I mean whatever you have, and everyone nowadays has coconut oil and it is a great carrier oil, but when you have that, that protects the skin, it dilutes the essential oils so your not going to burn or cause any rashes, and is known as sensitization, contact dermatitis.

And so what we are seeing people do is damage the integrity of their skin because essential oils in and of themselves will dry and hurt your skin because they are alcohols or ketones, or esters. There is no nutrient of substances. There is actually no fat in the essential oil. They are technically not even oil, nor are they essential. It is a really kind of fun thing when you look at the name. They are lipid Fillic, hydrophobic, they don’t like water, but they like fat substances. That is why we call them “oil”. And so it’s a wonderful concept when you think about being able to make your own stuff and get away from some of the harmful things. So why even use essential oils to begin with? Well, when used properly, they contain healing properties like they are rich in antioxidants and who can’t use a little more antioxidant boost, moisturizing body care, I mean, that helps oxygenate, that helps protect your body from free radicals, and protects your skin microbiome.

And also a lot of folks, especially those dealing with candida overgrowth, a little bit of essential oils can go a long way. When it comes to just helping balance, because a lot of people don’t realize the skin microbiome is out of balance, just like the gut microbiome is. I don’t know if you have any insight into this, it is like the chicken or the egg. What is effective first? The skin microbiome or the gut because we know that they interplay with each other. I am always looking for that answer because my gut instinct tells me it is the skin. Because the skin is what is most readily vulnerable because it is exposed all the time where the gut is isolated in your guts. Either way, in my opinion, they are both equally important and we need to do our best to nourish but also protect and try to kill the bad stuff because it is all over if you are not careful.

Dr. Trevor Cates: Yeah, absolutely. As far as your question about which comes first, the gut or the skin. I think it depends on the person. I think that a lot of times it actually is the gut. I find that often the underlying causes really tie back to the gut. But sometimes especially in kids, or young adults, if they haven’t had a lot of antibiotics or things that may have killed off their good bacteria, but yet they have been, overzealous hygiene techniques that can start with the skin. But I think that a lot of times it starts with the gut and over time all of the food that we are eating, the medications that we are taking plus even just stress alone can disrupt both of those really. But it is a great question. And more research is certainly unfolding about the skin microbiome and there is so much that we don’t know yet.

Dr. Z: Yeah. And a lot of people have come to us on the gaps diet. They have done everything and they are still in really bad shape. I will challenge people that are out there that go from diet to diet to diet and they still find themselves with symptoms and they are just not feeling well. Maybe look to your skin. And then you will see, once you look outside, because we always say this all the time, we heal from the inside and sometimes we have to heal from the outside. Now I kind of want to heal from both, and you might find that healing from the outside in, but also taking an inside out approach, conjunctively might be exactly what you need.

But either way, enjoy, guilt free products. And that is something where we as a people, is it unfair to say addicted? Yeah. I think we are addicted to smell. I think we are addicted to fragrance. I mean if not, you wouldn’t smell it everywhere. It is all over the place. And I think that is by design, by God. We are attracted to those beautiful fresh smelling fruits and vegetables and herbs and things that are rich in polyphenols and bioactive compounds and things that we need to live. So let your nose do the talking and that’s where one by one by one. If you find yourself like me, my wife, we used to love those plugins and aerosols and things that made our house smell great and love those body care shampoo products, and that smell in our laundry.

We can not stress enough about laundry. Here is a quick tip about laundry. If you are doing laundry and if you have a strong smell after washing and drying your laundry, just know that is not good for you. What that is is a chemical surfactant put into the detergent, in laundry and little things to keep the smell intact, so you are wearing that chemical on your skin all day long. If it’s truly a natural surfactant, if it is truly a natural product, it is going to wash away. Your clothes should have a very faint smell to it. But what you see from these major companies, people don’t like that. And a friend of mine actually did a study. He did a study where he owns a nontoxic laundry company. Stephen Ezell from MyGreenFills.

He did a fun little study from traverse city, Michigan. A really nice, resort kind of town. So these are, your stereotype, let’s say they are educated people. He went to the mall and he grappled around this, what do I do? He wanted, and he has created nontoxic laundry products, completely non toxic, all green. And very few companies have been able to do it because of how hard it is to create the sensation of something clean, but also having a nice smell that doesn’t poison you. And what happened was he really grappled with fragrance because fragrance is dangerous for you. And so he wanted to only use essential oils, but again, they get washed out. It took him so much time and money to create a natural surfactant that wouldn’t poison the skin, that would keep the essential oil smell for just a little bit.

And so he wanted to test it though because he just wanted to have non scented products and his whole team, his executive team said, no, we can’t do it. Market research shared this and that. So what he did was he went to, I forget the store, but I think it was Joanne fabrics. He went to whatever arts and craft store, got the whitest, whitest rag that he could possibly get. Got two of them. And he literally wiped his engine block with one of the rags and then he went to the store and got some smelly laundry stuff and just kind of sprinkled it on so it smelled clean even though it was literally a filthy rag. And the other rag just was completely clean with no smell.

He went to the local mall. With this educated clientele. I think that is important. We always say, well people are uneducated so they make bad decisions. He went to this educated community at the mall and he said, Hey, I am a local manufacturer of laundry products and I have a survey, which one do you think is cleaner? And he gave both rags to the people, the literal clean white, non scented rag versus the oily greasy engine block rag with smell. And obviously because I am leading up to this, which one you think profoundly people chose as being cleaner?

Dr. Trevor Cates: The smelly one.

Dr. Z: Because it smelled clean. They went to the greasy rag that he literally wiped off his engine block and they said, Oh yeah, this one is cleaner. Because it smelled cleaner. And so that as a business owner challenged him to come up with a solution that now is known as MyGreenFills.

She helps millions of people every year. Fun story but that is who we are. That is hardwired into us. But the thing is that maybe your skin problems are like Steven’s son, The reason why a Restaurateur, who owned about 50 restaurants in New York, why he left everything and started this laundry company was because his little infant baby boy had a rash, uncontrolled. They tried everything, every cream, anything you could try and nothing worked. And then the idea came to him like, well what if it’s in the laundry? So they stopped using the mainstream one. I won’t say because I don’t want to get sued. They stopped using the mainstream laundry stuff, use the “natural one” that they could find at the health food store within like two days.

The kids skin was like completely regenerated, because that is how children are at that young age. They can heal that quickly. And he’s like, wow, he didn’t realize that his little baby in that onesie and the wrapping of the towel and swaddled up in the bundle of joy was wrapped up in chemicals that was poisoning him. Smelled great. They loved it. And so laundry is a big issue for people that have skin issues that they don’t even realize. And I would just challenge everyone. I have recipes on my website. You can make three months worth of laundry detergent for like 20 bucks. It’s super cheap, a little bit messy, be careful because it can get really messy if you don’t do it right. But you know what I mean? Like these little things. When you say endocrine disruptors, when we are talking about metabolic burden, when we are talking about what we could do to help the microbiome of the skin is first to stop the insult, stop the attack, and then use products that are life giving.

Dr. Trevor Cates: I think it is fantastic. We have essential oils as an alternative because like you said, people like a scent of some sort. They like nice smelling things. We like that. But the problem with fragrance is real. It is full of endocrine disrupting chemicals and they are in so many of the products we have in our homes and workplace and everywhere. And so it is just another place to get exposure to these endocrine disrupting chemicals that wreak havoc on our hormones. And so absolutely, I think essential oils are not only a cleaner option, but I love the health benefits that they provide. People oftentimes talk about the essential oils that I use in my products. They love part of the ritual because of the smell, and I don’t know why, but I feel good when I put your products on.

Well, part of that is probably the essential oils that are in there. Self care is so important right now. It is such an important part. People are at home more and they can not go out and get their pampering, they have to do it more at home. And so DIY skincare is a big one right now and people don’t have as much access to synthetic fragrance right now. So that is actually a good thing. So now is a good time to use some more essential oils. And of course, you want to use caution with that.

Dr. Z: Yeah. I want to give you guys a few and I am sorry, I usually try to, earlier on the interview, to give practical little stuff, but I want to give the top four or five. And the key to a lot of this is the antioxidant property. And arguably essential oil is concentrated plant-based, volatile organic compounds. They contain more antioxidants than really most supplements you will see on the market. Like oil for example, there has been a report sharing the ORAC scale of antioxidant capability of a food substance, is a million ORAC points versus organic wild blueberries, which is like 1500. You would have to eat a hundred servings of blueberries, just equal one drop of clove and I am not saying you are supposed to eat clove or drink clove but just to put it into perspective, imagine what that does to your skin.

Helichrysum oil is known as Immortelle. It is the anti-aging essential oil. It bodes well from the beginning of recorded history of people using flowers and herbs for skin care. So many references in the Bible of aloe and myrrh, when Queen Esther, I love the stories of the Old Testament and others talk about what they used to do and how they used to anoint themselves with these perfume types of fatty extract oils. Essentially what they were, because they didn’t have essential oils back then because steam distillation wasn’t invented until like ninth century AD. So what do you think they did? They would have helichrysum blossoms and they would just put that in a big VAT of olive oil and let that steep.

That is a natural solvent. They get this very faint nice smelling olive oil that it would have helichrysum or myrrh, both of those are wonderful healing properties. A lot of folks enjoy Rosemary. It is a wonderful one for anti-aging. Again, rich in antioxidants and also a nice benefit to these too, because Rosemary is the herb of remembrance. So some people will find it is hard when someone says which oils to use for which it is like a lot of them do a lot of different things. Because Rosemary is great for skin complexion and it is rich in antioxidants. It is extremely healing, but it also helps stimulate hair growth and it can help your memory function because again, it stimulates cognitive performance. There is a lot of cool stuff when you think about other oils like geranium, that is one of the typical women’s health oils.

The fact is Geranium, Clary Sage, and Ylang Ylang, these are extremely floral types of oils. A lot of guys can get over lavender. I think that lavender is a little more socially acceptable, but not a lot of guys are willing to go out smelling like Ylang Ylang and Geranium. Especially going out playing volleyball or Frisbee with their friends. You have got to think about that. Over the years it has been kind of funny because I am trying to break that stigma, but you will see a lot of women gravitate towards certain smells and a lot of them are the floral scents, like the geranium and the lavender and the Clary Sage and Ylang Ylang, all of which are wonderful for the skin. But you will see guys towards more like the woodsy, like the Cedar woods or the frankincense or the Myrrh, like Musk, smells like the old spice kind of thing.

Whether you are a guy or a gal listening, you use what works for you. But my challenge would be, especially ladies out there, just know, especially if your husband is like a man’s man, he is not going to go hunting or if he is a cop. He might be made fun of. So just be careful, ease him into some of the more floral things. But guys, I have to say, and this is no joke, this is kind of funny, but I have gotten more compliments by how I smell by men. You know straight guys, married guys. Because of how I smell, then women. He is like, man, you smell pretty good. What are you wearing? They want to know my cologne. Oh, I am wearing citrus oils.

I am wearing this or that. I will never forget this big burly Uber driver when I was going on a business trip and he just loved how I smelled. He was married with kids. So I am just saying that to say we could break the stigma. You don’t need to smell like old spice to be attractive. Thank goodness. Tea tree is another one that keeps on coming up because you know, Tea tree is one of those oils, like in Australia, they use for virtually everything. It is like when you look at the Aboriginal culture, the tea tree is a healer. It is a healer from top of your head to the soles of your feet. And it is wonderful. Especially for fungal infections. And that is something that a lot of folks recognize with skin and with acne.

Whether it is a bacterial outbreak or whether it stems from candida overgrowth. Tea tree keeps on coming up over and over and there have been studies talking about comparative to placebo trials. How Tea tree can be three to six times more effective helping with acne versus placebos. A diluted solution of Tea tree. Always dilute, you just don’t want to put a drop or anything on your skin. Citrus oils are another one that come up over and over again, rich and D Limonene, they are some of the most antioxidant potent safe ways of combating viruses and bacteria and fungi. Some oils like oregano and lemon grass and clover are very caustic. They will burn you if you don’t pay attention.

Orange and lemon and grapefruit. These are very gentle oils and you are not going to find you burning yourself or hurting yourself. However, because of bergaptene that is in many of them, it is a chemical that has an effect with the UV light from the sun. You could create what is known as photo toxicity. I share that to say you use oils in certain seasons based on what you are doing. If it is sunny where you are at right now, or if it is summer and if you want to go outside and enjoy some suntanning, great. Have fun, but don’t slather yourself with orange or citrus oils because you could run the risk of burning yourself of which I have. I didn’t realize this and this really shocked me, infrared sauna technology can also exemplify the bergaptene, so I caused myself to have a whole mid body rash because I put on some essential oils before I went into my infrared sauna.

And because I had bergamot in it, at first I thought it was shingles. I was like, what in the world did I do? And I didn’t know anything. Unfortunately I have to go through these things to help the world not go through these things, but there was nothing in the research to suggest that infrared saunas have a UV type of photo, a toxic reaction with bergaptene. Anyway, whether you are suntanning, fake suntanning at a tanning salon or whether you are outside, whether you are doing infrared sauna or red light therapy, stay away from citrus oils on your skin, just for several hours before and it will be good. There are certain little nuances like that, but you don’t see those kinds of reactions with the lavender’s or the tea tree or the helichrysum or the geraniums. Those are oils that are generally safe without even having to think twice.

Dr. Trevor Cates: Yeah. The Spa Dr. skin care products for the face are free of those ingredients. We do have some of those essential oils, but we make sure that they are safe to use and they don’t have the photosynthesizing effects because certainly that is the last thing we want people to have. Using all these great antioxidant rich ingredients and then go out and get burned. That is not what we want. Those are all fantastic oils. I love all of those. I think I just want to remind people that when you are making your own DIY skincare, that they do have a shelf life that DIY skincare even with essential oils in it, can grow bacteria, mold, different things in there that we don’t want. So there are great recipes and I have a bunch of recipes in my books, but you need to make them fresh. Some of them last longer than others. It is good to store them in the refrigerator that gives them a little bit longer shelf life. But you have got to make them fresh.

Dr. Z: Exactly. So that is the concern with when you go to Pinterest and when you go to blogs, especially the water based products, those are the ones. I have talked to some cosmetic formulators, that say three, four weeks max max. When you are doing like a DIY, that’s water-based especially. You can not smell it, you can not see it but do you want to use a product that is already micro contaminated? That is a good point. You want to focus on small batches that you want to use and just as a rule of thumb and who has time to DIY all the time too. I mean that is the other aspect of it. It is fun. And you know, this whole Coronavirus situation that gets people in the situation where you can’t shop and you can’t leave your house at the drop of a hat.

I think what happened was there was this mass awakening or there is becoming this mass awakening that maybe people weren’t as prepared as they thought they were for stuff. I don’t know what stuff is for you. You fill in the blank, but what would your life look like if you gardened a little bit. And even if you live in a one bedroom apartment, you can still have a garden tower, you can still have a little window sill pots. You can grow a tomato plant in a one bedroom apartment and it will look beautiful. It would be like a decorative item. You don’t have to have a huge garden, but imagine if you started growing your own herbs or you start growing your own stuff and maybe making your own things once in a while. There is this element of empowerment and that is really what it is for me with essential oils. Before I met essential oils, I didn’t have a medicine cabinet.

Like nothing. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to do if I got an athlete’s foot or a pimple or my kid had a fever. I was at the mercy of going to the pharmacy. I was at the mercy of doing something that I knew had a negative consequence to it because the reality is no drug or over the counter is free of any side effects. That is why you have that big list. But you know one thing you will never find on a bottle of essential oil are side effects, not because they don’t have any, but if you use them properly, there are virtually no side effects other than being allergic to them. And that is wonderful. Just like your natural supplements, just like your products. There is no risk if you follow the instructions, which is pretty cool.

And what that does, I feel to me as a father, a husband and educator, it brings me to a place where a friend even, think about it, think about who I am. Think about who we are to people around us. It brings us to a level of empowerment. Knowing that not only do we have tools to take care of ourselves, but we can help others. And next thing you know, the whole world is flipping out around. You are younger, you are in a little bubble, you are doing okay. And then you become a source of hope for them, and Oh, why are you not freaking out? Do you remember when hand sanitizer went out off the shelf, make your own, it is easy. Seriously get some moonshine, put a couple of drops of essential oil, it is done. I mean like it is that easy.

Dr. Z: People don’t even realize how easy it is to make hand sanitizer, but they rushed to the stores because they freaked out. Imagine not having to be in that state of consciousness. That is why I called it the essential oils revolution because it revolutionizes the way that you see the world and it is a lifestyle and oil is a part of it, but food is huge and exercise and mind, body, meditation all these things work. That is why I love what you have been doing and I am so glad that our paths continue to cross and thanks for doing your part and helping us live this holistic, healthy lifestyle, my friend.

Dr. Trevor Cates: Absolutely. I completely agree. We need to expand this more. We need more of a holistic movement. It has become very apparent during the pandemic that we all need to get back to the basics and the foundation of good health and how we can use nature to support us more, and a lot of different ways. Essential oils are such a great part of that. So tell everyone about your newly revised essential oils revolution summit.

Dr. Z: Yes. Since 2015 we have hosted two summits. We have created a master class and we have done a lot, little demo videos along the years of how to make everything from tea tree dish soap, to a cancer fighting roll on. I mean, just all kinds of different things. And what we did was we put together the best of the best and we have a really fun little experience for people, every day you get in-depth advanced training videos and PowerPoint presentations to demo videos of my wife and I in the kitchen showing you how to make stuff for traditional summit interviews. And it is coming up May 18th. People are going to get really the best of everything that we have done over the last five and a half, six years. Ever since we first launched this. And I invite folks to come. We have a lot of people and it is going to be a lot of fun. I am going to be very much engaged in the questions like I always am and I can’t wait to meet people because I truly believe we could thrive during this time. And that has been my challenge I keep on sharing with people . Let’s come out of this experience healthier, better, happier with more fruitful relationships in every area of our lives then how we walked into it. And I do believe that you will get a couple little tips and tidbits that will help you along the way in our event.

Dr. Trevor Cates: Awesome. All right, we will have the link up on my website so people can go check it out. And my interview is on there from before and then you have a bunch of new interviews too. So a whole combination of great information from experts. Thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate it.

Dr. Z: Thanks for having me.

Dr. Trevor Cates: I hope you enjoyed this interview today with Dr. Z and learned lots of tips on how to use essential oils in your self care. If you want to learn more about Dr. Z or about the essential oils revolution summit, you can go to TheSpaDr.com, go to the podcast page with his interview and you will find all the information and links there. And while you are there at thespadr.com I invite you to join The Spa Dr. Family so you don’t miss any of our upcoming shows and information. If you haven’t taken the skin quiz yet, I encourage you to do so at theskinquiz.com. It is a free online quiz. It gives you information about what your skin might be trying to tell you about your health and what you can do about it. Just go to theskinquiz.com. You can also follow us on social media. The Spa Dr. Is on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Pinterest and I will see you next time on The Spa Dr. podcast.