Safe and Effective Use of Essential Oils for Optimum Skin Health

Trevor: Hi there, I’m Dr. Trevor Cates, welcome to The Spa Dr. Podcast. There’s a lot of buzz today about essential oils. I asked my guest today to come on to spill some of the myths about essential oils and how to safely and effectively use them.

Before I start, I had a question from one of you that I want to answer. This one is from Lynsey. She says she has very sensitive skin and she’s concerned about using skin care products containing essential oils. Her question is, “How do I know if essential oils are ok to use from my sensitive skin?” Lynsey, I know how it is to have sensitive skin. I have sensitive skin too.

My guest today is gonna go in depth into how to find the cleanest essential oils and how to use them safely. I think you’re really going to enjoy this interview.

I’d like to add that I recommend doing a skin patch test before trying any new skin care products, especially for those of us with sensitive skin. All you have to do for a skin patch test is to just apply a small amount inside of your wrist, or the inside of your arm, or maybe even inside of your jawline. Wait for 24 hours, watch for any kind of redness, itching, bumps, any kind of sign that you might be reacting to the product.

What that means is that particular product you applied may not be great for your skin. You’re having some sort of reaction. That doesn’t mean that all the ingredients in there or that essential oils are a problem for you, but whatever the product combination is, or maybe one of the ingredients in there is something you’re reacting to. You want to try a different product. And again, it doesn’t mean you have to give up on essential oils but that particular product may not be the best for you at this time.

Just getting back to the interview because I know you all want to know more about essential oils. My guess today is Dr. Eric Zielinski. He’s also known as Dr. Z. He’s a sought after health researcher, and educator, author, and motivational speaker.

Dr. Z’s mission is to provide people with simple evidence based tools that they need to experience the abundant life. By hosting online events such as the Essential Oils Revolution and the Hill Your Gut Summit, Dr. Z educates people in natural remedies and empowering life strategies. He lives in Atlanta with his wife and four children.

In this interview, we cover top essential oils, very top, the best essential oils and how to select essential oils and how to use them safely and effectively for optimal skin health and overall health. Please enjoy this interview with Dr. Z.

Trevor: Dr. Z, Eric, it’s so great to have you on my show.

Dr. Eric: Well, thank you. I’m just so excited just to be on again. I’m excited to connect soon, we’re all going to be together at our crazy fun little conference coming up.

Trevor: Yeah.

Dr. Eric: I love seeing your bubbly face. You’re just awesome, Trevor.

Trevor: Thank you, thank you, Eric.

Today, we’re talking about essential oils. I love talking about essential oils. It’s so nice that we have a natural alternative to fragrance because they talk a lot about synthetic fragrance and the harmful ingredients that are in those and the concerns with that. It’s so nice to know that we have essential oils as an alternative to that. They also have a lot of therapeutic benefits as well. Let’s start off by talking about why, it seems like essential oils are so popular right now. Why is that?

Dr. Eric: Can I tell you I give 100% of the credit to network marketing. It’s just profound. People don’t recognize it but in the 40s, there’s a paradigm shift when the antibiotic industry said, “Hey, we got this little pill that will solve all your problems so you don’t need Oregano anymore for infection. You don’t clove, you don’t need these other things.” That folks back in World War I and World War II, medics had oregano oil in their medic case to help soldiers combat infection. That was what they used. They didn’t have antibiotics in the 20s and the 30s, right?

We’ve come back full circle. It was about 20 years ago, and about 10 years ago, 5 years ago, these landmark times that really network marketing said look, this is the wave of the future, we need to get back to our roots.

It’s really kind of funny. As a marketing guy, I look at those little aspects of it. Essential oils have been around forever. It’s nice to see them get the credit that they deserve.

Trevor: Yeah, absolutely. Let’s talk about some of the benefits of essential oils. Share with everybody what you found to be some of the top benefits.

Dr. Eric: It’s wild because about the onset of really when network marketing reached out and said, “Hey, we have this great product,” that’s when a lot of research started coming out too. Within the last 15, 20 years, the research has been just mind blowing. I mean everything, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, oral health, every condition you can think of. A lot of these studies are in vitro, they’re cells in a petri dish, we don’t have too many animals or human trials yet in comparison to drugs.

It really is a matter of what do you want to approach in your health. I kid you not, I could probably figure out a way to use essential oils to help you. I started Trevor. I opened up the door, it was crazy. I opened up the door to research and I created this database on my website. I don’t know how many articles we have, close to a hundred. Everything. Just most health conditions can be connected to—I guess the bottom line is we have to recognize that the chemical properties of drugs are based of is a plants, fern, by large or majority. It’s not like chemist. My father knows a chemist.

I’m talking about this stuff. It’s not like chemists just invent a chemical property in their mind. They’re like “Okay, let’s look at these plants, let’s look at the beneficial aspects of plants and let’s try to make synthetic version of it.” That’s how oftentimes drugs are made. Same things collations in the potions that people buy at the store.

I love essential oils as just a non-toxic solution to skin care, to health care and you name it. Emotions, mental balance, it’s like you’re a kid in a candy store when it comes to essential oils and it’s just a matter of using them wisely.

Trevor: Yeah. Absolutely. I know that you’ve done some research on the skin microbiome and you’re just on a summit recently talking about that. Let’s talk about that because that’s something I talk about a lot, and I love talking about the skin microbiome. I think it’s so important to talk about those microorganism that live on our skin and protect our skin from breaking out in acne, and eczema, and premature aging, all that. A lot of people talk about they’ve got microbiome these days. But skin microbiome are also really important especially with people that have skin issues and that want to age gracefully.

Dr. Eric: In a sense, I think it’s important to put things into perspective. Trevor, I’m looking at a beautiful woman that is one human cell for every ten bacterial cell right now. That’s wild. When we look at each other, when we look at people, we’re just not human cells. We seem to forget that we live in symbiosis with an environment that is way outside beyond our ability to even comprehend just how vast it is.

The reality is our skin houses trillions of microorganisms. A lot of them are helpful, some of them are harmful, but they all work together to protect us in a way where we need to maximize that efficiency because your skin is the first barrier in your immune system. It’s first line of defense. It’s like the front lines of an army. If your skin has any cut, any abrasions, if it’s damaged, if it’s overly dry, then your body is going to be susceptible to disease.

There’s interesting when you look at the skin, how absorbent it is. It can literally, studies have shown, absorb up to 60% of the chemicals in the products that we put on our skin.

The funny thing is, not funny I guess, it’s really kind of shocking. It’s funny when you think about how effective they are. There have been studies showing that essential oil, massage lotion applied on human skin within five minutes, the chemical properties of the oil actually has been detected in the blood. Within 20 minutes, full content of maximum exposure of the chemical properties of the essential oils turn the blood and within four hours, they’re gone. That’s interesting because it all starts in the skin.

Essential oils and various curia oils are transdermal, they penetrate to a certain level but it’s all about maximizing that healthy benefit that we have in immune system. Because if the immune system, a.k.a. the skin, is damaged, then we’re going to be susceptible to all sort of things, not just breakouts of acne, eczema, psoriasis. I’m talking literal disease. That’s where a lot of folks need to make that logical lead, and to recognize, “Oh wow, if a chemical can absorb into my skin, through my skin, through my bloodstream, what does that mean?” It can cause oxidative stress, they can lead the heart disease that can lead after ethereal sclerosis, we’re talking diabetes. You name it.

I think it’s very important to recognize, we need to stay in balance, we need to stay in harmony, minimize as much as possible this toxic skin care products. I hold them responsible.

Research suggest for everything, for a main cause of the cancer that we develop in our society, Autism, ADD, neurocognitive disorders like Alzheimer’s, Dementia, it’s just shocking. A big proponent of do it yourself and for those people who don’t all the time and the energy, find a good skin care line, Trevor, you have a great one. Some people just don’t want to do it but we need to do something better that what we have on the stores shelves because they’re literally killing us.

Trevor: Yeah. It’s so true. If you think about the combination of things that we’re exposed to in addition to the personal care products we get things in our hair, in our water, in our food. The personal care products are just, it’s an addition to that, we want to look at all these things but we don’t want to ignore it. I think a lot of people put stuff on their skin, they don’t really think about it because they just think it’s on the surface. They just put it on mindlessly. A part of that is just what we’re used to in marketing and all of that. Hopefully, we can make our small little change and help more people understand that it is important. It is important part of your lifestyle, right?

Dr. Eric: Okay. A confession, a confession of Dr. Z. A confession of a dermal therapist here. Up until three years ago, I was using a hand sanitizer like caffeine. I bought the lie, I drank the kool aid, I’m like “Man, we live in this toxic environment, there’s bacteria, bad stuff, everywhere I got.”

My kids had the hand sanitizer on their lunch box. I have them in my car and everywhere I went. Everywhere you go, gas station, the store, whatever, at the gym, there’s little big jug of hand sanitizer. I was doing this faithfully until I started doing research on it, Trevor.

I recognized that one of the main components of hand sanitizer is Triclosan a.k.a. a registered pesticides since 1969. Completely annihilates your skin microbiome, dries the skin, creates a toxic effect on the body and now we’re linking that again to neurocognitive disorders like Alzheimer’s, Dementia, Cancer. So I stopped.

I was very radical, like literally just a couple weeks after I went to bad bath and beyond. I’m that guy. I’m that husband that once a year I buy my wife a thousand dollars worth of gifts, I put it in a big box in my closet in every birthday, anniversary, I just take some stuff out. The semi-annual sale, Victoria Secret and Bath and Body Works has every January, I would go and buy a ton of stuff. I bought my wife 20 little hand sanitizers and a bunch of lotions and I’m like, I just bought hundreds of dollars worth of stuff. I just realized that it’s toxic, it’s bad for us. I’m throwing everything away. I got really radical about it.

I say that to say this, pick the low hanging fruit. It was really easy for me to throw away stuff that I just bought. I wasted some money I guess, but at the same time it was empowering to recognize that I can make these changes. The easiest thing for me to do was to throw away my hand sanitizer. It was super easy, super effective. Anyone can do that today. I can’t begin to stress, your hand sanitizer is public enemy number one. It really is a public health risk.

A great solution is get a little spritzer bottle, like a one ounce spritzer bottle of essential oils. Fill it with a few drops of witch hazel, about five, seven drops of essential oil and water. You can have your own DIY hand sanitizer. Just again, a spritzer bottle, water, essential oils, and witch hazel and that’s it. That right there is the solution.

Trevor: That’s great. Which essential oils are you recommending for that?

Dr. Eric: Oh, any. I mean really, virtually any. Most essential oils like by and large are anti-microbial. Most is what we can see in the research have what’s known cell selectivity, they don’t target the good cells. They target the bad cells which is pretty wild. Just think the innate intelligent plant nature medicine has is unreal.

I say use whatever it is that you want to accomplish. For us, during the summer months, we’d like to be, something maybe refreshing like a peppermint is really nice and cooling. During the winter months we’d like maybe something a little more upbeat because where we live it gets a little darker. Citrus oils are great. You can just have fun, play. I mean lavender if you want to spray something at night to help you calm down, if you’re at work, and if you need something to help you focus, vetiver, frankincense is good. You use whatever oils or blends that it is that you want to really accomplish the effect.

The same thing with lotion. The same thing with your diffuser blends. Whatever you’re trying to accomplish, there are dozens and dozens of varieties of oils that you can use to accomplish that.

Trevor: I love that. I think it plays into that, we’re talking about skin microbiome and essential oils are so beneficial in helping with that balance like you were saying. If you could touch, just too really help solidify the connection between the skin microbiome and essential oils. Can you just talk about that just a moment?

Dr. Eric: Yeah. The skin microbiome is being destroyed particularly by the toxic chemicals that we’re putting on our skin. That’s well intentioned people, the lotions, the potions, the hand sanitizers. By using safe products or by doing it yourself, you then reduce that risk of annihilating the skin microbiome. Also, we find that essential oil based products help nourish the skin, help promote healthy bacterial balance, and help solidify the microbiome so your body will be protected.

Trevor: Absolutely, okay perfect. I wanted to ask you if people are new to essential oils and they want to go in and then they want to buy maybe five, three or five, maybe a couple, what are the best ones to start with? You mentioned peppermint, frankincense, lavender, will those three be the ones? Or citrus?

Dr. Eric: There are several, I go through my favorites and I find that there are several oils that really, are ubiquitous, you can use them for virtually anything. You’re never going to go wrong with the citrus oil. Lemon and orange, I love. Bergamot is fantastic. Bergamot oil, we’re finding more and more research regarding that. That’s like a sleeping giant. A lot of folks don’t recognize a power that that has even with pain, elevating mood.

Peppermint is great. Clove is so anti-bacterial, so healing especially for the mouth. I guess for me, I would create like a kit. I love clove for oral health. I love citrus oil for mood balancing. Peppermint for energy and also for pain. You name it. It just all depends on whether you’re not trying to approach a fungal infection, tea tree is the prototypical one. There’s so many different ones, lavender of course for sleep and calm. If you can get your hands on it, it’s so good, camomile.

That’s becoming more of a problem Trevor unfortunately is consumerism, we’re literally causing certain plants to become extinct and it’s getting harder to find good quality oils anymore.

I wanna be cautious people to, don’t go to Walmart, Walmart literally sells oils now. You can get a cheap $10 starter kit. It’s wild. Don’t go to Walmart to get your essential oils. You want to get a pure, therapeutic grade essential oil that is safe for internal use. If it’s not safe for internal use, you shouldn’t be putting it on your skin.

And that’s the other thing. If you’re not willing to eat your skin care, you probably shouldn’t be putting it on your skin. Again, it gets in your body. Not that I’m really going to squirt the stuff in my mouth, however the reality is we need to put things in a perspective and there are good ways of finding good quality brands.

Trevor: Okay. Let’s talk about that, let’s talk about how do you find the high quality brand and how do you choose that?

Dr. Eric: I’d like to answer that by kind of a roundabout way in saying there is no number one brand. That’s super important. If you go on the internet, you’ll see “Number one,” “I love them,” “They’re the only one.” No. It’s marketing, it’s biased, it’s well intentioned people who literally have a great testimony. I’ll say it in their defense.

And again, it goes back to network marketing. There are a lot of people that have miracle stories, right? We’re talking people apply frankincense over an incurable brain tumor on the back of their skull and their brain tumor goes away, and the doctor’s like, “What happened?” Of course that oil is infallible. That’s the best quality. Just got healed of an incurable brain tumor and that’s the kind of mindset that we have. There’s so many miracles stories out there, people are just attracting their brand.

I want to encourage you all folks, there are a lot of good brands, actually several. My wife and I used several therapeutic grade essential oils. The thing is you got to find what works for you. That’s interesting because, Trevor, you’re an naturopathic doctor, you practice your medicine, right? A medical doctor practices that. As a chiropractor, I was trained to practice chiropractic. People need to learn how learn practice natural health care. That means practicing essential oils.

What does that mean? Literally, I would suggest if you’re really interested in getting involved with the essential oils to look for an article and like step by step on how to really find one. I’ll go online, I would talk to some friends and family, get a good referral first and foremost. You can’t go wrong with a good referral. My opinion, from a trusted family member who isn’t trying to selling you something and then asks. Maybe narrow it down to like three brands, do some preliminary research online. Be careful, but I want to point out, recognize who’s gonna be hate speech and love speech. But if you go search XYZ brand and on Amazon, there’s zero out of five stars and a thousand people voted, that’s a good sign that’s something to stay away from.

I say that there are certain brands that are just way out there that shouldn’t even be selling products. The statistic is 75% of all oils on the market are adulterated which means they’re either fake or they’re cut deluded with a carrier oil which essentially means you’re just wasting your money and it’s not pure enough therapeutic.

There are again several. Once you narrow it down to a field, I would contact them. I would ask them for a report whether not to have an analysis of their oils. How do they source their oils? Find out how do they purify their oils? How do they maintain quality standards? Any good company who worked their way and sold will have all that information readily available, their customer support, if it’s not already on the internet, their customer’s support should be all in this quick email.

It’s a little work. I suggest taking it as work folks because could you not. People are utilizing essential oils to replace pharmaceutical interventions. It’s literally medicine for people. As I hope you’re interviewing your doctor, and as I hope you’re taking really good care in who your healthcare provider is and not just going to whoever it is just because they’re in your insurance program. You need to take that much care when it comes to utilizing supplements essential oils because the stuff is getting in your body. Once you narrow it down to a couple, try some.

I know it’s a couple dollars but buy, I would recommend because they’re relatively cost effective and they’re good overall is lemon, lavender and peppermint. Buy lemon, lavender, peppermint from like three brands. Try them, smell the, experience them. If you open up the bottle and immediately gets a headache, that might be a sign that that particular brand uses a particular species of peppermint that your body doesn’t respond well to. That’s what I mean by practicing essential oils. Maybe you’ll smell a bottle of lavender and just like fall asleep immediately, find your peaceful heavenly resting place and you’ll be like whoa, this is my Zen moment. That’s the place where you might buy your lavender from.

Apply them on your skin diluted. Never apply topically undiluted, that could cause a sensitization reaction, like an allergic response. Get a few drops of coconut oil, get one drop of let’s say lavender, lemon, or peppermint. Apply it on the bottoms of your feet, or on your wrist, behind your knee and some of the pressure points of your body, the trigger points, and see how your body responds.

I mean, really, if you break out into a rash, it’s not a good sign. You don’t want to use that oil ever again. We needed some of the living experiments. Once you find that, then you can really start diving deep and start buying other different oils and blends within that brand. Then the bottom line is this folks, you gotta trust. There has to be a level of trust. The companies we buy from, we trust them. I know no one’s perfect, but reality is we trust that they’re doing their best and they give us some high quality oils.

If we have a minute, we could talk a little about organic or inorganic. Do we have a minute? Let’s have it work too.

Trevor: Absolutely, that was one of my questions I want to ask you about.

Dr. Eric: Is this tough? It’s really tough because organic is good but it’s no guarantee. In 2014, in Rome, there was a conference. Aroma therapists, researcher scientists from all over the world gathered together and one of the main points of this conference was to talk about contamination.

There is a researcher study that, I don’t have the data available, but I’ll just paraphrase, forgive me if I misquote but you’ll get the bottom line. They tested several different oils, organic oils for pesticide contaminants and virtually every oil they tested had pesticides in it.

Trevor: Wow.

Dr. Eric: Some had more, the citrus oils had more than non-citrus oils. The reason is, is because, just because a farm is organic doesn’t mean that the farm next to it is organic. Unfortunately, Monsanto is everywhere. There’s cross contamination, there’s drift wind, there’s runoff of water, there’s pollination, there’s bees, there’s foxes and everything else you think about that makes things move in the air and pollinate. The reality is it’s virtually impossible to find a pure, virtually anything anymore but a pure oil.

Interestingly now, because oils are lipids, they’re fats, the fats soluble pesticides really attract to the plant and you can’t extract that out regardless of how good your quality of your desolation procedure is. Citrus are even more affected because of the rind. There’s a chemical of, a process, really essentially like emulsification that the pesticides just get trapped, then there’s no way of getting out.

But at the end of the day, organic is best, or I should say better-er but it’s not a guarantee. I think this is important, to put in perspective. To me, the best thing is something that’s indigenously grown, and I do know this for certain that chemical consistency of a plant that’s naturally grown in this native environment, far out surpasses any plant that’s not native. That’s important because a lot of companies sell oils that, like say they have a great organic farm in Missouri. I’d rather get the legit plant from let’s say lavender in France, vetiver from Haiti, eucalyptus from Australia. I’d rather get that than some farm in America because at least the chemical compounds are going to be more powerful.

But at the end of the day, it just puts things in the perspective, there is no such thing as an only pure, no, none, I mean everything has some sort of contamination to it. I think it’s important to remember, cause just don’t drink the kool aid out there because you get a lot of different, cause, again Trevor, this is a billion dollar industry. Millions of people are using essential oils out of nowhere. You hear a lot of different stuff on the internet.

Trevor: Yeah, absolutely, okay great points. I love all of this. Let’s talk a bit more about essential oils safety because I know some people are afraid to use essential oils because of safety concerns. I think if we just talk about how to use them safely, you mentioned a few things like diluting oils. I think that there are some that you have to dilute even more, right? Like tea tree oil is so strong, I usually recommend a 5% dilution on those. Is that what you recommend the others? Let’s talk about some of these safety issues

Dr. Eric: Yeah there’s, it’s really just a matter of using common sense to a lot in extent. A friend of mine, I don’t know what he was thinking but bless his heart. He actually put a drop of tea tree in his eye after he developed pink eye. He read online that tea tree is antibacterial. He had a bacterial infection in his eye, put a drop of tea tree. Imagine what happened to him.

If by the way that happens to you, you shouldn’t go blind, just get some coconut oil, or olive oil to dilute it. That’s the kind of stuff that we see out there. We’re seeing injury reports, we’re seeing parents, well intentioned parents who are putting five, six, seven drops of undiluted oils over their baby’s skin, and their skin is erupting and rashes or burns and things like that.

Common sense be your guide. The reason I mean common sense is as much as we say essential oils are plant based medicine, they’re not really natural in the sense where you’re not going to go hiking and find a pool of citrus oils anywhere. You know what I mean?

Trevor: Yeah.

Dr. Eric: They need to be one bottle of lemon, like this bottle. There’s like 42 rinds of a lemon in here. How natural is that? Meaning it’s concentrated, it’s like your concentrated juice. We got to put things in the perspective what the ancients used. They didn’t have this. They didn’t have this, folks. When we see stories in the bible, it’s say I hear this all the time, “Oh Jesus was given gold, frankincense, and myrrh,” he wasn’t given this everybody, he was given frankincense resin, right?

And when God told Moses to curate the anointing oil, he said put cinnamon and cassia in a bath of olive oil. Well, that was an extract and that was so highly diluted.

A minimal amount of essential oil in this beautiful ointment, it’s still offer the healing benefits. And that’s the key. Less is more, and we always need to dilute. Because this right here is, it’s very hollow and it could be caustic too. And so, always dilute. Don’t be afraid of anything because there’s no fear if done properly, we could use a diffuser. I love the steam distillation diffuser, four, five drops. A little bit like a Dixie cup of a water, or is it like a hundred mils of water. That’s great, smell throughout.

Internal, I don’t recommend, and sometimes I do, sometimes I’ll put just a straight drop of peppermint in my mouth. But I know what to do, what not to do. I know, cause I over did it, I actually developed a little bit of reflex because I put too much in. I’ve realized this is not good. Unfortunately, there is no research to state what a good dose is and what isn’t. But you know Trevor, I love some Perrier, some sparkling water, couple drops of stevia, and one drop of lemon. That’s my 7UP. I haven’t had soda in 15 years. That’s my version of soda pop. I love that, but that’s safe. That’s diluted and that’s fine. But when you start putting two, three drops in your mouth, I start to caution folks because your esophagus is very sensitive and people get esophageal irritation that could actually cause reflux, cause GI issues just because they’re doing too much of anything.

If you’re taking them internally, again, one drop of like lemon, orange should be fine if you want to put it in some water to flavor your water. If you wanna use it for more therapeutic, if you’re using a capsule, limit your oils to maybe two, three, possibly four drops in the capsule, that’s it.

Don’t listen to these crazy morphine bomb recipes on Pinterest. I’m talking, people recommend twenty drops or something in a capsule. That’s a lot of oil. That can actually put a burden on your kidneys. People don’t recognize that too. What happens, these thing still have to be metabolized, right.

And so we don’t want to overdo it. But again, if you want four drops of essential oil, eat a whole lemon. I want to put that perspective, because I love my vita-mixer and I love making my green smoothies, I’ll put literally a whole lemon with the rind. I love it. And I get from a whole lemon, I get roughly about four drops of essential oil. That lets me know too that essential oils are safe especially if they’re diluted and if they’re done in propriety.

Also to put things into perspective last of all, anything you taste has an essential oil in it. It’s either fake or real. Your peppermint patty, your lemon bars, whatever it is you’re buying at the store, it’s flavored. Most natural flavorings according to the FTA are oil based if they’re natural flavorings. If they’re synthetic, God knows what it is, really. It’s a synthetic version of what the essential oil is.

Just some basic high level overviews, but yeah you could go into 1% dilution, 2%. Aroma therapists typically recommend 2%. 2% of an ounce which would be roughly twelve drops, that’s typically like a carrier. If coconut or jojoba, or almond, you would put let’s say ten to twelve drops of essential oil and that would be roughly like a 2% safe mixture. That seems to be the aromatherapy standard, 1% for babies. If you want to use more of a therapeutic grade like Trevor you mentioned, go up to five and then you can go from there but it’s very interesting.

I have all the conversions on my website, cause I know it can get confusing but you have roughly like 600 drops in an ounce, so 1% of that would be six drops, 2% will be twelve drops. You recommended 5%, that’d be thirty drops in an ounce. That’s kinda how we do things in the aromatherapy world.

Trevor: Yeah. Absolutely. What the research talks about treating acne for example with tea tree oil. They recommend that if the test is suddenly done in 5%. That’s what they usually recommend for like you said therapeutic.

Okay, great. You mentioned bergamot and I love bergamot, it’s in my skin care line. It’s been part of our essential oil blend and I love, love bergamot. What I learned about it though is that you have to be careful with sun sensitivity. Ours is modified so that people can go in the sun, there’s not the issues with sun sensitivity. I just wanted to point that out, see if you want to just say anything about that was citrus oils and the concerns about photosensitivity.

Dr. Eric: Yeah, that’s good. I wonder if I could pull it up really quick. Man, oh man. I’ve done so much of the research. I haven’t put everything to memory yet. In a nutshell, not every citrus oil sensitizes the skin.

So essentially, what that means folks is if you’re to create a 2% diluted lotion with coconut oils, some shea butter and bergamot. You apply that on your skin, this isn’t therapeutic, this is for lotion to smell good. If you go out to the sun for literally up to 12 hours, that bergamot oil can cause your skin to essentially get sun burned easier. It could cause a sensitization. Phototoxicity is what the technical term is.

The reality is that not all of them do that and a lot of the CO2 extracts don’t do that. Citrus, I got a list. I’m sorry, I’ll give it to you later because it’s really important to recognize not all of them are like that. We use oils on a regular basis and typically, I find orange and lemon I do very well with, plus I have relatively nice pigmentation and so I don’t get burnt much anyway. But for people that have fair skin, it essentially is like going to a sun tanning salon for some people.

I don’t want to over scare people and say, “Oh you can never use citrus oils in the sun.” I do it every day. But there are certain ones that are again a little more. But you know what’s funny, Trevor, I actually did that. I accidentally put some bergamot on my skin, it actually just got like a little like, it was like a round white spot out of nowhere. It didn’t hurt but I realized, oooh that is what that was. It caused a phototoxic effect, temporarily damaged some part of my skin but it wasn’t like a burn, you know what I mean, it wasn’t a I have to go, it wasn’t a third degree burn or anything crazy.

Trevor: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Just being smart about everything and it sounds like there are some that you can still use and go out in the sun. I also often tell them that they’re doing do it yourself of skin care with citrus to do it in the evening when you’re not going out in the sun and then just give yourself 12 hours, or longer. Or if you know you’re getting ready to go and spend a day at the beach or something, maybe not use the citrus right around that time just to be smart about it.

Eric, I’ll share with everybody when you have it the specific oils that you want to be careful with and which ones are okay. Do you have that on your website? Can we just give a link to people or how do you want to share that?

Dr. Eric: Yeah, I actually have a citrus article. I have a database with just tons of different articles on it on drericz.com, if you go to the essential oil database, it will be in the citrus article and yep it’s right there. Citrus oils, it’s called for weight loss, stress relief and much more. There’s a lot that people could do with grapefruit and applying grape fruit wraps around their body. My wife actually used that when she was competing for the Mrs. Georgia pageant last year. Like, whipped up cellulite on the back of her thighs. It was unbelievable, Trevor. There’s a lot you can do with essential oils, it’s fun.

Trevor: Essential oils are like you said, they’re so potent and we need to be careful with them. But when we use them properly, they are such a great alternative to first line of going straight for the antibiotic or straight. Of course we, drugs are fine when we need them, pharmaceutical drugs are great when we need them. But using these kinds of things natural therapies first is always great. And then having that available in skin care products and personal care products, it’s fantastic for so many reasons because it smells good and it’s anti-microbial and many are anti-inflammatory and so many great properties in that.

I love that we’re talking about this today. I know people probably wanna learn more. You’ve got an upcoming summit on essential oils. This is your third one, right? Tell everybody about your summit.

Dr. Eric: Well, I’m just most excited that you’re featured in that summit. Finally, I was able to track you down and get you featured with thirty nine other essential oil experts. I’m super proud of this event because it’s the largest and only non-branded event where you’re just not going to be soil an oil.

One of the reasons why I did what I did was because as a natural health enthusiast, I started looking into essential oils a few years ago. I realized it was virtually impossible to find unbiased information out there and it’s not a bad thing. I get that but as a public health researcher, there’s a point when you know what, I’d rather get my information from someone who isn’t trying to sell something. It’s not again, not like that’s a bad thing but I don’t sell essential oils at all. I don’t even recommend a brand on purpose because I just provide education.

This event is the same thing. We have bloggers, distributors, chemists, doctors, we have all sorts of folks, aroma therapists talking in a non-branded way. We cover everything. Dr. Trevor you did a great job talking about skin care, your favorite essential oils and a lot of our favorite friends that we spend time with as well. All kinds of different health conditions we discussed, how to use them at home.

There’s a really heavy day that I want to  encourage people to take advantage of heavy meaning. We talk about grief, we talk about suicide, we talk about how aromatherapy can help in all those ways. There’s a lot, a lot that we’re doing. I’m most that a significant portion of the proceeds is going to go to an organization called Humanities which is an aroma therapy group that works with sex trafficking victims and I didn’t realize this, but they’re based out of Utah.

I thought Atlanta was the sex trafficking capital of the world. But Utah, I didn’t realize the amount of women that are sold then slavery every night. Young girls and women. These people, these precious souls, you got to listen to the interview. Just listen to Carrie Shane talk about what she’s doing, how she’s ministering and helping these precious people. They didn’t even have basic toiletries, Trevor. Their lives are being threatened, their families, their pets are being threatened. They go to these little secrets aromatherapy safe houses. They get treatments and they get tampons. They get whatever it is that they need, even like a lavender massage for fifteen minutes. You can just give someone just a breath of fresh air and hope and help them. And also try help them to keep them as healthy as possible as they break through from this slavery.

That’s a huge component of what we’re doing with the Essential Oils Revolution. This is more than education and that’s it. Again, thank you for being part of it, Trevor. Your talk was awesome and all kinds of other folks are gonna just enjoy it as well, I know.

Trevor: Great. We’ll have all information and link to the summit, and all information about that up on my website. I’m so excited for people to attend your summit. I think it’s going to be fantastic. I can’t wait to watch the interviews too because I only know one of them so far. That’s great.

Okay, thanks so much Eric for being on today and for all the information you’ve shared. I really appreciate it.

Dr. Eric: Oh, you’re welcome. Thanks for having me and I love all that you’re doing Trevor. Well done.

Trevor: Thanks.

Thank you and I’ll see you next time.