Earlier this week I made a comment in a gardening post, and I wanted to expand on that a little more. The comment made was in regards to the purity of our gardening bounty and how important it is to know both your source and how your food (ie: the plants or animals) is cared for from seed (or birth) to the farm table.
As you might have guessed by now, I am an advocate of following this principle in all aspects of life.
Knowing your source……whether that be your:
- Information source (Ah! News…. are you a mainstream news follower, or do you seek deeper truth than that which is spoonfed?)
- The people in your life who either affirm you (hopefully) or emotionally cripple you (toxic relationships)
- Food (we literally ARE what we eat)
- Makeup and personal care products (bad news! Have you looked at your ingredient label?.. and are you making choices based on that ingredient label?)
- Household chemicals/cleaning products ( I can’t even find current stats on this, but in previous years, household chemicals have been accounted for over 10% of toxic exposures reported to US Poison Control centers… and that’s just Emergency Room visits… we aren’t even counting the health cost of personal toxin load buildup over time)
All of these have great impact on YOU… emotionally, physically, mentally, and on your long term health and wellness plan….. what you allow yourself to be exposed to…. is it sustainable to good emotional and physical health?
Can you expose yourself regularly to toxic relationships (any relationship qualifies here) without health detriment?
Can you use toxic chemicals daily… both on your person (soaps, shampoo, makeup, skin care etc) AND in your home and expect to remain healthy as your body loads slowly with these chemicals?
Can you continue to eat prepackaged food with unpronounceable chemicals as part of the ingredient list and expect your body and immune system not to rebel?
The answer is NO to all of these. 100% NO. (hundreds of studies will back this)
And yet….. And yet….. And yet… we tell ourselves little white lies, because the truth would mean that we acknowledge the need for change.
- “That illness will happen to our neighbor, but not us.”
- “That person who tries to tear me down daily doesn’t affect my self esteem, self worth, or even my physical or emotional health.”
- “I’ve eaten this way for years, and it hasn’t bothered me yet, so I’m sure I’m not affected the way other people might be.”
- “If I don’t read the label, I won’t have to KNOW…. and if I don’t KNOW, then it won’t be bad.”
- “A little exposure to those chemicals every day isn’t bad, right? I mean, I don’t work in a chemical factory or anything.”
Daily exposure to toxins of any kind IS having long term effects on all of us…. Why do I personally know 3 people under the age of 40 who are currently battling colon cancer? Why are nearly 1 in 5 Americans on mental health drugs compared to 30 years ago (when it was 1 in 184)?
Having an insider’s view of the prescription end of our healthcare system for over 25years has made me extraordinarily aware of this, as has my interest in the health ramifications (both physical and emotional) of toxic relationships versus healthy ones. It is this insider’s view that really began convicting me of making personal SUSTAINABLE changes in MY life and in my family’s life many years ago. Don’t forget, there was a time when I was a statistic just like you yourself might be now…. I’ve written about it on my blog in an earlier couple of posts.
It was the pharmacist in me that followed an initial curiosity with my own personal research before committing to the oil and supplement company you’ve seen me reference. In my humble opinion, buying from companies that cannot give a step by step accounting of the ‘life’ of each and every bottle oil from seed to bottling…… well, that would be equivalent to buying a prescription drug from someone off of the internet (THAT is illegal… but you get my drift)……. You never know what you’ll get. The other thing I like about Young Living is that they have a batch/distilling # on each bottle, so that not only does the company commit to purity, it qualifies that by giving each bottle a number that can be tracked BACKWARDS. This is not a common practice in the essential oil industry.
I leave you now with these thoughts:
- You cannot unlearn something that you now know
- Now that you know….are you going to do something about removing toxins in your life and the life of your family?
- Lauren Crews Dow, another YL oil aficionado commented on her public FB page:
“There are, as of yet, no standards for therapeutic-grade essential oils set by any government agency in North America. Hence, labeling fraud is rampant. Therefore, to be sure you are getting TRUE therapeutic-grade essential oils, you need to know your grower, your distiller, your packager, and your distributor because anywhere along this chain of delivery, oils can be compromised.
There is nothing dishonest about producing food or perfume grade oils. The problem comes when such oils are bottled, labeled, and presented as if they were therapeutic when they are NOT!
A common practice in the Essential Oil community, is to take a decent grade of Essential Oil, dilute it by 90%-95% with an odorless, colorless solvent (usually an inexpensive petrochemical) so that what was a pound of good oil then becomes 10 or 20 pounds of diluted oil to be sold as if it were the original substance, thus multiplying the profit. Understand, that such diluted oils often carry labels stating they are “Genuine” or “100% Pure”, which is allowed by the U.S. FDA. However, when you see a bottle of Frankincense for $10-$20 for a full ounce, you can be sure it has been diluted because you can’t gather the resins from the Arabian and Somalian deserts, transport them to France or England to be distilled, and then import them to North America (or any other country) for that price and maintain quality and purity.
Mysteriously, for every pound of Frankincense distilled in the world, more than a dozen pounds are eventually sold (pretty scary). Pure, unadulterated Frankincense, should cost around $140 per ounce. In Biblical times, a pound of Frankincense oil was more precious than a pound of gold. In fact, in ancient times, it was called “liquid gold”. Today, a pound of gold is worth around $4,800 (referenced in 2010), while on the retail market a pound of pure Frankincense is worth about $2,400.
If you have smelled TRUE Frankincense, then you will know the difference immediately when given a sample of the diluted versions that are very common on the market.
Other signs on labels are when only the common name “Frankincense” is used, and the Latin name, “Boswellia carteri” is missing, that is another clear warning that it is not genuine and certainly not therapeutic.
(Info from The Chemistry of Essential Oils by David Stewart Ph.D., D.N.M.)
Moral of this, you GET what you pay for in essential oils. Period. I know essential oils are “popular” now, but be an informed consumer! Don’t be fooled!”
If you’d like some help getting started detoxing your life, I’d love to help you find your True North. Starting with kicking chemicals out of your home one by one (baby step style) is a great place to start! (Have you heard of The Thieves Product Line?)
In Health and Sustainable Preparedness,
Liz
