Essential Oils - Help or Hype?

This article on essential oils as new antibiotics is so chock-full of good health-related tidbits that I've decided to just do several bite-sized blog posts about it over the course of time.

For this first post, I'm focusing on the topic of essential oils, and how they relate to health in general. If you read the entire article now, you'll see why I'm thinking that the material it covers will be worthy of more than one blog post from me!I stumbled upon essential oils a while ago.

However, at the time, I only knew of a handful of uses for them, and only knew about a couple types of oils. I remember purchasing lavender essential oil about 10 years ago because an acquaintance told me that it was a good way to stop our bug bites from itching, in lieu of drug store creams or sprays. I wasn't even sure back then why I should avoid the drug store products, but I figured, well, why not? I walked into the (only) health food store in my town, asked for help, and walked out with a bottle.

I remember treating it like liquid gold, because compared to the bottle of Benadryl spray that had previously graced our medicine cabinet, it was so expensive! I kept it in a special place in our bathroom, and family members had to ask permission to use it the first time, so I could tutor them on how to use a *tiny* amount. Ha.

Flash forward to now. We currently have zero prescription drugs in our possession, and our various cold medications are all gone, as are the digestion-related pill cures we used to have hanging around. And while my husband keeps a bottle of ibuprofen around just for show, I could count on one hand the times he's actually cracked it open in the past 5 years that he's had it.

I've done extensive research on the published benefits of essential oils, as well as the contrasting articles written by many about how essential oils are not as wonderful as many claim that they are.

The bottom line for us? We've used them for actual problems and have seen that they work wonderfully most of the time. As for the "miracle cure" term that is often used, I don't think there is anything in this world that works the same way for every single person, so I choose not to use this phrase.

However, I can honestly say that essential oils have helped my family toss out medicines that have other horrendous inactive ingredients and matching side effects. So from our perspective, they are a great alternative to conventional drugs.

More to come!