Seasonal Threats and Essential Oils

Following is a transcript of the video.

My name is Mary Beckett and I'm with Blue Ice Essentials and this is a recorded video because our internet sharing for Facebook is not working today. And so we have decided instead of doing a live video that we're going to do this as a regular video. 

So if you're watching this in the meeting, can you just mute yourself so that we don't get any feedback for the moment? And then at the end, I'll stop and we can ask questions and stuff. 

So, seasonal threats and essential oils is what I wanted to talk about today. 

So, what are we talking about when we're talking about seasonal threats? 

The seasonal threats are actually you know, things that we run into, at this time of year. There's coughing and sniffling, sniffling and runny eyes and a lot of people walking around looking pretty sad and complaining about the “spring cold” that's going around. 

And you know, this time of year of course, with the COVID-19 going on, then you always worry that you're sick with something else. 

And a lot of times people don't connect these symptoms with allergies... not even doctors a lot of times. 

So symptoms like this can be caused by things like dust, pollen, snow mold, dry grass and leaf material that's coming out from under the snow, fluff from trees and plants that are starting up for the season. Things like poplar fluff, Cottonwood, that sort of thing.

So for years and years and years, I had a recurring fall cold that seemed to catch me just as the school season started and lasted months, sometimes all the way until spring and I got pneumonia a bunch of different times. In fact, my file at the local clinic was about two inches thick, and mostly with me going in to visit because I had another really long bad cold and I hadn't had a voice for six weeks or whatever. 

So eventually a friend pointed out to me that I was sick the first day of school every year. 

Now that triggered one of those movie montage moments because I started out going, “No I…” and then I realized, wait. And I had all these visions going through my head of, you know, walking into the school with one little kid on each side, and feeling like a zombie with a runny nose and stuffed up and hard to breathe. And, you know, the usual. 

So I looked around outside and I saw it - there was fluff everywhere. 

And that's what was causing my problems because fireweed in the Arctic blooms into fluff in the fall. And I am so allergic to all the fluff in the spring. And this was just another kind of fluff triggering my allergies. And so I had known about that, but I didn't have a clue that that was the cause of my problem. 

So now I knew I had a specific cause for all these colds that I've been getting. And I was able to do something about it. 

But the problem with that is, is that a lot of those things don't really work. 

I've tried pretty much all of them and some are definitely better. than others, but none of them made it so that I had no symptoms, they just reduced the level of the symptoms and made things more livable for me. 

But if I went anywhere where the pollen counts were high or dust was really bad, you know, spring cleaning in closets, that sort of thing. I would have to double up or even triple up my dosage. 

And even then, when I was in Texas, my grandkids never heard what my voice sounded like when I was visiting them because I would get there, and I would lose my voice within an hour of landing. And it didn't matter how many pills I took, it wasn't going to come back until after I got home. 

So of course, you know what's causing the problem for you. But the people around you, they don't necessarily get it. And they think that you're contagious, and it's so frustrating because there's just not a lot you can do... or at least that's what I thought until I got to be about 50. And I discovered that you know, there is something. 

So I travel a lot and for me travel always meant more allergies and every trip I had to plan around the symptoms. I never really noticed that until my kids notice that they don't have to do that anymore. And they think it's such a good thing. 

So eventually I would end up sick on pretty much every trip I went on and I would hunt around for meds to help deal with it. 

And then one year I was down in Texas and I got really sick. Well actually, I had been in New York and then in Texas and and I just picked up something I thought in New York that was contagious I thought, but really what it was was fall allergies. By the time I was done, I was not sleeping laying flat anymore at all and I just was not getting any sleep. I was so sick and you know, it was really in my lungs, and that's when I discovered essential oils. 

So what can you do for symptoms? 

Well, the first thing that I ever tried was Breathe. Breathe Respiratory blend is a mixture of eight different essential oils. There's Laurel, Eucalyptus, Peppermint, Melaleuca or Tea Tree, Lemon, Cardamom, Ravintsara, Ravensara. 

So those eight things work together to create this wonderful blend that when you put it into your diffuser, you breathe it in and you can breathe deeply already, even if you don't have a cold or whatever, it still feels good coming into your lungs because it opens up all those little alveoli in your lungs and makes it so that you can really get good oxygen. I love it. 

It comes in a bunch of different forms. So if you're sitting next to your diffuser, you've got the essential oil blend that you can put in. 

But there's also the Breathe Touch roller that you can put on your nose or chest. 

There's also a Breathe stick, which I really enjoy because the Breathe stick is sort of a rub and I use it when I work out because it helps me breathe better as I'm working out. 

And of course the Breathe Drops which I think are wonderful and I carry those with me especially when I travel because you know if you get sitting next to somebody with a perfume that makes your eyes run and your nose itch, you can have a couple of those Breathe Drops with you and it doesn't bother. 

So I use all of the forms of Breathe. And even with my allergies under control, the breathing is always better and more clear. And you know, that's always a good thing. 

So for immune support, I use On Guard which is a Protective Blend. It has Wild Orange, Clove Bud, Cinnamon Bark, Eucalyptus and Rosemary in it. And it again comes in a variety of formats. 

I grab this whenever I have a scratchy throat. I can add it to my water or put it in a diffuser. 

There's On Guard beadlets that are a third of a drop of the On Guard in a little gel beadlet so you can put it on your tongue and burst it in your mouth if you want or you can just swallow it if you feel like you have a tickle at the back of your throat and you just know you're going to get sick if you're not careful.

There's also "the best cough drops ever" as a friend of mine told me. On Guard drops are awesome. 

And of course the Hand Sanitizing Mist, which is awesome - especially now when everybody's wanting to use spray sanitizers all the time. I really like this one, it is really effective. 

When I'm traveling one of my favourite things, if I'm starting to get a sore throat is I take a couple of drops of On Guard and the photo shows the purse size one that I carry with me. This is a picture of me traveling. You can tell because my nails are done. And you just put a couple of drops of On Guard into some of the tea that they offered me on the airplane, I think that was green tea maybe and maybe a little bit of something to sweeten it and you've got a wonderful drink and it helps soothe your throat. 

So prevention is key. And that makes Spring, Fall and traveling to weird places where they have new things that you're allergic to, super easy. 

So another one that I discovered later, which has now completely allowed me to clean out my medicine cabinet, I don't really need anything else anymore, is peppermint, lemon and lavender. It's a blend that has been used by lots of people over a long period of time. It is effective in a bunch of different ways, so it doesn't matter how you prefer to use it. It will help you out. 

Here's a picture of my travel diffuser in my hotel room, and I've got my lemon, lavender and peppermint and I'm ready to go. 

So for me, I don't react to things automatically anymore because I'm using this all the time a little bit if I know that I'm going places where I can get a reaction.  I find this blend is more effective than the over the counter stuff that I was taking before. 

When I travel with this blend, I can guarantee that I won't get sick from my seasonal and environmental allergies. It just doesn't bother me. 

I spent a whole summer in Texas during the high pollen season and had zero symptoms, not not just less symptoms, but no symptoms. It was awesome. 

It's also less expensive. Even the generic versions of the drugs are serious money. 

I went into a drugstore in Saskatoon a while back and took this picture. At that point 25 Reactin were on sale. The sale price was $17.99 for the package which worked to just under 72 cents each. The regular price was $27.99 or a little over a dollar 10 each And of course in Inuvik, where I live, the regular price is closer to $38. So you know, you can just do the math. 

With lemon, lavender and peppermint, on the doTERRA website. If you have a wholesale account, you can buy the three together as the Beginner's Trio  for $69.25 - that's the Canadian price for 250 drops, more or less, per bottle. So that means you get about 125 doses of two drops each, which is what I use. And that works out to 55.4 cents per dose - so cheaper. 

The Tri-Ease, which is Lemon, Lavender and Peppermint in a soft gel, and they are 60 per bottle. This is the US price - there was a sale on when I made the slide the first time and it was being offered at a small discount, but the regular price is 66.45 cents per dose. And again, that is a little bit more expensive than just using the straight oils but it's slightly more convenient, so you kind of expect it to be a little bit more money. 

It's super simple to use this trio. You can do it in a variety of ways. 

You can diffuse the oils together, put a couple of drops of each of them into your diffuser and run it in the room you're going to be in. It smells nice, and everybody in the room gets the benefit at the same time. 

You can create a rollerball with the mixture in fractionated coconut oil and apply it to your chest, your  throat, the area around your sinuses, that sort of thing. And it works really well. 

The dilution that I would recommend is about five drops of each in a five ml roller. And again, the five ml roller is the small one, the 10 ml roller is the slightly bigger one. So you know it depends on what you want to make. I think if I was making this in a roller, I would tend to use the 10 ml one because, let's be clear, it's something I use every day. 

You can also ingest them and this is my preferred method because I like the feeling of my sinuses opening up when I take it. So I just put a couple of drops of each into a glass of water. That's my little travel shot glass that I carry with me. And I just put it in there. I think that this picture was taken on an airplane. Again, me traveling. 

And then Tri- Ease of course, you can just buy the pre-mixed blend and it's available from both the US and the Canada warehouse. 

Another thing that you can do is you can make an inhaler. So if you go on to our membership club, all the instructions are there of how to make an inhaler, and a list of the supplies where I purchased them and stuff. I'm going to post this video on my blog as well, so you can find a video of me making an inhaler if you go to my Instagram TV channel. I think it's probably also way back in the archive on my Facebook page, but I will maybe do one again in the next little while. 

And that's where we are. So does anybody have any questions for me? I'm just going to stop this share. So does anybody have any questions about the essential oils or how you use them in the springtime? 

(Holly) - Hi, I have a question. I was wondering - should there be some of those oils that I didn't like the smell of Is there anything else that I can use?  

(Mary) Okay, so I have been caught at times where I didn't have something you know, sometimes when you're traveling, your supply doesn't keep up. The last time I was in Vancouver, I got hit with cottonwood season and I didn't realize that I was going to, and so instead of taking my oils once a day or twice a day, I was taking them three or four times a day. And so suddenly I started running through my supply rather quickly. So you can substitute other similar oils. 

Lemon has a lot of limonene in it, so does Lime so I just had run out of lemon, I started using Lime and it totally worked. It's a little different flavour, a little different scent, but it has that basic component in it that works. So you can totally work. 

Some people don't like peppermint because it's too strong for them and Spearmint is a little bit less in your face. It's just a milder mint, but it still has the same menthol content. Well, it has a lower menthol content, but it's still got a menthol content. So that is something that you can certainly substitute. 

For lavender. The key component in there is linalool. So there are quite a few different things with linalool in them. One of them is another essential oil that is really high in linalool. So here's an essential oil that you can use instead of lavender. If you don't like lavender, Petitgrain is awesome. And Petitgrain has a large linalool content in it. And it comes from oranges.  You know about Wild Orange and Neroli and Clementine and so on. Petitgrain is another one that is from the oranges and is just at a different part. And so it's completely not a floral It's made from the leaves of an orange tree. So it's kind of got that leafy grassy kind of flavour to it. You can totally use this one instead when you're when you're making a diffuser mix. 

If I was going to use it internally, I would only put it in a gel cap because I don't think I'd like the flavour of this but then I don't like the flavour of lavender and I do that all the time. So I guess it doesn't matter.

But there are other essential oils that you can totally use. 

Another one that a lot of people use for a decongestant, which you might think is kind of funny is ZenGest. ZenGest is the essential oil that you use for a tummy upset. But it also works really well, take my word for it, I have done it, ZenGest comes in roller as well as in the oil that you can diffuse. And if you put that on, just on the bridge of your nose like right there, it will clear your sinuses. 

It's because the essential oils that we use have more than one way of working in our body. And so sometimes they have side benefits as opposed to side effects. And one of the side benefits is you can use the same oil for a variety of things. 

Likewise, you know, lavender is also great for skin irritation. So if you get a sunburn and you have it with you because you're using it for your allergies, you can also use it for your sunburn. So there's a lot of different ways that you can use Essential oils. 

Did that answer your question? 

(Holly) Yes, it did. Thanks very much. 

(Mary) All right. Well, if there aren't any other questions, then we'll put this off. And we'll share it on the Facebook page and on my blog, and I hope that you guys enjoy your day.