[Transcript] – The Best Book That Exists For Learning About The Healing Power of Essential Oils And How To Use Them: Soothe Inflammation, Boost Mood, Prevent Autoimmunity & Much More.

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Transcripts

Podcast from:  https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/podcast/the-best-essential-oils-book/

[00:00] Onnit Weighted Vests/Kion Flex

[04:46] About Dr. Eric Zielinski

[07:24] Applying Essential Oils On Your Body

[16:13] How Dr. Eric Got Interested In Essential Oils

[22:48] Importance of Essential Oil Species

[28:37] Joovv/ Miracle Noodles

[32:05] Danger of Buying Essential Oils

[37:22] Using Essential Oils

[46:06] On Aroma Therapies

[56:42] Cravings Using Essential Oils

[1:00:17] Antibiotics In Essential Oils

[1:04:31] Essential Oils Used In the Bible

[1:11:06] End of the Podcast

Ben:  Welcome to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.  This one's kind of cool because last week I released a podcast episode where we really geeked out on essential oils and then I got my hands on a copy of one of the better essential oils books, I would say the best essential oils book.  It's written by this guy who has no affiliation with any of these essential oil companies.  So it's totally unbiased, but chock full of a ton of recipes.  You know I'm right now diffusing seer wood essential oil for the wakefulness and the mood enhancing properties that produces, and I learned that and I am also using a nebulizing essential oils diffuser which I also learned about in the show.  It's on my desk, it's beautiful.  I pushed a little button and it lights up, makes my whole room look like a massage parlor for whatever that's worth.

Anyways though before we jump into this show about this book on essential oils with the author of the book, I want to tell you about Onnit, and Onnit sells these things called hyper vests.  I own one, and of all the weighted vests you can wear, this thing is like the Cadillac of weighted vests.  It flexes and moves with you, it fits really tight and form fitting.  So you can do box jumps, you can run on the treadmill, but it's not bouncing around and hitting you on the jaw like a lot of these weighted vests do.  It's got this breathable wicking fabric, it's called a hyperwear.  You can even buy a little weights to along with it, so you can make it weight as much as you want to.  Ten pounds for power workouts or sixty pounds for strength workouts, you name it.

Now Onnit has a lot more than that, of course.  They have functional foods like emulsified MCT oil, fantastic if you don't have your blender handy.  They've got a huge range of supplements including a nootropic supplement called Alpha Brain that works really well.  They have battle ropes too, and they have apparel, really cool shirts.  They even have handed body sage, defense soap, zen-spice body wash, but grab yourself a weighted vest whenever you're there, and you get a discount.  How?  Just go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/onnit.  That's bengreenfieldfitness.com/O-N-N-I-T.  That automatically drops 10% off of anything that you may want to get your hands on over there.

This podcast is also brought to you by what, in my opinion, is one of the best things you can put into your body if you're injured or you're sore.  It's called Flex, and it's sixteen different ingredients including type two chicken collagen glucosamine and chondroitin, a Flex-pro blend with cherry juice, ginger, turmeric, white willow bark, hyaluronic acid, boswellia, a goat milk mineral whey concentrate with a whole bunch of minerals and electrolytes that assist with your joint hydration, and then also an enzyme blend.  You may have heard of proteolytic enzymes.  They work really well in recovering from surgery.  I've been taking 12 of these capsules a day as I recover from the stem cell surgery I got last week, and anytime I've had a really hard workout or I'm sore or I'm injured, I pop this stuff like candy, and it works like gangbusters. It's called Kion Flex, it's like a shotgun, pretty much everything that's ever been studied for joint health.  We just shoved it all in there, and it works.  It really works, especially if you don't want to find all this stuff and go to the four corners of the planet to get your cherry juice and your boswellia.

Anyways, Kion Flex.  You get it at getkion.com.  That'll automatically get you 10% off.  Get Kion, KION, getkion.com, that's where all of my favorite formulations and supplements that I design exist, so check it out.  Getkion.com, and the one I was just telling you about is called Flex.

In this episode of The Ben Greenfield Fitness Show:

“You don't really know what flavor is until you taste food with essential oils.  My wife makes this seven-layer vegan bean dip thing, and once she started adding that one drop of lime and one drop of cilantro just makes it just pop, you know?  That flavor.”  “So you get down to it, like these things, it's just a mass craziness because no one's monitoring it, Ben.  The FDA doesn't care, it's the wild, Wild West, and anyone can sell anything”  “Folks, if I leave you with one thing, and this is something everyone one of you can do…”

Ben:  Hey folks, it’s Ben Greenfield here, and it’s a few months ago at a health conference that I was smearing, I think it was lavender essential oil on my skin.  Somebody gave me a bottle of lavender and wanted me to relax, apparently.  So I think I was smearing maybe on my temples, and this dude walks up and he's like dude, don't put that straight on your skin.  I think he said it could be caustic or something like that, and I shouldn't apply undiluted essential oil to my skin, and I started talking to this guy, and it turns out he's kind of like an essential oils master.  He's not like a multilevel marketer, some guy who's got like his own funky named brand of essential oils.  He's just like a guy who just knows back and forth, essential oils.  His name is Dr. Eric Zielinski, and not only is he pretty much a walking encyclopedia, soup-to-nuts guide on everything essential oils.  He's got all these recipes and formulations and tinctures and topicals that he knows, and he does these online summits where he's get like the most knowledgeable people in the world when it comes to essential oils and bring them all together and talk essential oils.  And considering the fact that I'm personally to the point now where I have a diffuser for essential oils, and every room in my house, and I'm diffusing right now thieves essential oil in my office because there's a sickness going on in my kid's school right now.  I want to keep myself super-duper, I guess I would say.  What would be the word, Dr. Eric?  Is this thieves helping me out at all?

Dr. Zielinski:  You know your immune system?  Well (a), thank you for having me be here, Ben, and how cool man, I converted you.  So yeah man, your immune system, you're trying to boost it up.  There's a lot of things you can do.

Ben:  You didn't convert me, I was already converted.  You got me even more educated in this stuff, but yeah.  This book that you sent me a few weeks ago, well I get a lot of essential oils books 'cause there are a lot of them.  They're like a dime a dozen, like everybody's got some essential oils encyclopedia, a recipe book or something, but yours is really good. I read it cover to cover, and I decided I wanted to get you on the show to ask you about some of the things you talk about in here, but before we dive into this book, can you fill me in real quick.  When I was putting essential oil on, I think it was on my temple, why is it that you shouldn't put essential oil directly on your skin.  Is that the case for all essential oils?

Dr. Zielinski:  Oh, yeah.  For 99% of all applications, you know, Ben?  Just kind of think of it.  You know I hate to say it, but we've gotten really lax when it comes to natural therapies like you know, you're not going to go to Walgreens or whatever and get an over-the-counter drug and just take a handful of bills 'cause you want to.  We've really taken that approach to probiotics, to supplements, thinking oh, it's natural.  Well just because something's natural doesn't mean that you're bomb with it in a way that you think it could or should.  So you're not going to find a pool of lavender in a lavender field, it just doesn't exist.  You need thirty pounds of lavender flowers to extract and itty bitty fifteen-milliliter body of lavender.  Its super concentrated, and our skin, I mean it's proven our skin wasn't designed by God to have oils directly on it.  They're caustic, they can burn you.  They can cause what is known as sensitization, a contact dermatitis.  So what do you do?  You dilute it with a carrier oil.  I man there's three reasons why, but the main reason is that everyone can relate to in one way or another.  But the bottom line is these oils are super concentrated, they literally can replace your medicine.  We have friends that are using oils to treat cancer because chemo and radiation has failed them, or they just wanted to take a natural approach and they can be like changing, really.

Ben:  Interesting, so it can burn your skin?

Dr. Zielinski:  Yeah, or also because the chemicals, just whatever, we could pick like a chemical, like D Limonene.  You know D Limonene is one of the most richest components of citrus oils.  Now citrus oils are extracted from the rind.  The grapefruit, the lime, the lemon, the bergamot, whatever, right?  So when you extract, again, forty lemons to get one bottle of lemon oil, you have a lot of D Limonene, like more than you're ever get in nature, so the body can have an allergic reaction to that because it's just too much and they're like what do we do?  The skin microbiome can literally not handle it.

Ben:  Really, so it's not the burn.  It's the actual bacteria on the surface of the skin?

Dr. Zielinski:  Yeah, all of it.  Yeah, it could be all of it.  It actually can annihilate the good bacteria on the skin where it shouldn't.  I mean we forget that the skin has a microbiome, and the chemicals that we put on affect that.  I go into that a lot actually, I think we need to talk more about the skin microbiome because the skin is the first layer of the immune system, you seem to forget that.

Ben:  Are there essential oils that you could put on your skin that would actually help the microbiome to flourish?

Dr. Zielinski:   That's a good question, I have not seen that in the literature.  However most essential oils when they are used the right way, the answer is yes.  I mean there is innate ability that is known that self-selectivity whether it's cancer, whether it's some sort of pathogen or whether it is the biome.  Oil, like all natural substances have the ability to feed the good and to kill the bad.  So again, I can't prove it, but I've seen it but it's pretty profound when you do it the right way.  But there's the thing though too, combat medicine, we have to remember lavender and tea tree and thyme, these oils were used in World War I, World War II, straight when bleeding and I just cut of my hand.  What do I do?  This is what soldiers used to use before the antibiotic came out, so you know when I was out hiking with my son and my four-year-old boy's listening to me, and he was running down the trail of the mountain.  He tumbled, he busted his head, and he went to my car and I had lavender and he had a split open head.  I thought it was going to get stitches.  I just put straight lavender on it.  That's combat medicine, other than that you always dilute.

Ben:  Okay, what do you dilute with?

Dr. Zielinski:  Carrier oil, like anything that is an oil, like a vegetable oil that you're familiar with.  Your coconut, your grapefruit.  I'm sorry, I'm looking at it.  I actually just looked at my screensaver, seen the grapefruit.  Grapeseed, olive oil, almond oil, sweet almond, jojoba, and the one's that you'll see at your local health food store.  Good oils that basically decrease the concentration of the essential oil, but here's the kicker.  Essential oils been volatile which means that they evaporate, that's what technically they are. They are the volatile organic compounds that are in plants, and so what that means is if you were to apply a straight essential oil on your skin right now, it literally is just going to evaporate, and you know that because you smell it and the air is the proof that there are particles being omitted once you put an oil on your skin.  Once it reaches your nose, you're like, “wow, how did it get here so quick.  Like you're literally wasting your money away if you're going to use them undiluted.  (A), it's cost effective, and (b) it helps the body absorb it.  Using a carrier oil opens up the pores.

It actually helps 'cause these oils literally will penetrate into your bloodstream, and there's been studies within that within twenty minutes, the highest concentration of the essential oil will be detected in your blood and then guess what?  After an hour and a half, it's gone because the body can completely metabolize these things.  So again, a couple of reasons, you're saving money, you're saving your skin, and also you're saving the planet because unfortunately, and I know you'll appreciate this, Ben, 'cause we've talked about this, just we were consumerizing things to death, and I can just tell when we met a couple of months ago, you care more just about your health.  You don't care about the planet, and we have to 'cause I want to make sure my kids can enjoy these precious, plant-based compounds, but we literally are consumerizing plants to death right now, and it's almost virtually impossible to find blue chamomile and helichrysum and other oils or other plants in their indigenous and native form.

Ben:  Oh wow, I never even thought about that when I'm like blasting all these essential oils all over my house and these diffusers, it's kind of a good point, huh?  I guess I'll think more intensively about leaving the diffuser running when I walk out of a room.

Dr. Zielinski:  That's the point man.

Ben:  When somebody hands me, let's say a body of lavender, and I don't want to apply it to my skin.  Let's say I want the relaxing benefits of lavender or I want to destress with it, and I can get my hands on let's say coconut oil.  Was coconut oil one of the carrier oils that you mentioned?

Dr. Zielinski:  Yeah, yeah, just a straight coconut oil.

Ben:  So how would I do that, would I just take a few tablespoons of coconut oil and put that in some kind of a jar and then just put X number of drops to the lavender into that?  How do I actually do things logistically?

Dr. Zielinski:  That's a good question, so traditional aroma therapy teaches us, and there are dermal limits.  There are max dermal limits, max internal limits, and we need to be careful about it.  So buy and large a two-percent dilution is pretty good for everyone.  I mean babies, children when you want to go under one percent.  So let me explain what that actually is, so let's go ounces.  Per ounce of a carrier oil, so let's say you get an ounce of coconut oil.  There is about six hundred drops there, so if you want a two-percent dilution, two percent of six hundred is twelve.  So you would use twelve drops of lavender per ounce of a carrier oil to get a two percent dilution which is safe to apply on your body.  You could go up to five, ten percent.  Once you start getting above ten percent, you really start getting into like a serious medicinal dose.  Under two percent, one percent below is for babies and children, pets, that sort of thing.  So that's it, you just mix it, you can do a number of things.  You can put it in a mason jar, you can put it in a bowl.  One ounce will last you several applications.  It's good in folks, this is a good idea.  You want to apply these on your body, two or three or four times a day if you're trying to treat something like SIBO or trying to boost your athletic performance.  I mean again, like I just shared, your body will completely metabolize these within like two hours.  The half-life is relatively quick compared to all drugs.

So it's a good idea just to have a regular… I have tons, I have roller bottle blends.  Like you could go get a roller bottle on Amazon for like a couple of bucks?  You could get a carrier oil, and here's the kicker though, one that won't harden.  Your coconut oil that you eat, that will harden, and I'm in Georgia right now.  We just got two inches of snow, so I'm here crazy enough.  Our coconut oil is cold, it's hard around my house.  So you could get something as a fraction of the coconut oil, well it actually fractionates out the long chain fatty acids which cause coconut oil to harden, or your MCT oil or whatever it is, a liquid form of a carrier oil that won't harden, and you could make roller bottles, you could have pre-mixed blends.  I mean we got stuff all over.

Ben:  Interesting, how did you kind of get interested in essential oils because, like I mentioned, you don't have an essential oils company.  You're not selling these things, you're not part of one of these.  You always know when you're on a popular essential oils website 'cause there's somewhere on the menu on the tip of the website that says opportunity, so you too can join the pyramid scheme for selling essential oils.  And granted, all of these companies like Doterra and I even got Young Living on my website.  I don't think the oils are bad, I just think that a lot of times, it's kind of like the fox growing in the hen house, so to speak, when you're picking some of these brand about essential oils, and they freaking sell the essential oils, but in your case, how did you actually get involved with the essential oils and becoming kind of like one of the go-to resources, at least in the health community that I'm in for essential oils on essential oils education?

Dr. Zielinski:  Really that's why, it's because of what's out there, and I don't want that, man.  I didn't plan on this.  You know I went to school to become a chiropractor, I was a researcher in school, I was a medical writer, and one of my clients commissioned me to write a series of public health reports about oils, and up until that point, I mean very openly here man, be transparent.  I marginalized them the smelly stuff.  I couldn't imagine playing beach volleyball with my guy friends, smelling like ylang-ylang.  They take my guy card away, I couldn't get in that mindset, and my wife has been using oil since we have been married, and I thought it was her thing, man.  Just her smelly stuff, and I never needed them.  Like I never had a healing from them.  I healed from nutrition, through exercise, mind-body practices.  That's like my personal story.

So when my client paid me a good amount of money to write, and I read hundreds of hot studies, and I was like whoa, what is this stuff?  I went up to a friend of mine, Dr. Josh Axe, and I'm like hey, why don't we hot a tele-summit about essential oils.  We'll get all the people together and not have it to be branded because like you mentioned, Ben.  All, literally, 99.9% of every website talking about an oil is selling the oil.  I'm like that's like financial bias 101.  I mean I can't do that, I'm a trained public health researcher.  So Josh and I brought it on together, brought on my friend, Jill Winger, who's a homestead blogger, and a hundred and sixty-five thousand people from around the globe came.  It was the largest event at its time three years ago, and that's when I had my aha moment 'cause literally, Ben, thousands and thousands of comments, and I've read them all, I remember.

Thousands and thousands of comments poured through, and the resounding request from everyone was we need someone to help us.  We don't know who to trust, the aroma therapists say this, and these persons say that.  Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and I'm like you know what? It's time to learn, so I went to aroma therapy school.  And next thing you know, get this book deal with a random house, and next thing you know, you know coming out of a master class in my website's getting half a million hits a month.  Like people are finding me 'cause they basically, they need me, and my wife and I have been determined to step up to the game and deliver them this good scientific brand-free information, and truthfully, we're helping a lot of people.

Ben:  Interesting, so this new book, this healing power of essential oils book, is this just taking all the information that you've learned from all these different essential oils summits that you put together, and disseminated it all in one single book, 'cause it's kind of like a bible of essential oils?

Dr. Zielinski:  Yeah, you know it's that, but it's my personal research.  It's all of the blogs, all of the recipes, all of the formulations.  You'd be surprised, there are like literal, proven recipes for things like fibromyalgia and others that just the research has shown.

Ben:  Fibromyalgia, you mean like a joint and muscle pain?

Dr. Zielinski:  Yeah.

Ben:  Like, what?  What would you do for that?

Dr. Zielinski:  Oh man, you put me on the spot.  Give me a second, I don't have it in memory.  It's on my website, you go to my website I have the fibro blend.  Like seriously, it's like a blend that researchers have shown.

Ben:  Is it in the book, the fibro blend?

Dr. Zielinski:  It should be.

Ben:  I've got the book in my hand right now.

Dr. Zielinski:  Hold on, man.  I got this, I got this.  My website, this has proven, okay here it is folks, for people that battle fibromyalgia, research has shown that this blend can help and what I got is two drops of bergamot, two drops of camphor, two drops of lemon, two drops of peppermint, two drops of rosemary.  You mix that with two ounces of a carrier oil, whatever it is that you want to use, and I like to add a little bit of aloe, aloe gel.  Aloe vera gel is a good one and you just mix that up in a four ounce glass jar, and you got yourself something that researchers have shown that really, really can help people 'cause fibromyalgia is really elusive.  Again, I'm doing research on this stuff, and people needed a resource and I'm like hey, you can go to my book, or I'm sorry, you could go on my website and check out a summit, but the truth is, Ben, there's a million books out there about essential oils, but they're all like reference guides.  All of them are like A to Z, this is like a legit health book.  We go into what causes autoimmunity like let's dig into inflammation, let' talk about how to heal at the root cause, and yeah, essential oils aren't going to cure you of death, but they can help.  Like I say this all the time, you can't live the American fast food lifestyle and expect to put a couple of drops of essential oil and be cured.  It's a holistic lifestyle, and that's really what the book's about.  It's helping you implement oils in everything.  Your food, your daily life, whatever it is.  They can help.

Ben:  I've got like a diffuser on my desk here, like I mentioned, and one of the things that I'll use during the day is rosemary because I've heard a lot and read about rosemary's effects on things like memory and cognition, and it kind of peaked my interest when I was reading in this book about rosemary because you go into how not all rosemary is equal, and I don't mean like from different companies putting weird fillers and stuff into it which I think is an issue in of itself but the actual strains of rosemary that are used.  I think you refer to it as a chemo-type, but can you go into, maybe using rosemary as an example of how like the family and the genus and the species of an essential oil is so important?

Dr. Zielinski:  Yeah, so at the end of the day, there are different species of let's say frankincense is a great example because there are several brands that top that their frankincense is the best, right?  So you have a different variety of species.  There's frankincense serata, there's frankincense sacra, there's frankincense seratal, there's all kinds of different frankincenses, species, but just like how you can go out to your rose garden if you have like a local garden and you see all different kinds of roses.  They're all roses, but the species is different.  Some are yellow, some are red, some are fragrant, and some are not.  So when it comes to the chemo-type, this is the tricky thing because in spite of appearing the same.  Again imagine you're in a red rose garden, right?  Everything looks the same.  The chemical components of each plant might be different, even though they're literally standing next to each other.  So the chemotype of the plant is that plants are similar, they're the same, they're identical to the naked eye.  Similar in chemical compound, but there are chemical anomalies which is essentially like a twin.  You know no two twins are alike, identical.  There's always going to be some sort of differences, so for rosemary for example, there are rosemary species, the same rosemary.  Again, we've talking rosemary officinalis, you're regular rosemary that you get.  Some are rich in a chemical known as camphor, and that's a chemical that acts as a muscle relaxant, a diuretic and actually can promote menstruation.

Again, that's one, there's a camphor chemotype, there's a cineole chemotype.  1, 8 cineole is actually a proven cancer-fighting agent, it's an anti-inflammatory agent. There's another chemotype of verbinol which is high in pinene and verbionol which is a chemical that acts as expectorant, or it can help with muscle spasms.  So what does that mean?  The same rosemary plant has essentially 99.9% of the same chemical compounds, but one of them is rich in camphor, one of them is rich in cineole, one of them is rich in the other ones.  So the bottom line is if you could get your hands on the chemical analysis or this company knows what they're doing that's selling them, they'll actually say rosemary officinalis CT, standing for chemotype, cineole.  It'll actually indicate on the bottle what the chemotype is, and all that it's saying.  Bottom line, all it's saying is that this version of rosemary has more than average, more than normal amount of this one chemical, and that can make the biggest difference in the world because if you don't want to relax your muscles, then you don't really want to go for the camphor chemotype.  If you don't want something that will help with muscle spasms, then you don't want that version, and there are several different essential oils that we know that are actually marked by the right companies.  So how do you do figure it out at home 'cause this is now getting a little deep, but there are guides out there you could buy that tell you hey, on average, your essential oils should have this amount of this chemical, this amount of this.

So all you do is you go to the company, and all your good companies should have this, a chemical analysis. I guess chromatography, and so you get the report, and this says hey.  This rosemary has this amount of camphor, this amount of cineole, this amount of these chemicals, and it's a little bit of back work but here's the point.  We got to kind of take our health into our own hands a little bit, and if you literally are trying to treat a disease, then a little leg work, a little bit of research will go a long way because people don't realize, especially when it comes to cinnamon.  You know cinnamon bark versus cinnamon leaf, completely different chemical compounds.  Yeah, so if you want to help promote blood sugar balancing, that's your cinnamon bark, but if you don’t know cinnamon leaf ain't going to cut it 'cause it has completely different chemicals, like cinemaldehyde versus eugenol which is the chemical that's high in cinnamon leaf.  Again, you got to get back to plant chemistry basics 101.  So that's what the book's for, that's what my master class is for, kind of to teach people like okay, here are the basics, here are some guides, this'll help you.  For those of you who really want to get deep into this stuff, here are a couple of books you might want to buy, and let's go to work.

Ben:  Okay, so with rosemary, just to kind of cut to the chase here, I want the kind that's going to help me with memory and cognition, and if I'm looking at the actual chemotype, like is there a way I can tell on the bottle?

Dr. Zielinski:  All of them, all of them will have what you want.  When it comes to the types, the chemotypes are the chemicals that actually do things that are secondary like the diuretics, the muscle relaxants, the anti-inflammatory agents.  So for you, any of them can actually help if that's your goal.  If your goal is only cognition, you're good with any of them, it doesn't really matter, but I would say for you, I would say though because inflammation is such a big cause of cognitive decline anyway, I will go as a downfall to the rosemary chemotype with cineole, C-I-N-E-O-L-E.  That one is the one that is high in 1, 8 cineole, and high in the anti-inflammatory compound that will help too.  So kind of give you a two for one deal.

Ben:  Okay, cool.  So cineole, that's how you pronounce that?  Cineole, C-I-N-E-O-L-E, I want to look for that in the actual rosemary that I use?

Dr. Zielinski:  Yeah, the one that's chemotyped.  It just has more cineole than the other versions do.

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My kids like it, my wife cooks with it, and we have a whole bunch in our pantry.  You walk in our pantry, no whole wheat pasta or anything like that, just this stuff.  I have been using it more than I use quinoa or amorinth or millet or anything like that, and it's amazing for your gut too.  It's very nourishing for your gut 'cause it's just a bunch of shirataki and Japanese yam based fiber.  So you can get this stuff and get a fat discount on it, skinny discount I should say, a miracle discount over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/miraclenoodles. That's bengreenfieldfitness.com/miraclenoodles, and if you use discount code “Ben” you're going to save big.  Use discount code “Ben” over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/miraclenoodles.

Ben:  Now why do you need to be careful, even if it's the right chemotype, like if it's the right rosemary, why do you need to be careful just like buying essential oils at let's say, like Walmart.  I mean Walmart has essential oils.  Why is it that that would be any different than what you might get from say, well honestly like a lot of those multilevel marketing websites that are talking like Doterra or Young Living?  I get the impression that they have a higher quality oil, but what's going on with the actual oil itself that would make this so important?

Dr. Zielinski:  You know, Ben, in my first summit, I interviewed Dr. Robert Pappas.  He's out of the University of Indiana, I think, or Indiana University, either one.  He's the foremost chemist in essential oils, and this is what he does.  I mean he tests them, and he is one of those third party testers that every virtue, every company has used, all to make sure they're pure.  He's gone on record, during one of my interview, to say 75%.  At least 75% of our oils on the market are adulterated.  They're fake, they're synthetic.

Ben:  What do you mean fake?

Dr. Zielinski:  Like they mimic chemical compounds to put into the oil, and there might be one drop of real essential oil, but they manufacture their synthetic compounds.  The body doesn't know what to do with them.  I mean these synthetic compounds, I mean again you want to talk about the contact dermatitis I just shared, sensitization that causes that.  It causes just neurological outbreak, the body doesn't know what to do with these things.  Again, they're highly concentrated anyway.  So chemists can mimic the chemical structures of these oil, and also people like certain things.  And going to my friend, you remember Steven, right?  From my green fills?  The man who invented this non-toxic laundry solution.  They did a test, and they found…

Ben:  Like have I met this guy?

Dr. Zielinski:  Oh from the same event that we were at, that we met.

Ben:  Oh, okay.  I'm not putting a name or a face.  Either way, go ahead.

Dr. Zielinski:  Okay, cool dude.  Bigger dude, bald head, cool guy.

Ben:  Oh yeah, I remember now.

Dr. Zielinski:  Remember Steven?  Yeah, so Steven tested this, and he gave people…  It was crazy.  He tested people and what they decided, what they determined was the best, cleanest laundry, and what he did was they took dirty rags.  Straight up dirty rags, and they gave it to a person, and they put on some really fake smells to make it smell clean versus just the normal dirty rag, and then thy had another rag that was straight white, whiter than anything we've ever seen, but it didn't smell like anything.  People, by far, chose the dirty rag that smelled clean versus the actual clean rag that didn't smell like anything as being the cleaner one.  We're so attracted to smell, so what does that mean?  In peppermint, people wanted to smell like candy canes.  They liked that Santa Claus smell, so these companies will add synthetic chemicals to peppermint to make it smell mintier, sweeter.  You know real, true peppermint shouldn't have that fake, yucky, kind of sweet smell.  it makes me sick, but most people who've never smelled it, they don't know any better.  So that's what they do, and so all these big box stores…  I'll say this flat out.  One mark and they've had their oils tested.  They've been proven they're fake, and you're not going to find frankincense oil for five bucks, it just doesn't exist.  I mean there's the raw material necessitates that the bottle is going to at least be twenty, thirty, forty bucks, and then if your company wants to make money, you got to charge fifty, sixty, seventy for a bottle.  So you get down to it, like these things.  It's just a mass craziness because no one's monitoring it, Ben.  The FDA doesn't care, it's the wild, Wild West and anyone can sell anything.

Ben:  Another one that I use a lot if oregano, and I actually looked into this a while back because you know, full disclosure, my company, Kion, we actually sell this really high quality oregano.  People use it for like athlete's foot and fungal issues, topically, or they'll use it for things like gut issues or immune system orally, and strong oil of oregano will like freaking burn your mouth.  When I was trialing some of the oregano, I would get a hundred percent oil of oregano, and occasionally, I'd forget that a certain batch that I'd had wasn't actually diluted with, usually we use like sweet almond oil and put it in my mouth and literally just had a little mouth burns for days.  But when I was working in this olive oil, I found out that they can use GMO oregano when they're making the oil.  They can have extremely little levels of this stuff called caracole which is like the active component in oregano.  It can be just like thyme and not even oregano, so I ran into all these issues where everything from GMO to no laboratory certificate of analysis where you don't even know what's in it.  So yeah, I hear you, but I think a lot of people will just like see whatever.  Rosemary, it's going to make me smarter.  Grab it off the shelf at Walmart because you heard it on a podcast or whatever, and you wind up doing more harm than good.  So it's a good point.

One thing I wanted to ask you about too, because I've got a bunch of essential oils upstairs, and my kids, I forget what the recipe was.  It might have been lemon bars.  They were doing some recipe for their podcast, and one of my boys grabbed, it was either orange or lemon essential oil from the pantry, and he put a few drops in the batter for what they were making.  I'm pretty sure it was a lemon bar, and it was actually really good.  Like it gave this really great flavor, can you actually cook with essential oils?  And if so, is there anything you need to be aware of, are there any best practices for using essential oils in cooking and for oral consumption?

Dr. Zielinski:  Yeah, oh yeah.  For sure, so buy and large.  You don't really know what flavor is until you taste food with essential oils.  My wife makes this knock off, I love it, seven-layer vegan bean dip thing, and once she started adding that one drop of lime and one drop of cilantro just makes it just pop, you know?  That flavor.  So buy and large, the rule of thumb is per teaspoon of whatever it is, whether a teaspoon of cinnamon, a teaspoon of oregano, a teaspoon of lemon zest, you use two to three drops of essential oil.  Now there is max, you know?  If something calls for fifteen teaspoons, you're not going to put like thirty drops in, and I would be careful 'cause you want to have about three, four, five drops max per dish.  So at the end of the day, this is a culinary dose, and you will get a minor medicinal benefit.  A nice one, I mean we're not looking to heal cancer here, so yeah.  Just a couple drops per dish, works fantastically.  A consideration though, especially with lemon.

Now think of it this way, I get this question asked all the time.  Well does cooking with oils affect the chemical compounds?  You know, a bud teenage from proteins because they get heated.  Well think of it this way, to get an essential oil, most of them are steam-distilled, and steam requires an intense heat.  So for all of your herb oils, all of your minty oils, you're totally fine with cooking them, but with the lemons and the citrus oils, they're not steam-distilled typically, they're cold pressed like an olive oil press.  So these oils haven't been heated, so you will change the chemical compounds.  I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but you can't expect the same medicinal effect if you're going to cook your lemons or your citrus ones, but you can steam-distilled citrus, and the bottle should indicate whether an oil has been steam-distilled or cold pressed if it's citrus.

Ben:  Okay, got it, and it's just a few drops.  You don't need that much if you're cooking with essential oils?

Dr. Zielinski:  No, I mean literally two to three drops per teaspoon is the rule of thumb, but in total though, again you don't want to have like two drops of cinnamon, two drops of clove, two drops of like fifteen different drops.  You got to use common sense, but you'll see just a few drops in total really just pop the flavor in.  To me, Ben, you know, that's my soda.  Like I haven't drank pop, soda in fifteen years, so I had some liquid stevia, one or two drops of lemon, and I add my sparkling water.  Like that's my soda, that's my drink, you know?

Ben:  Yeah, I totally hear you.  I'll use like a micro organic stevia, I don't use a lot of essential oil in soda, but what I've been doing 'cause it's winter here right now while we're recording this.  I've been making like drinking chocolate where I'll brew some decaf coffee or some tea, and then dump that over like a nice… I've got like an organic mix of cacao and cinnamon and I think there's a little bit of coconut milk powder in there, and then I put one drop of peppermint, and I bundle it all up and it's got this amazing peppermint hot chocolate flavor.  It's really good, and if you put so much mint in there, you're freaking screwed.  You can't even get your nose near that thing without feeling like it's going to burn your sinuses off, but just one drop of cinnamon works really well.  And from what I understand about cinnamon and about some of these other essential oils is they can even be used for things like gas or bloating, or in your book, you even go into like small intestine bacterial overgrowth.  Yeah SIBO, that essential oils can be used for the gut.

Can you go into how you would use essential oils for gas and bloating, and I got to tell you?  One thing I picked up from your book I've been doing is when I get gassy with that same peppermint, I'll just like put a few drops in my hand.  Well I guess I should be putting it in a carrier oil after what I just learned from you and like massaging the abs, just like a clockwise abdominal circle, and it works really well, but can you fill me in a little bit on best practices for using essential oils just for general gut health or even for knocking out critters in the gut?

Dr. Zielinski:  Yeah, we need to remember that the gut is the stomach, the gut is this tall, it's further down the GI tract so we're talking the intestines.  So for something to bypass your gastric juices, you got to use what is known as an enteric coded capsule.  It’s basically a polymer coded capsule that bypasses, that won't get digested by the acid in your stomach, and it will start to digest in the intestines, the distal colon especially.  So I guess for people 'cause it's such a buzzword, leaky gut, I mean proven oregano oil can actually repair leaky gut.

When it comes to SIBO, the small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, peppermint has been proven to help, and there's actually a mix that was researched that actually suggests that, write this down folks, this is an interesting one, caraway, lavender and neroli.  Neroli is in the orange family.  Caraway, lavender and neroli, you mix that in a one-to-one-to-one ratio.  You make a blend, you make your “SIBO blend” make your gut health blend, and you have a blend ready in like a bottle, and you put two to three drops in a capsule, fill the capsule with an edible carrier oil 'cause you never want to even have these oils have these oils straight when you consume them, for a number of reasons.  It protects your gastric lining, but it also helps the body absorb them.  Remember folks, oil is your friend, and I know, Ben, you teach so well.  I mean we're not afraid of oil here, but most people are.  We got to remember, our cells are coded with cholesterol.

Ben:  What do you mean most people are afraid?  Because the thing fat is bad to eat?

Dr. Zielinski:  Yes, most people are freaked out, and they have these crazy, no-fat diets, and we got to remember though.  Without fat, your body can't digest most nutrients.  So adding carrier oils to your essential oils will actually help your body absorb it better, internally or externally, whatever.  So caraway, lavender, neroli, take two to three drops, two to three times a day.  For SIBO, that could help.  Peppermint's been proven.  I mean time and time again, specifically for gut health issues.  But yeah, they're fantastic, but it's not a gel cap, and I say that because if you want to consume essential oils to get into the bloodstream and just consume them, it's great for inflammation.  You know, here's one for folks.  A lot of athletes deal with inflammation, pain.  Copaiba is a fantastic one for pain.  Put a few drops in a gel cap, get your gel caps on Amazon, but it's not going to get to the gut.  So just to put that again in an enteric coded capsule, which you can get those on Amazon, and that way, you'll really be able to treat the gut specifically.

Ben:  Okay, if I'm going to use peppermint or ginger or any of these other essential oils that either come in blends from different companies or that you can buy on their own, just putting in a glass of water isn't going to cut it?  I need to encapsulate it?

Dr. Zielinski:  No, and in fact, that's actually not the best idea because you could burn on the mucus membranes in your oral cavity, in your esophagus, and here's the kicker with peppermint.  As much as we love peppermint, it's a great, just anti-nausea agent.  It helps with so many things.  It's such a relaxing agent.  If you were just to drink peppermint, and I've done this, Ben, you actually cause acid reflux because it will literally release the esophageal sphincter.  It'll relax the muscle which is the muscle that separated the esophagus from the stomach.  It'll relax that so you'll actually develop reflux, heartburn.  So people that are trying to help cure stomach issue with peppermint, they're causing more issues, so that's why you need to have the peppermint in the capsule, or like you do, just simply apply it 'cause it literally will penetrate into the cellular level.  Like into your bloodstream, it'll calm yourself down.

Ben:  Okay, so if you put it on your stomach, you don't even need to encapsulate it.  You just put it on the skin of your stomach?

Dr. Zielinski:  Yeah, you don't have to, but for people with serious issues, that's kind of like you want to both.  Like you literally will want to do both, you just got to be careful.  You just don't put it in water.  ‘Cause you don't want to burn yourself, you don't want to cause reflux.

Ben:  Okay, but you talk about peppermint being relaxing, but then you have like a performance enhancing inhaler.  I think peppermint is an ingredient in that, so how does that work if peppermint is relaxing?

Dr. Zielinski:  Yeah, see this is the beauty.  We haven't talked about this yet, but homeostasis, harmony.  You know oils like peppermint and ylang-ylang are somewhat counter-intuitive because they could do almost opposite things.  You know muscle relaxant is different than increasing the air waves.  It is the same, like peppermint is so relaxing it could relax the respiratory system to start breathing better, and it's so relaxing that it actually can calm the muscles to cool 'cause it's anti-inflammatory.  It's the bottom line, it's not like lavender, and I'm sorry.  Maybe I used the wrong word, it's not like sedative, but it's invigorating.  It can actually soothe inflammation, calm down just hyper-inflamed muscles and your hyper-inflamed respiratory system.  A lot of people don't breathe well anymore, so when I came up with this performance boosting inhaler, it was actually based off of a study.  There were three studies in Iran evaluation athletes, college athletes, and they just either put, Hey, don't get me wrong.  I'll do it once in a while, it's not going to kill you to put a drop of peppermint in your mouth, but the problem that most people do is put like two to three drops and water, and drink it five times a day.  They literally gave these kids a drop of peppermint in their mouth, and they did VO2 Max scores.  They did jumping tests, they did just athletic performance evaluations, and they found that these kids performed better athletically.  They were breathing better, and you know, as an athlete, Ben, you got to breathe.  If you don't breathe man, you're going to burn out quick.  So it helps your breathing, it helps increase respiratory rate, decrease blood pressure, interestingly enough, but it gets forming better in a number of different ways.

Ben:  Interesting, so how do you make this inhaler exactly, and how would you use it?

Dr. Zielinski:  Cool, go online.  Go on Amazon, you get in and type up aroma therapy inhaler.  All it is, it's just a tube.  It looks like a Chap Stick container or lipstick.  Inside, it's a cotton swab or a cotton tube.  What you do is you buy it.  You get the tube, you fill the tube up, or you put the essential oils on the cotton.  So from us, we're using ten drops of peppermint, five drops of orange and five drops of spearmint, that's my thing for a number of reasons.  It's a really invigorating blend.  So ten drops of peppermint, five drops of orange, five drops of spearmint.  You put that actually on the cotton tube.  You put the cotton tube inside the inhaler, and you got it.  Like on the go.  There's a lid, so every time you want to open it up, you can take a couple of deep breaths and I would encourage you to take five to ten nice deep breaths, focused and that's something you do right before you work out.  Also you can have that same blend, mix it to like a two percent dilution like we talked about.  Twelve drops of the blend per one ounce of a carrier oil, put it on the back of your neck, put it on your chest.  That's great to do right before you work out.

Here's another one, you get a spoon of coconut oil.  You know a teaspoon of coconut oil, one or two drops of that blend, mix it together and swallow it.  Take that before you work out.  Like that is extreme.  I promise you, for those athletes out there that want something, a noticeable boost, you'll experience that if you do either one of those things.

Ben:  So why wouldn't you just, and I did this actually last Wednesday night at my men's tennis league.  I had already read your book, so peppermint was a hot topic on my mind, and I kept a little bottle of peppermint essential oil in my pocket.  I took it out of my pocket, and I just basically sniffed it, like gave it a big whiff, almost like smelling salts, and then I just put it back into my pocket.  Could you just do something like that, or does it have to get into the nasal membranes?

Dr. Zielinski:  You can, but you know what you're doing?  You're decreasing the shelf life, so oxygen is our enemy here.  Oils, don't believe it folks, I see the crazy stuff out there.  Oils have a shelf life of two to three years max, and what you did Ben, you know any better, but every time you open up the bottle, you're decreasing the shelf life because you're exposing it to oxygen.  So by doing that, I would guess that your oil would last six, seven months max because you'll actually notice the oil go rancid.  The smell would be different, it won't be as sweet or as fragrant.  You notice the effect will change.  They literally will be oxidation happening.  So the point of an inhaler, I'm so glad you asked us actually 'cause I totally glossed over that.  The whole point of the inhaler is to have this little, again this is ten or fifteen drops or twenty drops.  It's there, you could do whatever you want with it, and every six months or so, you're going to want to put oils back into it.  Just that way, you get that effect 'cause it saves the bottle.  Folks, this bottle is precious, like I literally have people treating themselves for cancer with these essential oils because chemo failed them or because radiation failed them.  Keep it in a dark place, a cool place. Don't expose it to oxygen as much as you can.  You know, open it, use it and close it.  It's legit.

Ben:  Interesting, I wish I would have had one of these inhalers back when I was racing Ironman triathlons.  I could have easily kept on in my back jersey and just snorted on that thing when I got past the end of each hour on the bike or something like that.  I'm going to make one of these things, but for anybody listening in, if you decide to make an inhaler like this and try it, leave a comment.  I'll put everything Eric and I are talking about over in the show notes.  Just go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/healingoils.  That's bengreenfieldfitness.com/healingoils.  Now Eric, when it comes to kind of like smelling oils, there's a lot of different diffusers out there I've noticed.  Some are cold air diffusers, some you put just the oil into, some of you mix oil with water and then you put it into the diffuser.  What's the best kind of diffuser that you use?  What do you use?

Dr. Zielinski:  Yeah, well I have two.  Actually you know our inhaler is technically a diffuser when you consider it that way, so anything that you could do just to get the essential oils to inhale them, there's a highly concentrated version.  This is for someone dealing with an upper-respiratory condition or someone who's really trying to treat a specific disease.  It's called the nebulizer.  You could actually get this thing, actually I sell it on my store, on my website.  Its pure essential oil, you add fifteen, twenty, thirty drops in this glass container, and you push a button, and this apparatus vibrates at such a high level.  It omits pure essential oil vapor into the air.  You only want to us this thing fifteen, twenty minutes at a time.  It's that concentrated, I've actually done it, Ben.

You know what I love about you, Ben.  You and me, let me experiment.  We're going to try this stuff, and you know we make mistakes but we learn, and I got myself dizzy, got myself nauseous because I was overdosing on essential oils one day.  I had my office room closed, I was diffusing, nebulizing for two hours.  So I'm like whoa, I'm tripping out, man.  I felt like I was in some kind of psychotic drug.  Don't do that.  Well ventilated room, it’s intense.

Ben:  It's called a nebulizer?

Dr. Zielinski:  Yes, a nebulizer, an essential oil nebulizer.  How much essential oil do you put into it?  Anywhere from fifteen to twenty, thirty drops.  The instructions, depending on the glass container, some are larger than others, but yeah.  Don't trust me folks, don't overdose on this stuff.  It won't be good, there's such a thing as too much.  But most people, and this is what we have all day long, is you mentioned these misters, or they are called ultrasonic diffusers.  There's basically a vibrating disk on the bottom of a water tank, and it vibrates at such a high level that it breaks up the water, it breaks up the essential oil into millions of particles that are omitted into a fine mist and that’s totally sake around babies, around pets.  You can have that thinking all day long.  It's not concentrated, it's dispersed throughout the room.  Those are great for just mood, those are great for just creating an atmosphere.

Folks, if I leave you with one thing, and this is something every one of you can do, I would lead you with, throw all of your aerosols, all of your fake smells.  Whether it's an all-flower plugging, spritzer spray, if it’s not a pure essential oil I promise you what it is, it's a synthetic ingredient that has been shown…

Ben:  Except those little pine trees that you hang in your car, I think that those are pretty fun.

Dr. Zielinski:  Yeah, especially those things.  Man if I go in your car and I get that, I get nauseous, I can't even handle it.

Ben:  I used to love like the new car smell one.  I'd hang that thing and I kind of smell it when I'm at a stoplight.  Take a big whiff 'cause it smells, now I know I'm breathing myself some man boobs.  It's true, you can achieve all of the same things with essential oils.  Hey, so I was just looking at the essential oil diffuser on my desk.  Maybe this is why my office tends to have a much more powerful essential oils smell.  It is a nebulizer, so maybe I've been overpowering myself here in the office.  Yeah, it's a nebulizer, but the other thing I was going to ask you was this aroma therapy inhaler.  There's a whole bunch of different ones on Amazon.  Does the brand matter when you're talking about these aroma therapy, for people who want to do that performance enhancing inhaler you talked about?

Dr. Zielinski:  Yeah, I would get on if you can.  I would get one with a glass container, there's a couple.  I mean it’s a couple more bucks, it's a little fancier.  We didn't talk about this, Ben, but oils and plastic don't mix.  The chemicals, the petro chemicals in plastic are so weak, essential oils will leech them, break them down, and if you're going to mix oils with anything but a PET, known as PET plastic, it would break it down.  So I would be careful, I like anything with glass.  You have glass encasement that fit into a metal tube.  I mean again, it looks like lipstick.  I would go for that one.  It's a couple of extra bucks, but if you don't have the money, the PET plastic is fine.  There's so many things, and folks it's just not performance.  Its anxiety, its stress, its mood boosting, like there's so many blends, I don't know how many blends or inhalers there are on my book, at least fifty because they literally can change the chemistry in your brain.  They impact the limbic system, your primal brain, your memory, your mood, your emotion, so there's so much science behind this and it's just capturing the scent, the chemistry that your body needs, it could be life changing.

Ben:  You talk about food cravings too, and specifically, you have a little essential oil trick for food cravings.  I thought that one was kind of interesting, can you go into that?

Dr. Zielinski:  Yeah, I mean you know when it comes down to cravings, when it comes down to anything addiction-wise, black pepper for those people who are struggling with nicotine.  Black peppers been proven to help decrease the nicotine withdrawals.  When it comes to unhealthy food cravings, specifically grapefruit.  You know grapefruit essential oil can literally stimulate lipolysis which is break down of fat.  Its thermogenic, it'll actually 'cause your body to burn calories, and it has the ability, 'cause it again these affect the limbic system to decrease food intake.  To me, I haven't seen the exact research on this specifically, but the only way I would understand it, why would animals and people evaluating, just smelling grapefruit, not be as hungry?  Well it has to be because of the two hormones left in there grilling, because if those hormones are out of whack, you're not going to feel full or you're going to have unhealthy cravings.  So again, they haven't tested it, and that's the only problem I have with research right now in essential oils, Ben, 'cause they haven't really gone to the mechanism.  But if you know enough about the body, I guess you can make a conjecture.

So for me, my thing is for those people who are battling just overeating in general, who want something, maybe to help them feel full and to help really burn some fat and to help cravings, my little trick is going back to my Dr. Z soda pop.  I'll get a drop or two of grapefruit, mix it with some liquid stevia extract which actually act as a carrier.  You fill that out with thirty-two ounces or so of sparkling water, and the carbonation will help you feel full.  The grapefruit will add that nice fat-burning flavor enhancement, and you're good to go, you know?  So that's great, you can add lime to it if you want, lemon.  You can add bergamot, you can add so many others, but grapefruit's the one that the research has shown.

Ben:  I wonder if you were to just eat grapefruit or drink grapefruit juice, I mean obviously then you're kind of defeating the purpose 'cause you're getting, not a lot but some fructose and some calories.  I wonder what the comparison would be.  Do you think that the essential oil is that much more powerful, kind of like in the same way a drop of lavender is the equivalent of like thirty pounds of lavender leaf?  What is it, the leaf or the flower?

Dr. Zielinski:  Yeah, the flower.  Now good, you know that brings up a good point, citrus oils are extracted from the rinds, so if you want to get the benefit of citrus essential oil, you would have to consume the rind.  And for me Ben, when I'm making my smoothies or something, I don't do them every day, but if I were to have like a sweeter fruit smoothie, I'll put a whole lemon.  I'll get everything, the rind of the fruit.  So this is interesting because what about people who can't take or eat grapefruit because they're on a blood pressure pill or something.  Because grapefruit has an uncanny ability to counteract a lot of medicine, especially cardiac medicines.  Well we find that people that use grapefruit essential oil, it's totally fine because the chemical compounds of the rinds are different than the fruit.

This is another question that I get asked all the time, I just got asked this yesterday on my blog.  Dr. Z, I'm allergic to orange, does that mean I can't have orange?  Well not necessarily.  The fruit is different than the rind, different chemical make-up.  So I don't know, but I would think that if you do want it, you got to take a bit of the whole entire grapefruit.  You can't just take the fruit 'cause the fruit doesn't have it.

Ben:  Okay, got it.  There's one other thing that you go into in the book that attracted my attention 'cause I've had it before.  I'm a carrier or Staph 'cause I've had MRSA.  Back in the day, I got a pretty bad leg wound while racing, and a few times, like it's weird, it's ugly.  Hell I even almost lost my leg once, I have a big article about this over on the website where you can look at the nasty pictures of golf ball-sized holes getting eaten away into my thigh from flesh-eating MRSA bacteria, so I'm super careful now, and I've used thieves before.  You know like this thieves essential oil blend that I mentioned which I really like for the immune system which is, what is thieves?  It's like clove, lemon, cinnamon, eucalyptus and rosemary, I think, but you've got something that you talk about that's especially good for Staph or for MRSA.  Can you go into that, and how you would use it for something like that?

Dr. Zielinski:  Oh yeah, I mean you know folks, we've created a problem with these super bugs.  We've just used too many antibiotics, and so these little microorganisms are resistant to fungus, fungal agents, anti-fungal agents resistant to antibiotics, and there have been research studies, and it blows my mind.  They've done research studies showing that antibiotic resistant bacteria, like MRSA and others, and here's another thing too, fungal.  Anti-fungal resistant fungus that using oils like eucalyptus, lemon grass, tea tree.  Thyme is one we don't hear too much about.  Thyme, they actually kill these bacteria, these fungi that are resistant to medicine, and so these are actually saving people's lives and they're in hospitals right now that the medicines are doing nothing for, and so there's a number of ways and all these are edible.

So this is where, for some people who want a good systemic benefit, put the two or three drops into a capsule, fill a capsule up with an edible carrier oil like olive oil or something and take that two or three times a day, or you can just apply it over the area.  We didn't talk about this, Ben, but it's really important.  Don't waste your money.  If you want a medicinal benefit, don't put oils on the bottoms of your feet.  They've done transdermal tests like you know the patch that goes on your arm.  There's a reason why they say put it on your arm, not on the bottoms of your feet.  You know out of everywhere in your body, in my opinion, the best place to put oils are on your abdomen because out of the ranking from most permeable to least permeable, the top are the most sensitive areas like your genitalia, your nasal mucosa, and then it goes to the neck.  Then it goes to your trunk, which you know your stomach, your lower back, then your arms, your hands and then your legs and feet.

So at the end of the day, if you're applying oils in the bottoms of your feet you're wasting your money.  It's just not getting in your bloodstream, but your abdomen is the way to go.  That's why, Ben, you experience such good results with peppermint with a stomach ache or something 'cause it literally gets in there within minutes.

Ben:  But put it in a carrier, put it in like a coconut oil or a jojoba oil or something like that?  I got to remember to do that ‘case it's so simple for me to just kind of like grab it and put it on, but I'll remember to use that carrier.  Okay, that's good enough, so something like eucalyptus would be in a carrier oil, very, very good for something like Staph or MRSA.

Dr. Zielinski:  Yeah, and I would add though the key, lemon grass and thyme.  I would add those, and tea tree.  I mean there's several.

Ben:  I mean like this thieves is pretty good then because it's clove, lemon.  Well it’s lemon peel, cinnamon bark oil, eucalyptus and rosemary leaf oil?

Dr. Zielinski:  Yeah, I mean you know there's a reason every major company has a version of that blend.  Every one of them, yeah.  That is a really kind of rock solid, it has many things, benefits to it.  High in antioxidants, anti-fungal, so many different things.

Ben:  Okay, got it.  Now you have also a book, you have a few books on Amazon.  This one's called “The Healing Power of Essential Oils” but you also have one called “Using God's medicine”.  The reason I wanted to ask you about that specifically was that I'm a Christian, and I've talked about everything from energy medicine to different healing modalities one might find in the Bible on the podcast before, but when it comes to the Bible, what are some example of essential oils that we can find used by folks in the Bible especially because I think it's kind of interesting, and I think you have kind of a unique knowledge of that?

Dr. Zielinski:  Yeah, Ben.  You know we got to remember, they didn't have steam distillation back then.  I mean distillation was invented by Arab alchemists around the ninth century, A.D.  What we have here, you know when God told Moses to make the holy anointing oil?  He said basically hey, get this big bat of olive oil, put a bunch of calamus, a bunch of cinnamon, a bunch of these different ingredients, and he goes let it steep.  Basically he told the Israelite to make a sav.  You know when Mary anointed Jesus with pure nard, that wasn’t pure spikenard, it was this spike…

Ben:  Did you call it nard?

Dr. Zielinski:  Yeah, you know the story when she and all the disciples were like hey, you're wasting money, and she like massaged his feet and anointed it with her hair?  It made the whole room?  Yeah, it was nard, it was spikenard.

Ben:  Well I mean what's nard?

Dr. Zielinski:  Oh man, spikenard.  For those people, spikenard is a great essential oil.  It's a great plant, it's fantastic for medication, for calming, for focus.  It is really a good oil, it's not to be confused with lavender.  Somehow there was a myth out there that got spread that lavender was spikenard.  Again, it's just a plant.  Look it up, it's really interesting, but the oil itself, it's kind of stinky.  I'm not going to lie, it's really strong, and it’s earthy.  I mean stinky meaning earthy.  It's not like oh, it smells like a wedding or a holiday.  No it's like earth, its super grounding.  So what our ancient ancestors did was they took frankincense, resin, myrrh, resin, these cinnamon bark, and they put them in olive oil, and they allowed it just to steep, extract.  And so what you had was just highly, highly deluded essential oil based products that had minimal amounts of essential oil, but it wasn't the pure oil like we have today.

So I don't care what you see out there, it just was impossible. They just didn't have the ability to extract these oils the way that we do, and so we got to remember what we have today is nothing like our ancient ancestors use, but yeah.  There's so much herbal medicine.  They used to burn the incense, like there was a reason, you know?  Tribal cultures in the Bible, especially talks about burning frankincense and burning these oils because it had inhalation benefit would change someone's brain chemistry to help them pray.  Think about that.  So if you meditate, if you do yoga, Pilates or something, you want to defuse your essential oils to get literally just transform your experience.  So there's so many ways that we could use essential oils, but interestingly too, this anointing oil was like this antibiotic.  It was the cleansing agent.  Yeah, God told the priest to sacrifice the animals, and there was blood everywhere.  Just imagine the E. Coli and all this stuff.  While they anointed it, they just doused it with this oil that was rich with cinnamon and calamus and other essential oil based products that was again, highly deluded, but it was still anti-microbial.  So God knew what he was doing, he just didn't say just do this for a reason, there was purpose behind it.

Ben:  Interesting, yeah.  I think that's the first part of the book.  Somewhere in the book, it talks about like harvesting stuff from trees and plants.  I forget, do you remember the verse from the Bible that you have in there?

Dr. Zielinski:  Oh yeah, Revelation 22, “The leaves of the trees are for the healing of the nations.”  Just think about that.  Like what are we going to heal ourselves with, what has God given us to use as medicine, and ancient travel cultures since the beginning of time, we've always known.  You go into medicine, you go to roots, you go to bark, and you go to leaves.  The power is there to give nature healing, and so we extract that.  We get to tap in that nature, it's awesome.

Ben:  Yeah, I like it, the leaves and trees, baby.  Well this is a good book, “The Healing Power of Essential Oils”.  I'm going to link to it, and I'll hunt down some of these things that Eric talked about on Amazon like the nebulizer and this glass aroma therapy inhaler and some of that stuff.  So just go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/healingoils.  That's bengreenfieldfitness.com/healingoils, and I will link to all that.  And then also like I mentioned, Eric does these online summits.  They're actually really good, and he's got one coming up.  It's like a ten-video course summit with Cyrogy and Robyn Openshaw, and some people who kind of run in the same circle as us, so I know really, really good resources on, especially essential oils.  They're true essential oil masters, so I will link to that particular docu-series as well.  If you just want to become an essential oils ninja, this should be a pretty good way to do it, and what I like about it is it's not like sponsored by a specific essential oils company.  So it's relatively non-biased, and people aren't just like on it, trying to sell their own brand of essential oil.  So check it out online too, I'll put a link to that one in the show notes over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/healingoils.  In the meantime, Eric, thanks so much for coming on the show, and sharing all this stuff with us, man.  It's a great book.

Dr. Zielinski:  Man, I love you, Ben.  I really do, I appreciate your brother and appreciate all you do.  Thank you, and folks, to leave you with one thing, don't get overwhelmed.  There’s so much information out there, just start step-by-step.  Get a couple of quick wins, learn some basics, do that two-percent dilution we talked about.  I want you to do something today, and then work on that.  If it's one thing I get, Ben, so many people tell me I'm so overwhelmed.  I have a whole case of essential oils, and I never opened them before. I don't know what to do.  It's easy, just follow the steps, join the master class, get the book, and go to Ben's website.  Let's crush this thing, thanks brother.

Ben:  Cool, thanks man.  Alright folks, bengreenfieldfitness.com/essentialoils.  Until next time.  I'm Ben Greenfield along with Dr. Eric Zielinski signing out from bengreenfieldfitness.com.  Have an amazing week.

 

 

A few months ago, some dude walked up to me at a health conference as I was applying a bit of lavender to my temples and told me I shouldn't apply undiluted essential oil to my skin.

Turns out, upon engaging in conversation with the guy, he is an essential oils master. His name is Dr. Eric Zielinski, D.C., author and host of the Essential Oil Revolution summits. The guy is like a walking encyclopedia soup-to-nuts guide on mastering essential oils for health and well-being, and is chock full of dozens of recipes and formulations for restful sleep, reduced inflammation, balanced hormones, and more.

In his new book “The Healing Power of Essential Oils” he shows readers how to make their health a priority with the life-changing benefits of essential oils. He teaches everything you need to know to get started, including the top seven oils you should stock from Day 1, the commonly used techniques and tools and daily practices you can follow to enjoy the properties of essential oils, including a five-minute devotional using frankincense and neroli to set you up for a productive and stress-free day, and a simple bedtime routine harnessing the soporific effects of lavender.

Backed by extensive research, Dr. Z also supplies essential oil blends that promote hormone balance, reduced inflammation, improved digestion, increased immunity, and so much more. You'll be armed with over 150 recipes for every health need, and a special section on women's health includes dozens of formulations for PMS, fertility, pregnancy, candida, and menopause. Even those well-versed in essential oils will benefit from this thorough approach. With your newfound knowledge, you can begin tailoring an essential oils practice to your unique pain points and lifestyle right away – and start experiencing amazing results.

Trained as an aromatherapist and public health researcher, Dr. Z started his online ministry in 2014 with DrEricZ.com to help people learn how to use natural remedies like essential oils safely and effectively. Now visited by five million natural health seekers every year, it has rapidly become the #1 source for Biblical Health and non-branded essential oils education online. An accomplished researcher with several publications and conference proceedings, Dr. Z currently sits as a peer-reviewer for multiple journals. Dr. Z lives in Atlanta with his wife, Sabrina and four children.

During our discussion, you'll discover:

-Why Eric came up to me at a conference and told me to be careful applying undiluted essential oil directly to my skin… 7:30

-The best dilution oils for essential oils… 11:00

-How to fix fibromyalgia with essential oils… 20:00

-Why not all Rosemary is the same and why you must know what a “chemotype” is prior to actually using an essential oil… 22:45

-Why you have to be careful with the essential oil you buy at national chain stores… 32:15

-How you can actually cook with essential oils… 37:45

-How to use essential oils for gas and bloating and even SIBO… 41:30

-How to make a performance boosting inhaler with peppermint… 46:15

-The best kind of essential oil diffuser to use… 51:45

-A special essential oil grapefruit trick for managing food cravings… 56:45

-The best essential oil for MRSA and staph… 1:01:00

-Eric's book “Using God's Medicine for the Abundant Life: An Evidence-Based Approach to Essential Oils” and the host of evidence in the Bible for use of essential oils… 1:04:45

-And much more…

Resources from this episode:

-Book: The Healing Power of Essential Oils: Soothe Inflammation, Boost Mood, Prevent Autoimmunity, and Feel Great in Every Way

Essential Oils for Abundant Living (10-Lesson Video Course ) – a docuseries style video course launch including  Sayer Ji, Chris Wark, Robyn Openshaw, Cancer Tutor, Health Talks Online, Trevor King, Michael Ebeling and other essential oil masters!

The oil of oregano Ben mentions

Nebulizing essential oil diffuser

Glass aromatherapy inhaler

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