Essential Oils

Ahh, essential oils…

Essentially, they’re about the most potent “theraputic” substance that you can anoint yourself with. In allergy season, people claim that they’re life savers. People say that peppermint, eucalyptus, melaluca, lemon, lavender, and a small army of other cold distilled smelly things clear up sinuses, releive sore throats, and almost anything but give you eternal youth. (But I wouldn’t put it past them)

Now, as someone whose used essential oils and suffered through allergy season clinging to any cure I can find, I’m not against essential oils, but they’re just so…strong.

One thing that you can try, and I’ve done this too, it put peppermint oil directly on my sinuses. Holy minty-freshness Batman! So, the sniffles went away for a bit, but in exchange I got 45 minutes of watery blinky eyes as the oils seeped down my forehead into my eyes. So, if you try this, don’t plan on reading anything or making a serious conversation with anyone because people will be so worried that you’re ok they’ll keep asking you. And of course, because you’re a good person and you don’t want to explain your failed experiment you’ll just grin and bare it and say “I’m fine” through the minty tears welling up behind your eyelids.

Now, if you’re not daring enough to try peppermint, you can always try eucalyptus oil which I’ve found to be less potent than peppermint. You can rub it on your neck with lemon oil which is supposed to help your allergies, but it usually just makes me feel like I rubbed koala colonge all over myself.

Melaluca or tea tree oil has been touted as a miracle oil. It’s a disinfectant! It’s helps sore throats! It cleans the air! All of it availible to you in a 15mL bottle from DoTerra for just $25! You can even use it to help your sore throat by dropping some of this ambrosia on a q-tip and holding it to the back of your tongue. (Side effects include a nasty taste in your mouth, triggered gag reflex, and possibly vomiting from over exposure…not that I know from experience or anything…)

If you don’t like rubbing oil all over your face, and then repeating the same process twenty minutes to an hour later after the oils wear off, you could always carry a bottle of this precious oil and sniff it throughout the day. That should do the trick right? Well, yes, but then you also have to deal with people giving you the sideways glances as they judge you for periodically sniffing a small bottle. Then, when they finally work up enough courage to ask you what you’re using, you’ll have to go through the questions every essential oil user goes through.

You know…

“Oh, that smells good, what’s in that?”

“How much was this?”

“What do you do with that?”

And last, but certainly not least:

“Do those really work?”

You could also put the oil on a sniffer–a small wick you can soak with whatever oil you like, encased in a plastic case. But, then you have to go through pretty much the same process eventually.

Same for applying oils, except everyone will be able to smell it. But hey, at least you smell good! You’ll just see people start to sniff as you walk in the room and turn in their seats trying to find the source of your aromatherapy.

I reccomend if you actually want to try essential oils after this sarcastic post, read the directions, don’t do anything stupid, don’t expect miracles, and prepare yourself to become the center of conversation as you brand yourself as an essential oil user.