Toxin Free Living with Samantha Lee Wright (from the Essential Oil Revolution Podcast) | Ep. 43

Everybody, you are in for a real treat. Today. I am joined by Samantha Lee Wright, host of the Essential Oil Revolution podcast. And I am just so excited to brag on my girl. And so I'm going to read her bio. And before I do that, I want to make sure that you know how to find her, because you are not going to want to miss out on a single thing that she has going on. So to make sure that you can find this amazing human is look up the Essential Oil Revolution podcast and you can actually find that at www.revolutionoilspodcast.com. she also has an Instagram samleewright and she has a ton of amazing free information. But what you're going to make sure you want to get your hands on today is her lower toxic load freebie. That is what we're going to be talking all about today. And so before I read your bio, I just want to hear your voice in the podcast so everyone can hear you. Thank you so much for being here. Hi.

Hi.

Hello.

Hello. Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited.

I'm so excited, too. We actually met a while ago because I had the great honor of being on your podcast. And so when we were chatting, I was like, girl, I need to interview you.

Kurt, you crushed it, man. I'm telling you. So my podcast is all all about just essential oils, like, so it's health and wellness. But really, people who listen to my podcast, they want to know all the essential oil goodies, all the ins and outs. They want to go deep, and it's really difficult to factor. We've had over 250 episodes. You know, it's really difficult to find people who can come on and really knock it out of the park when it comes to giving that kind of specific content, the deep dive into essential oils. And so you came on, you totally crushed it. You were amazing. And yeah, you're like one of my favorite people now. I'm so glad that we got to meet.

You guys are going to be hearing a lot more about this amazing relationship because, girl, I'm going to be having you come back. We're going to just keep finding topics.

Exactly. We'll find any excuse to talk. Right?

Any excuse. Any excuse. So let me just brag on you for a minute, you guys. I need to read you Samantha's bio. And then we have some really cool things we're going to be talking about today. And so stay tuned. We're going to be really diving into toxic free living, but I also want to get to know our girl a little bit better because what fun is it to learn about the human that's behind the amazing industry and being real trendsetter. So I'm really excited about this, but let me just read you her intro. So, Samantha Levright is host of the Essential Oil Revolution podcast, which is the number one. Did you hear me? That is such an accomplishment. This is the number one essential oil podcast in the world with over 4 million downloads to date. Her podcast is a home for essential oil fanatics, newbies, and people ready to take charge of their health. She is a wife, a mother, author, speaker, and a fierce advocate for living life on your own terms. Samantha, thank you. Thank you so much for being here. I'm so excited, as you could probably tell.

Let's do it. I'm excited, too.

Where I wanted to start is actually an interesting question that is a little bit more just us chatting about what it is to be human. And so when you think about your journey, when you think about how you got to where you are today.

Who.

Were you before that?

Before where I am today, I was an optimist. Maybe a little naive, but truly just a human looking to do the right thing in this world for my body, for the planet, for the world. The kind of person that really, when I started learning about how many problems there were in, you know, pick anything. But let's focus on, let's say, like, commercial products that we sell, because we're going to be talking about that a lot today, the kind of ingredients that are in products. It would make me so upset that I would. I would cry and my mom would always, as a little girl, try to remind me that I didn't have to carry the weight of the world on my shoulders. But that's. That's who I used to be. Someone that thought they would solve all of the problems and get really, really down on myself when I didn't have all the answer.

I so love that I imagine this little you. And she has such a compassionate, deep spirit, and she's seeing all of these things. And then there's this, what I hear you saying, it's a sense of responsibility, of what kind of change can I make? And it's like you owned this drive, this fire inside of you, of how can I take this knowledge and do something good for the world? Because you felt it so very deeply.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think we all do. You know, when we were growing up and we start learning and we start learning how to learn on our own. Right. Like, I remember I used to spend so much Time in the library. I thought libraries were just the coolest thing on the planet. I still do. You know, the fact that you, like anyone can go in and find a topic that they're interested in and just learn on their own. But, you know, we'll probably get into this a bit later. But it's interesting how I got to where I am today, where so much of my world revolves around health and wellness, alternative health. Really empowering people to take charge of their health really started at a young age when I was exploring, exploring my options for birth control. That was my big kind of defining, this is something that's really affecting my life right now. I need reliable birth control and looking at all of my options, researching all of my options. And I didn't like any of them. I thought they were all terrible options. And it got me down this rabbit hole of women's health in particular. And I started learning about natural infertility awareness and, you know, the dangers of hormonal. Hormonal birth control and, you know, all these things. And it got me down this huge rabbit hole that changed my life forever. I started studying midwifery. I became a doula after that because I was so upset about the options that were out there for women, but also completely awe inspired, awestruck by the power of women's bodies and like, that whole cycle of life of becoming a mother and growing a baby and having it, just all the things. And so that was a big chunk of my life was becoming a doula and working with women during that phase. And it all kind of spurred out of this outrage for terrible birth control options for women.

That is such an interesting story. So you're little and you're aware of all of this stuff that's going on, and you see these changes that you want to make happen, and then that fuel is like gasoline to the fire as you're growing and you're looking for options for your health, your hormonal health, family planning, and they're not great. And so the way that I hear that you responded to this, is your solution focused? So you're looking at, well, what can we do? And you found some answers. And so one of the things that you did is you studied women, women's health, and you became a doula. I didn't know that you have practiced as a doula.

Yeah, yeah. Long time. Yeah, I still do it on occasion, but it's definitely becoming more of a used to thing than a current identity, which is hard because it used to be my, like, my biggest identity, actually. I have a tattoo in my arm of the oxytocin molecule, because it's the molecule of childbirth and love. And, yeah, I love that. Working in that industry, working with young families, young moms, during such a pivotal moment in their lives. It's just one of the biggest blessings to be able to be in that world. And, you know, not just for the factor of getting to hold little cute babies all the time, but really seeing families turn into families. You know, like seeing a couple that used to just be them, too, and now it's. Now they're a family. And you can see so many wonderful shifts happening. Like, so many women who would take my childbirth classes or that I would just have conversations with were finally sort of changing the way they saw health care for them, for themselves, saw the products that they were using in their homes and realizing, oh, I've been using this forever on myself. Do I really want this around my baby? And that can be sometimes a big opening of the door for people to realize that we are living in quite a toxic world. But we have so much control and power over that of what we bring into our homes, and we can choose healthier products so that we don't expose ourselves and especially our little babies to those things.

And sometimes it takes caring for somebody else for people to really, I think, pay attention to what we're putting in our bodies. So it's one thing if it's what I'm feeding myself and what's in my environment, but it's another thing if somebody else is depending on my correct decisions. Right. And so you were able.

Women, especially, I think we tend to take care of everyone else first. Right. We have a hard time putting ourselves first. So especially when. When I became pregnant, I've always been into health and wellness and making the best decisions for me and my. My body. But especially when I became pregnant myself, that was a big, you know. Oh, yeah, I really, really don't want to put this in my body now. I've got that extra reason, that extra push to do what's best for myself, because now I have someone else depending on me.

So there's the hormonal piece, and then you. You were pregnant, and so then you have this extra layer of a baby that's dependent on you, and you fiercely want to protect your baby. And so how did it wind up on this journey? How did you end up coming through to love essential oils and focusing on that? Because it sounds like you really also had a love for being a doula.

I did. Yeah. I love being A doula. And for a long time I had studied herbalism too. Just learning, you know, not. Not deeply. I never practiced as an herbalist or anything, but just for my own. I remember a book I got once because I love, I love books. I got a book about herbal teas. It was like 10,000 teaspoons. Tea remedies, right? And I would just pour over that book forever, just like you. Whenever I'd have a headache or a stomachache, I'd be like, oh, there's a T for that, I bet, you know, And I'd look it up. And then I became pregnant and I had my first baby. And then I became pregnant again about two and a half years later. And during that second pregnancy with my now my now six year old daughter, that was when I was introduced to essential oils. I had no idea they existed before then. So even though I was totally into the hippie dippy world and all the natural remedies and alternative health, no one ever taught me that essential oils, pure therapeutic, great essential oils were natural medicine. They were herbalism. There's just in a different form that I wasn't accustomed to yet. And so once I made that connection and I heard all these amazing stories about, you know, people using essential oils to, you know, get their kids off of their asthma medication or to, you know, lower the amount of insulin they needed each month for diabetes, like all these amazing stories, I was like, wow, is that really true? And I started researching and then I started using them on myself. And I was so blown away by how quickly they worked. You know, before, when I'd have maybe a headache or a tummy ache, I'd go make myself some peppermint tea, which would take a while to make the tea, then I'd have to drink the tea and then it would take 30 minutes or an hour before I really felt like it was helping much. So when I had my essential oils, that same scenario, I just go pick my peppermint off of my shelf, open up the bottle and sniff it, or put a drop under my tongue, or put a drop in my water, or rub it on my belly and it took two seconds to do and immediately I would feel results. I would feel the effects of the peppermint on my body and it was so effective and it was so quick. So by that time I had two babies now and I was like, wow, these oils saved me so much time and so much money and so much cabinet space and they work so well. And I just from there became a bit of an evangelical. It's just like you guys, everyone do you know essential oils, they work so well and they're so quick and they're so easy. And it really changed my life forever. And I started the podcast soon after that because I was so fascinated with these oils. I wanted to learn everything. And I wasn't the expert. I said, well, let me get some experts on the mic and ask them all the questions that I want the answers to. I know there's other people that want these answers too. And that really kind of changed my life forever.

I love that. It's kind of in those moments when instant gratification takes too long and then you get that relief from suffering. It's inarguable. And part of my story is that too. Like as you're speaking, I was thinking about, I had this moment when I was in medical school and I was sitting on a clinical rotation and somebody came in with really severe Crohn's disease, which is for those who are listening that aren't familiar with that, it's a really, really severe gastrointestinal disease that can cause agonizing pain and hemorrhaging from the bowels. And she was really sick and we gave her a specific naturopathic medicine and when she came back a week later, all of her symptoms were gone. And it's like what you're describing when you have that peppermint and you're suffering and you feel so unwell, and then you can sniff it or put it under your tongue or put it on your tummy and you're like, oh my gosh. I can't argue the outcome. And that's how I felt with this girl. I was like, oh my gosh. Like, whatever it is that is happening, I need to master this. Because this is hope bringing, this is life giving, this is empowering stuff. And this is what you're doing.

Yeah, that's the word, you know, empowering. If I had to, you know, if someone asked me like, why do you love essential oils so much? If I had to boil it down to one word, I think it would be, I find them empowering, you know, as a mother, especially to have my wellness cabinet full of solutions that I can literally just grab and open and use. And that gives me the power to take charge of my health and to manage my kids health in a way that's safe, it's effective, it's completely natural, and I don't need someone's permission to use it. Right. I don't have to wait to get in touch through the phone and Call the doctor's office and wait to hear back, just to get some easy solutions of what I can do for myself and my family when they're struggling, when they need that extra support. It's a very empowering feeling.

That self sufficiency, that self sufficiency is game changing because so many people who turn towards whether it's essential oils or botanicals or homeopathy, oftentimes they're people who feel so demoralized by what kind of healthcare they have been receiving. To have then this education where you have permission to do what you know is best for your body and, and then to see that it works, it's pretty, pretty life giving. And so I admire you so much for really seeing this. Like your little. You, she's really owned that. Like she's seen, like, this is a problem. I'm identifying that. I feel that like you would weep because you saw it so strongly and so purely and then you did something about it. And 200 plus interviews later, I can't even imagine how many lives you've touched. And you know, one mom or one person or one father listening to this podcast and then they share that wisdom with somebody else that can create this beautiful butterfly effect.

Yeah, I get, I'm just like getting a little teary thinking about the emails that I get from listeners. Like, I got an email the other day that said, sam, your podcast has literally changed my life. Like, I, you taught me how to empower myself and use these tools. And you know, like, here's what happened. Like, I had one of my listeners write in that her uncle, who was, he was stage four lung cancer, I believe it was lung cancer. And she started using frankincense with him. She would make him frankincense pills and he would take them. And, you know, her uncle went back to the doctor and the doctor said, you know, what have you been doing? Because, like, everything has slowed down. You know, like, it didn't cure his cancer, it didn't reverse his cancer, but it extended, extended his life and it improved his quality of life so much. And she was so grateful for that. And so you could just tell she felt so empowered by being able to do something right, to give her uncle this, this little gift of comfort and to slow down, you know, his deterioration too. It was just. Yeah, I'm getting a little teary because it was just a beautiful moment. And I get those kind of emails all the time. And it's not. And it's not me, you know, it's not me. I'm just the messenger. It's this feeling of, you know, you're the one that. That can empower yourself through these tools, through this knowledge. It doesn't have to be essential oils. It can be anything. Learning to shift your mindset, to understand that you are, to borrow a phrase from a friend of mine, you are the CEO of your own health. That's a really powerful mind shift to take.

Yeah, let's emphasize that again. You are the CEO of your own health.

I borrowed that from my friend Marisa Snyder. She's got a great podcast as well. We'll give her credit for that.

We'll put her in the show notes. If you just ping me over a link, I'll make sure to include that which I really like. Because the traditional medical model is very hierarchical in nature, where you go to the expert, and the expert for an exchange of funds, condescends to tell you what. What your prognosis is, how long you're going to live, what you're going to need to do, and what your new label is. And I know I'm taking a slightly extreme version of that, but some of our listeners have been, unfortunately, victims of that extreme. And so if we pendulum all the way to the other extreme, as we have somebody who does some research, they receive education like you did, going to the library, reading the books, listening to the podcast, taking. Taking the classes and then trying something and then seeing the outcome and how there is hope and that we can get out of this rat race. And you get emails about this all the time, which is. That's gotta be really helpful in those moments when we feel demoralized and tired and it's like, oh, why do I keep doing this? And then going back to that. It's gotta be a real fire stoker.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. And just to echo what you were saying about that, that sort of exchange of energy and the way that our medical model is sort of set up right now. I recently experienced this all over again with my daughter. She was three and a half years old at the time and had suddenly had these crazy symptoms going on where her joints were extremely swollen, just really out of nowhere. We had no idea what was going on. And through a long series of events and doctors and specialists, she was diagnosed with juvenile idiopathic arthritis, Jia, which essentially means kind of like rheumatoid arthritis, but for kids, when there's also no explanation for it. That's what that word idiopathic means. And. And it was just this sort of re. Experiencing of everything that had led me up to that point in my life of learning how to do research, learning how to empower myself, not being afraid to raise, you know, put my hand up in a doctor's office and say, you know, tell me more about that, or I disagree. That's really hard for a lot of people to say because it turns out that her diagnosis was a complete misdiagnosis. She does not have jia. She doesn't have arthritis. She has Lyme disease. And I kept pushing and pushing for this testing to get done because they kept, you know, they wanted to tell me that there was no reason for this to be happening to her. It was just, you know, bad luck, basically. And I really refused to believe that. I said, that really makes no sense. To me. This doesn't make sense. And I think if. If you're going through a medical journey, especially, you know, in your gut, when things just don't make sense, and it's that moment that you need to learn to listen to and keep moving forward. And it took months and months. It's not, you know, it's not an instantaneous result of kind of waking up, being like, oh, something's wrong. I have the answer. It's hard. It's really, really draining. It's emotional. It was a very emotional time. But, you know, in the end, I kept pushing forward and I kept asking questions, and I kept researching, and I KE kept sticking up for my daughter and saying, no, I want you to run this test again. It came back negative the first time. I said, well, through my research, I know that this. This particular test has a, you know, 50% inaccuracy rate. Let's run it again, because I think this is what she has. Turns out the second test came back positive, completely changed the trajectory of her care. Whereas had we just kept listening to the doctors, she would have been on immunosuppressants for minimum three years of her life with probably very little results, because that's not what the problem was.

To extend on that from. I study vitalism, which is a perspective, very traditional, naturopathic perspective, that expresses that the body, in its inherent wisdom, will produce symptoms to tell us that something is out of balance. And so if we look at your daughter's symptoms and we honor, okay, her body knows something needs to be supported. Her body knows there's this invasive critter that is making her sick. We're going to tell everybody that by making her symptomatic. And so one philosophy that you received from the conventional medical model is, oh, these symptoms are bad. We're Going to suppress the immune system so that it can't produce these symptoms. And because there are no symptoms, then she's good. Versus what you did is you looked at the symptoms as opportunities for data collection. So as our listeners are hearing your story, I was wondering what you did next. You received this diagnosis. You got this information as a result of your continued advocacy and perseverance. What was next?

Yeah, so once we got that diagnosis, that was huge game changer. It's such a blessing to get a firm diagnosis. Right. And I'm sure anyone who's listening who is still struggling to just get that right, it can be extremely frustrating. So my heart goes out to you. Keep trying. Keep. Keep asking questions. Try and try to figure out what that is. Because once you know what it is, that's when it's a game changer. Once you know what's causing the symptoms, it's all about now helping the body know how to take care of itself. Like what you said earlier about the body having that inherent wisdom to heal itself, I truly believe that. But sometimes our bodies need help, right? Our bodies need extra tools to be able to do that. So we switched gears from there really quickly and started doing a lot of herbal remedies. We worked with an herbalist who specialized in lyme, did a. There's a lot of different protocols out there for lyme disease. We started with the Steven Bruner protein protocol, and then we shifted from there. We finally got into a doctor's office that specialized in that. That beautiful meshing together of western and alternative health. So they had the diagnostic tools to run and the tools to be able to treat things more holistically. That was. That was served finally, are like heaven's gate opening and being like, yes, we finally found, you know, the people that have more answers for what she needs. So they ran a few more tests. We've been running the herbal remedies for a while, and she'd had a lot of improvement, but it wasn't, you know, she wasn't totally out of the woods. They ran some tests and discovered that there was a lot of mold in. In our environment and in her system. And there's also this. This bacteria in her nasal passageway that made it really difficult to. For her body to heal from the mold toxicity, which then made it almost impossible for her body to handle the lyme disease. So it's a. It's sort of a. One thing leads to another story of how when your body has toxins in them, and toxins can be, you know, chemicals unnatural Substances, but they can also be natural substances like mold in our environment or certain bacteria. When our body's overloaded with toxins, it can't function properly. It can't function at its 100% capacity, which is. It's designed to heal itself. So she was a kind of textbook example of, you know, she's dealing with this disease. If we just tried to directly attack the disease, it wasn't enough. Her body needed more support port. We needed to flush her system from a lot of these toxins in order for it to then be able to do its job, which is to try to kick out the Lyme disease, which is a. If anyone knows anything about that disease, it is extremely difficult. It's a very intelligent bacteria that's very hard to get rid of. So we're still not 100% out of the woods, but we are miles, miles ahead of where we were, you know, two and a half years ago, Gosh, almost three years now that she was first diagnosed.

And she's.

She's running, she's jumping, she takes dance, she takes ballet, she jumps on the trampoline. Whereas, you know, two years ago, a year ago, she was. Couldn't even walk hardly. So it's been, you know, some days go by and I forget. I forget that she has this. This disease that she's still battling in her body because she's just. She's doing really, really well.

And that's using a lot of natural and integrative methods. And so I really see that you've married the two together, which is ideal. And so for listeners who are hearing this is you have the right to do an audit of your treatment team. And so if you go to a doctor and the doctor says it's idiopathic juvenile arthritis, and they just say, sorry, we don't know what it is. You have to be on immunosuppressants, it's not curable, or whatever nonsense sense they say is oftentimes for me, that says, well, I'm not satisfied with what your projection of the future is. I'm going to get a second and a third and a fourth opinion until you can find someone who's willing to collaborate integratively. There's doctors out there that do that. I know for Lyme specifically, you want to look for doctors that are. I'm sure you guys have done this. Like Lyme literate doctors. They call them lld. And what I love about this is you're like an ideal person to interview because you just make these perfect segues because really, the bones of. What I would love to learn from you today is how environmental medicine, toxicity and detox can play a role in our health. And from your unique zone of genius, using essential oils and alternatives to, you know, that scrubbing bubbles spray that people put in their tubs. So can you, can you speak a little about that?

Yeah, absolutely. I'm a, I'm just a huge advocate for people taking charge of their toxic load. And it seems like a big responsibility when you kind of frame it like that. But it's so important for all of us, everyone, you know, people who are going through a health struggle or not, people who are completely healthy seeming right now to lower our toxic load. And because our bodies are constantly trying to filter out these toxins every day. It's their job, right? It's what our bodies are designed to do. We take in. We're never going to avoid junk 100% of the time. Right? But it's our body's job to recognize what's beneficial for our bodies, what's not, and filter out what's not. But in the society we're living in today, more often than not our toxic load, the amount of toxins in our body that our bodies are trying to filter out are just astronomically higher than what they should be. And it's not your fault. It's our environment that we're living in today. But just to be clear and set the record first, you don't have to go what I call full granola to be able to lower your toxic load. Because as soon as I start having this conversation, a lot of people start being like, oh my God, she's going to tell me to throw out everything and do this and don't eat this and all this stuff. And there's a balance that you can find. And I'm a huge fan of balance. I never do anything 1000% right. It's like you got to find your balance and what works for you. And that's why I focus a lot on what people are buying, products that they're buying and bringing into their homes. Because I feel like that is the easiest first step to take. It's the one that you have the most control over. You know, later when you have the budget or the energy, you can start eating all organic food and you can start doing all the more full granola things. But if you need this like a baby step starting place, start with what you're bringing into your home because you have total control over that. And things like eating all organic is great, but it's really expensive, right? So, you know, as someone who, you know, years ago when we were raising our kids, we struggled to put food on the plate. We were in a really, really tight financial spot. And sometimes they had to choose, you know, between, you know, buying the $3 shampoo or buying the healthy cereal for my kids. You have to make those tough decisions. But with the things that you're bringing into your home, that the products that you're using to clean your home or clean your hair or in the bathroom, wherever, essential oils, makes it so easy to make these products ourselves. So even if you're on a tight budget, you can, you can lower your toxic load by buying a healthier product or making your own with essential oils. But just to give like a kind of frame of reference, why this is so important. You know, recently they did this cord blood study. Have you seen this cord blood study that they've done?

Tell me about it.

They took the cord blood from newborn babies. They tested 287 newborn baby cord blood. So these humans that were fresh out of the womb into the world, they have not been crawling around, they have not been exposed to breathing in the toxic air or eating chemicals or anything like that. And they found, oh, sorry, it wasn't 287 cord bloods. They said it. I can't remember how many babies it was, but they found 287 commercial chemicals, pesticides and pollutants in the newborn umbilical blood. Before even starting their life out, there was over 250 toxins found in their body. And that was just the ones that they had tested. It goes to show that the buildup of just being human is that stuff is supposed to be filtered out. It's not supposed to go through the umbilical cord and into the babies, through the placenta and into the babies. It's supposed to be filtered out. But our toxic loads, just being human and walking around in our environments and eating the things we eat and using the products that we're using and breathing the air we're breathing and the water we're drinking, it's all building up at such quick levels and our bodies can't handle it. It's just too much. And that's why we see such a spike of autoimmune disease. That's why we see a spike in infertility. And it's linked to everything because it's preventing our body from doing its job of healing itself and keeping ourselves functioning at optimum health.

And I think about coming into the world as a baby where we already have that chemical burden. I mean, a large percentage of infants develop jaundice because their liver and their gallbladder are still trying to figure out what they're doing, let alone having to process out these complex environmental chemicals. So if we know objectively, like this baby needs a little bit of light therapy because their liver isn't processing things correctly, just imagine what's happening with the environmental toxicities. And different toxicities impact the nervous system and the endocrine system in so many different ways. In fact, I have two separate tests that I run with individuals. Mold is actually a completely separate category, but should arguably always be included, like you said, because mold and lime, they definitely piggyback off of each other. But in addition to that, I always run solvents, and I run metals. And so when I've done these testing, 100% of the people that I've tested show clinically significant accumulation of toxins. And it just depends on where they are in the country, where they are in their health journey. Have they been detoxing. But everybody shows statistically significant toxicity. And that makes sense if we're seeing it in our lives when we're being formed in the womb and we come with this barrel that's already filled with a toxic burden. So one of the things I would be curious to learn about is what are some ways that we can inexpensive, expensively make a big impact in our home? For example, like you said, cleaning supplies or personal products. What do you suggest?

Yeah, so when I'm teaching people how to lower their toxic loads, the first assignment that I give them is to throw out the word fragrance from their. Their vocabulary of things that are allowed in their homes. Just ban the word word fragrance from your home. And you're allowed to do that, right? You're the CEO of your own home, too. You're allowed to say, nope, that's not allowed in my house. And fragrance is one of the easiest places to start because it's easy to remember. Right. It's not a long glucose sulfur chemical name that we have to memorize. When you are in store or you're shopping online and you're looking for a product to buy to bring into your home, just turn the bottle over, look at the ingredients list, and see if there's the word fragrance in there. Or sometimes it can be also labeled as perfume. Like, instead of perfume, perfume. So fragrance. Perfume. Either one. If it has it in it. That is, to me, the easiest way to identify if a product has harmful ingredients in it. Not like everything in this world. It's not 100% guaranteed all the time, but it's one of the easiest places to start because the word fragrance is, you have to understand, is a code word used in commercial industries. It's a code word for a scent or flavoring agent that may contain any combination of 3,000 plus stock chemical ingredients that most of which are known hormone disruptors or at the very least, allergens. The, the American Academy of Dermatology actually says that fragrance is the biggest cause of cosmetic contact dermatitis. Higher than nickel, higher than poison ivy. Fragrance is what causes so many, you know, skin irritations as well. But we also know that the, the chemicals that are being used to manufacture these fragrances have parabens, petroleum byproducts, synthetically derived scents that are designed to mimic natural plant aromas. People think the word fragrance is just like, oh, they put some lavender in there. You know, if something scented with lavender scent and you see that the word fragrance is on there, I can guarantee you it's not any actual lavender that is in that product. It is just a scientific lab of, you know, a scientist squirting all the chemicals they can together that they have figured out in the laboratory. Smells kind of like lavender. When you experience that versus a true lavender, like in a lavender essential oil that is actually pure, that has actually come from nothing but lavender plant. And you smell the difference. You can smell, oh, this smells like earth. This smells like nature. This smells like true botanical. This stuff over here in this cheap, you know, $1 bottle of lotion labeled as lavender scent. It actually doesn't smell like lavender. But that's what we're used to, lavender smelling. Because we're so used to that, that fragrance being synthesized in a laboratory and sold to us. So it's, it's a code word used in industry where they're allowed to hide ingredients under that term. Because a fragrance can be considered a trade secret. A company doesn't have to disclose what they use to make their fragrance because they can hide it under a trade secret law and put it underneath that fragrance term. And that's what a lot of companies are doing now that they realize people are waking up and going, no, I don't want sls in my products. No, I don't want parabens in my products. I don't want this and that. And I don't want to turn a bottle over and see a list of 100 chemicals that I can't pronounce. Companies are waking up to that realization and going, oh, great, we'll just hide it. All under the term fragrance and call it a trade secret, so we don't actually have to put that on the bottle. So it's the easiest place to start because it's recognizable. And I'd say 99% of the time, if a company has the word fragrance on their bottle, it's just an immediate red flag that they don't have your best interest at heart as far as the chemicals and the ingredients that they're using to sell to you that you are then going to take home and breathe in or put it on your skin, which is going to get directly absorbed into your bloodstream. There's going to be some harmful ingredients in there that is so easy to avoid if you were to just buy from a better company or make your own, whatever that is. And now with, like, I am not the DIY queen by any means, but, you know, thanks to Google, you know, I can Google, you know, how to make my own household cleaner or soap or deodorant or whatever with essential oils. And you'll find thousands of recipes that you can try, and it can become kind of fun. So if you're on a tight budget, you know that that's, that's what you do. You make it yourself. If you have the money, buy from a company that, that you trust, you know, that has your best interest at heart. And that takes a little research. But there's lots of companies today that do that now, like that they know that people want healthier ingredients. They want products that don't contain a bunch of crap that's going to go into our bodies. And so you just need to learn how to research and find those brands or again, make it yourself. Because, yes, those things can be a little more expensive than the cheap stuff that you can find at the dollar store that's made from really cheap chemical ingredients. Right.

You're reminding me of. I was exposed to the power of fragrance in a bad way again. When I was in medical school. I learned a lot. I came from Iowa, and so, you know, we don't. We don't get exposed to as many things as if you were in a giant city, little cities in Iowa. And so I was in medical school in Arizona, and I met this friend of mine who had anosmia. Anosmia is the fancy doctor term for she couldn't smell anything. So we rewind and we look at her history. And it all began while she was working at Yankee Candle Factory.

Aha.

And so she had been sniffing all of these fragrances, and it's like I walk by there now. Now that I'm more sensitive to those kinds of things. I'm like, oh, I get this flavor blast of these very strange smells. And she was sniffing, smelling it all the time. And so her suspicion was that there was something going on chemically and she had, you know, neuroimaging done. And it wasn't until she had environmental testing done that she was actually able to identify she had a really strong toxic load. And it may or may not have been Yankee Candle, but it's fairly interesting.

Surprise me. Yeah, a lot of fragrance and plus, candles themselves are. I mean, unless you're buying, you know, specifically candles that don't have this stuff in them, but soy paraffin, like all these things that were burning off into the environment. There's been some studies done, and I can't, you know, quote you for sure on these, but there's some studies done on candles versus, like, smoking cigarettes. And there's some types of candles that burning is. Is, like, worse than smoking a whole pack of cigarettes just from the stuff that it's burning off and you're breathing in. That's breaking my heart. I know.

It's kind of my indulge. It's like my. My bad indulgence. I'm like, I really like anthropology candles, but I need. I need. I'm going to be accountable to you today, Samantha. I'm going to start making my own candles, and I'm going to use.

The candle industry is going to come, like, you know, they're going to come and, like.

They'Re going to give us a feast and assess. They're going to be like, Yankee Candle. I love that.

That.

And I think the fragrance is such a easy, fast thing that we can do. Like you said, just flip over the label and look at the ingredients. I'm curious about. I love your perspective on. There's lots of conversations about all these essential oil companies that are popping up to meet the demand of people who are. Who want to use them. But not all essential oil companies are created equal. And I've also learned a little bit that some essential oil companies, like, they'll say it's lavender, but it may not actually be lavender. And so I was wondering if you could give us a little bit of an inside scoop from your perspective about how to choose essential oils wisely.

Yeah, it's a huge topic, and I won't. I won't go on too long about it, but you're absolutely right. There are. Not all essential oils are created equally. And lavender specifically, for example, there's Been studies done on the amount of lavender being exported out of France. Like lavender essential oil being exported out of France is about 10 times the amount of lavender that's actually being grown in France. So we know that there's a lot of synthetic lavender oil, Right, Being exported out of France that is not actual coming from actual lavender. It's just made in a. In a laboratory somewhere and it's being sold as lavender essential oil. Because the essential oil industry is one of the least regulated industries out there. And I'm no fan of overregulation. But as far as protecting consumers, there's so much trickery that happens in the essential oil industry. There'll be, you know, there's nothing preventing a company from labeling an essential oil 100% pure therapeutic grade. You know, those terms alone get used over and over and over again by companies who legally, there's no one preventing them from putting that on a label and yet filling their bottle full of 98% crap. Right? Completely synthesized stuff. So it's estimated that over 96% of the essential oils being sold on the market are adulterated or synthesized somehow. It's really sad because especially as an advocate for people using essential oils for their health, people go out and they get so inspired and then they go buy some crap. I'm sorry I keep using that word, but it is. It's utter crap that's being sold to them. You know, at places like Walmart or the gas station or CVS or even in their health food store. There's really not a lot of regulation that prevents someone putting synthetic chemicals into an essential oil bottle. And then people buy it and they take it home and they use it and it doesn't work. Or worse, it makes them sick. Sick. And so that's when there's a lot of. There's a lot of misconception about essential oils out there because people have a lot of bad experiences. And 99% of the time, those bad experiences are a direct result of using a bad essential oil, basically. So it's kind of sad.

And there's other things that make it more complicated, too, right? So if we have, let's say 5% of these companies are actually using what they say they're using. In your journey, you started by studying botanicals, and then you discovered essential oils later. When I was studying botanicals, I got to go and stay at Gaia in Brevard, North Carolina, and they taught us about how in order to get the therapeutic, the most optimal therapeutic benefit of the plant is you have to time it correct correctly. So, for example, kava kava, the part used as the root for reducing anxiety. But if you harvest kava kava root after the plant has gone to flower, the plant has pulled a lot of that nutritional benefit out of the roots to push it into the flower. And so kava that has been harvested after flowering will be much less potent than kava that was harvested before. And so when we think about who's accountable to harvesting these plants at their more therapeutic, optimal dose, and then maybe you are getting kava kava, but maybe they use pesticides or other harmful agents, or maybe there was lead in the water or there's, you know, there's like wolverine here in Michigan. And we all know about Flint, Michigan. And so it gets way more complicated. And so when we're having these conversations and you're talking to people who are emailing you and reaching out like, okay, I want to use oils, but now you've got me freaked out about all of these imposters, what do you suggest?

So what I tell people is it really comes down to trust. And trust is a tricky thing, right? It can be based on a friend recommending something, and you trust that friend's judgment. It can be based on your own research. But doing actual research on the Internet nowadays is really difficult. It could be trusting what is coming from a company. It can be really difficult. And I don't have the answer for everyone, but my heart goes out there to someone who braves the journey of researching pure essential oils. It is a tough one, I will say. I was introduced to a company and I started really exploring their practices as best as I could. And I really liked them. In particular, I use young living because you can actually go and visit the farms. You can actually see what they're doing and see how they're distilling, how they're growing the plants, how they're harvesting the plants. And they earned my trust from all the research I did and all of the things that I saw with my own eyes and the people, the employees that I talked to, I did a big, deep dive into, into them and other companies. And that's the one that I. That earned my trust. And I think that that's what it really comes down to. I'm not, I'm not going to say they're the only company out there making pure essential oils, but they're definitely the ones that I go to. I don't really use essential oils from any other company on rare occasion, because they're just the people I, I trust. They're the only essential oil company that actually owns their own farms. They have their roots in sustainable farming. The founder grew up as a farmer and that's where his heart was at. You know, he like, knew that it was his responsibility to not only make pure essential oils for consumer use, for therapeutic use, but also to protect the environment. Because it takes a lot of plants to get one bottle of essential oil. And if you're not doing it correctly, you're not doing it sustainably, then you're just doing a disservice to the earth. It's really sad. So, you know, I don't know if I have good advice for people besides just doing some research and finding a company that has earned your trust and stick with them. Some easy sort of red flags you can look out for when it comes to essential oils is as a rule of thumb, if a company is selling you a bottle of essential oil that's in a clear bottle, then they don't care. They don't care about the quality of that oil because you have to protect oils from sunlight. So putting them in a blue or brown bottle or having an opaque label surrounding the bottle, that's like one kind of easy quick analysis that you can do. If, if the bottle specifically says do not ingest, then that is usually not 100%. It's like a lot of these rules aren't 100%. There's exceptions to these. But that's usually a sign that it's not a very high quality essential oil. If it has the word perfume on it anywhere or perfume on it anywhere. Not a good sign. I'm trying to think of my other red flag. That's kind of all I got from now. I don't want to, I don't want to get too, too over overwhelming for people.

And this is when people need to make sure that they go and they bookmark your podcast. You talk about this, this is your jam.

Yeah.

And so to kind of recap what I hear you saying is that research their practices, research, where are they farming, where are they getting their information, are they using more natural, organic, wildcrafting practices and what are they putting on their label, how are they bottling it? And I think that's a really great easy take home tip is if it's in a clear bottle at the gas station, it's quite unlikely that you're getting actual therapeutic grade oil. You're probably not getting what you think that you're getting and you're making these choices to try to get healthier. And so the other thing I'm thinking about is that in order to actually grow all of the lavender, to then extract out this small amount of wonderful essential oil is you got to grow a lot more lavender. There's a lot more labor, and it's going to cost a little bit more. And so oftentimes, if you find a really cheap essential oil, you might not actually be getting the pure essential oil.

Yeah. Price can be a big red flag as well. Absolutely. People are like, yeah, I came back from India with a pure bottle of rose essential oil for, like, 12 bucks. I was like, well, I'm sorry to break it to you, but I can guarantee you there's not a drop of real rose in there or maybe maybe one or two drops of real rose, but the rest ain't gonna do it because can you imagine how expensive it would be? It takes over 220lbs of rose petals to make one. I think it's one bottle of essential oil. I'm trying to remember the numbers here. If you take the flat and think about how expensive roses are to grow. So. So, you know, a pure essential oil should be nothing in the bottle except for what has been extracted from that plant, preferably without using chemicals to extract it. You know, some companies will pour a bunch of solvent chemicals on the plant material to sort of leach out as much of the juice, for lack of a better word, as possible, versus, you know, a company like Young Living that will only use a low heat, not a high heat. There's some companies that will use super high heat in order to get more juice out for less money versus Young Living will only do a low heat distillation to slowly get those precious molecules out without destroying their therapeutic benefits. So that a whole nother layer of the complication is even if a company is organic or not using chemicals, it doesn't mean they're actually extracting the essential oil from the plant in a way that's preserving its. Its true therapeutic potential either. So, unfortunately, it is. It can be quite complicated, but at the end of the day, you are going to get what you pay for, first of all. And. And there's lots of trickery going on in the market.

So I know we need to finish up here in just a couple of minutes, and I wanted to ask you, you, first question is recipe, and then the second question is super secret. So the first. And I have two recipes.

I do really bad on secret questions.

Making you anxious, which is good, because the first recipe question is actually stress relief. If you could do a combo of your favorite essential oils for Stress relief. What would you want to put in them?

Yeah, well, first, I do do it in a bath because that's the most relaxing way to use your essential oils is in a bath. Mix in a little Epsom salt, but then from there it's oil of choice. Man, there's no wrong way to go. Except in a bath. You would not want to do peppermint, clove, cinnamon, any of the hot oils that could burn your skin. But other than that, my go to is vanilla with a little bit of lime and copaiba. Oh, I love that combination.

Vanilla, lime, and copaiba. That sounds divine.

So divine.

Yeah, I'm writing this down. All y' all who are listening should be writing this down too. Wonderful. Okay, so you'll use that for when we end our call since I'm creating stress. And the second recipe is your favorite oils to use in your homemade house cleaning cleanser things.

Yeah, my homemade house cleaner. I actually buy what's called Thieves household cleaner that young living makes. It's this concentrate that's plant based. It's super great. You can use it on any surface. It's affordable. I love the stuff. I'm like, that's like the one thing I always tell people. You have to use Thieves cleaner. But the essential oils that they put put in there are cinnamon, clove, rosemary, eucalyptus, and lemon. And that's a beautiful combination. And you didn't ask, but I'll say my second favorite for cleaning is lavender and rosemary together.

You have such good ideas. These are so good. And by the way, Thieves, I've had great personal success with thieves. If somebody has like a throat and infection or their lymph nodes are enlarged, just putting a little Thieves along the lymphatic chain. If someone's listening to this audio and pointing to the jawline at the neck and then applying Thieves just down the roof of the mouth. Because we have quite a lot of lymph nodes through the mouth and I've. I don't know your experience, but I think it works really well.

Yeah, absolutely. I also love for throat stuff, taking just like a spoonful of honey and then mixing in a drop or two of lemon essential oil and sort of stirring that and then just sort of like munch on the honey a little bit and let it go down your throat. It's. Oh, it's so soothing.

Oh, that sounds wonderful. And local honey so that it has that the immune stuff from the local pollen. Okay, you ready for the super secret question?

I'm so nervous.

So the question is if your now self could tell your past self just one thing. What would you want her to know? I know I threw you a curveball here.

I think I would tell my younger self to balance the fun with the responsibility. And I think I've gotten a lot better about that in my later years, for sure. Like my mommy used to say, you know, don't put the whole weight of.

The world on your shoulders.

And it's definitely what I used to do. And I've gotten a lot better at balancing that with the fun. Because if you're not having fun, then what's the point? It doesn't matter if you're eating all organic, raw vegan, and you don't have a drop of toxins in your entire household. If you're stressed out not actually enjoying living, then, you know, what's the point?

I love that so much, Samantha, that I feel like that was what my younger self needed to hear too. And I think that we so often talk about, like, okay, let's talk about toxicity, let's talk about panic attacks, let's talk about all these different things. And I think it's so easy to ignore that childlike delight that we as adults deserve to understand, also experience. And so finding that balance, I think that's amazing. 10 out of 10. Your extra credit. You got your extra credit. 10 out of 10.

Yay. Yay. And just like one last plug. I mean, we have to wrap up. But, you know, you just reminded me so much of. I think one of the reasons I fell in love with essential oils so much is they did bring out that childlike curiosity in me. It made healthy living really fun again. Right? Because, like, especially when you get your first to few diffuser and you start concocting all your own essential oil recipes and stuff, and you're like, I don't need Yankee candles. I can make my own, you know, beautiful diffusers. And it's like magic. It's like magic. It's a beautiful thing. It's magic.

And it's been magic talking to you. I'm so grateful.

It's.

I just admire what you're doing in this world so much. So thank you and thank you for taking the time to come here today.

Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

You guys, if you haven't yet bookmarked, go and make sure that you find Sam Lee Wright at Instagram. Check out her Essential Oil Revolution podcast, and do check out her website where she's keeping everything up to date. All the cool stuff that's happening, all the freebies wellness stuff. Thereevolutionoilspodcast.com thank you, honey.

Thank you so much.