Everything You Need To Know About Essential Oils For Fat Loss, Performance, Smart Drugs, Scar Healing, Detoxing And More.

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Hey folks, it's Ben Greenfield and I'll try not to gross you out here, but two years ago I got this nasty staph infection and it exploded into the flesh eating bacteria mrsa. It took over both my arms and legs. It ate this golf ball sized hole in my right thigh. I'm not kidding here. And I almost lost my left arm. The doctor said if I wouldn't have identified it or if I would have caught it any later that my arm would have been gone. And I posted the entire nasty story with some pretty shocking photos. I'll put them in the show notes for this post and I'll give you the URL in a little bit here. But basically, after trying every natural remedy and every topical cream on the face of the planet, I eventually got rid of this entire MRSA thing and healed myself with something called essential oils. Now, over the past two years I went from knowing nothing about essential oils to discovering an entire wealth of knowledge about these natural remedies. And in today's podcast you're going to learn everything you need to know about essential oils for fat loss and performance, for cognitive enhancement, for scar healing, for detoxing, and a lot more. My guest today is Dr. Sarah Labisco and Sarah is a naturopathic physician. She's licensed in Vermont as an nd. She's also got a Bachelor's of psychology and she currently has this private integrative medicine practice where she uses essential oils and holistic medical practices along with conventional medicine quite a bit in her practice. And she has a new book coming out too soon called Break free medicine. And Dr. Sara has helped me personally out quite a bit with the essential oils that I've chosen to use for myself and for my family. And today you're going to learn everything that you need to know. But maybe we're afraid to ask about essential oils. Now, one thing before Sarah and I, or two things actually before Sarah and I delve in, the first is that you can access the show notes for this podcast over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com oils, including the link to that nasty MRSA story that I just described. And the other thing is that the FDA has some new regulations about what people can and can't say about natural remedies like this. So I'll make this easy on you, Dr. Sarah, but basically, if it sounds like Dr. Sarah is being really careful with her wording, there's a reason for that. It's based on these new FDA regulations. But we'll still, we'll still fill you guys in on everything you need to know. So, Dr. Sarah, thanks so much for coming on the call today.

Thanks for having me, Ben. It's great to be here.

You know, I want to, I want to dig right in with basically essential oils and what they actually are. But before we do that, can you just describe how you got into essential oils? I mean, was this something you discovered in naturopathic school or something you grew up with, or where exactly did you start to use these?

Actually, I was headed towards either pharmacy school or physician assistant school. What ended up happening is I had herniated a disc in my back L4 and L5 when I was actually in nursing school. So that led me to, you know, kind of reevaluate where I wanted to go in my life. And I couldn't, I couldn't lift anymore. So. And I knew I still wanted to be in medicine or to help people out, you know, with healing. And what ended up happening is I was very much into what they call the allopathic method. And my mom, who I thought was absolutely crazy at the time, discovered these essential oils and she had started using them for hormonal health and noticed an amazing difference. And I had struggled with back pain even before my back went out since I was 16 and nobody could diagnose it. Nobody knew what was going on because I was so young. I wasn't supposed to have a herniata death. And I was able to, I did get the surgery. And then after the surgery, even though I was taking, I mean, literally probably swallowing bottles of anti inflammatory drugs and pain medication, my mom introduced me to these essential oils and I found relief from pain for the first time. And I was very hesitant. I had to read the whole desk reference before I would even touch them. Because, you know, I was talking to pharmacists, I'm like, this thing is whack. They're not approved, what's going on. But I think when you experience something for yourself and you know there's a reason that something happens to you. And that kind of led me to go on to naturopathic school and use this, this modality that even that a lot of Natural cats use at the current time to help people.

Yeah. Yeah. Wow. And, you know, I. I agree that essential oils can be kind of. Kind of mysterious almost, and they definitely fly under the radar. The first time that I discovered them was with oil of oregano, and I've kind of branched out since then. But, I mean, it's crazy. Like, like 100% oil of oregano. I put that on my. On my mouth, and it just literally, like, burnt the insides of my mouth. Not to scare people away, but, like, this is. This is some pretty potent stuff, and I want to talk about which ones are safe and which ones you recommend. But before we even do that, what is an essential oil? Like, how does all of this plant extract that's so powerful get shoved into a tiny little dropper bottle that these essential oils come in?

Well, the essential oil itself is the aroma, organic, volatile part of the plant. It's what's referred to as the lifeblood of the plant. So if people, like, if they're gardeners or if they're maybe trimming their plant, what they'll see is kind of a liquid portion, and that contains all the different constituents of different molecules of the plant. And the way that they're concentrated is that they're distilled, usually through steam distillation. There are some other oils that use some other methods, but this really makes the essential oils more potent than dried herbs. So, for example, like, one drop of peppermint oil might be equal to 28 cups of peppermint tea as far as potency. And they're very lipid soluble, and their chemistry is very similar to our human body chemistry. So they're able to penetrate personal membrane, communicate, you know, at the cellular level in the DNA and, you know, travel kind of. They have kind of this mind of their own. They're able to go where they need to go to help balance out the body, because there's so many different constituents that are still intact when they distill the oil property.

Have people been harvesting this stuff from plants for a long time? Because it's like, one of the things that I think about a lot of people are like, well, you know, supplements are unnatural, or why would you want to take supplements or oil or herbs and things of that nature? But the way that I understand it, like, people have been kind of concentrating wild plant extracts and oils from plants, I think, for a really long time.

Right. There's actually biblical references to essential oils. They found some frankincense in King Tut's tomb. They think the Egyptians used Had some crude distillation method. They found some old distilleries back in Oman for frankincense. So it's been around for a really long time. They actually said that from what people are finding is that the peasants actually were given the herbs and the kings and queens were the ones that the essential oils were reserved for. And then what ended happening, what ended up happening is, you know, kind of herbs became more popular, but essential oils is actually thought to be the first, first modern medicine or first mankind's medicine.

So I want to delve into the science a little bit. Like we've talked about, for example, like putting fat in your coffee before in this podcast, and how when you. When you mix fat and coffee, it somehow activates oils in the coffee that get carried across your blood brain barrier so that, like the, the terpenes in the coffee can. Can act as cognitive enhancers. You know, oils work in the body in all sorts of different ways, but when it comes to essential oils, I mean, once, once you actually use an essential oil, what's happening inside of the body or what's the actual mechanism of action via which the extract of a plant would actually work within the body?

Well, they're what they call. They're what they're called organic compounds. So that means there's carbon and hydrogen and then there's different groups attached to the essential oils. And these are the little signaling molecules that actually induce enzyme processes in our body that signal an enzyme to turn on or turn off. And depending on the essential oil, like, for example, lavender might have 300 different constituents in it, and they could be made up of the three most common kinds. Groupings of these constituents are monoterpins, sesquiterpins, and phenylpropanoids.

Okay, so there's. So there's terpenes in these essential oils, too, right?

And like, so, for example, sesquileturpins, those are really well known for oxygenating. They have the capacity, because they're so small, to cross the blood brain barrier. So that helps oxygenate your brain. And, you know, oils that are high in sesquiterpenes are used for focus. And, you know, kids use them for helping studying monoterpins. Oils that are high in monoterpins are really good as far as making, you know, making it hard for bacteria or fungus or viruses to thrive in the body. So it's all. And then, you know, a lot of them, like peppermint is a combination of all three. And that's why it has so many different effects, because, you know, Like, I'll tell people what peppermint does, and they're like, there's no way that one thing can do that much. But really, because of the different constituents that are intact in the oil, it really can. It can. You know, the constituents will kind of go where they need to go.

Yeah, I've used. I've used peppermint before as, like a. Well, not only is just like a flavor enhancer, but, like, it helps to kind of keep you sharp during the day. Like, I've. I've talked before on the podcast about how I'll make, like, carbonated water, and I put some essential peppermint oil in there with chocolate stevia. It's kind of like drinking Christmas. Like, it can be used. I've had some folks use it for, like, you know, bacterial overgrowth and things of that nature. So, yeah, peppermint's. Peppermint's crazy. And I want to. I definitely want to talk about some of your favorite oils for specific issues, because I know you've got some. But one of the question I have about kind of the logistics of oils is do you. Do you use them topically? Do you use them orally in other ways? Like, what's the best way to actually apply essential oils?

Okay, so I use topically, orally, and I inhale. But I have a little disclaimer here, right? You can smell them or you can diffuse them.

Oh, like an air diffuser. Like a cold air diffuser or something like that.

Exactly. But you have to make sure if you're using these methods that the oil is pure and there's no additives or synthetics because they aren't regulated in the United States. So they could say, you mean if.

You use it for cold air diffusion or for anything.

Well, I mean, you're going to get the aromatherapy benefits because if you're inhaling, you know, the sense of smell will direct. You know, it goes into that emotional part of the limbic region of the brain. So that's going to cause an emotional impact or a relaxation effect that essential oils are probably famous for in the United States. But as far as the constituents and some of the medicinal properties that are in the plant, in order for you to get all those benefits, you need to use an oil that actually went through the process of the plant being taken care of, the distillation done properly, you know, the packaging, and keep making sure that the oil is of high grade. Otherwise.

What's that mean, high grade?

Right now, there's two basic European standardizations for genuine essential Oils, and that's the Afner, which is French normalization organization, and the ISO organization, which is an international standard. But you also, you know, you want to check with the company to make sure that they're also using other methods because they can still spike the standardized constituents that those measures are used against. So, for example, like, lavender has to have a specific percentage of different constituents in order for it to be labeled therapeutic. But some companies could just spike it with a synthetic filler to make the linol acetate look really high, but it's not the natural form. So that's where like companies can use optical rotation to tell you if that's the real oil natural or if it's been painted. You want to look for, you know, if they're using gas chromatography, heavy metal analysis, microbial flashpoint, refractive index, specific gravity. If they, if basically the company can list a bunch of different tests that prove that it's standardized in this independent third party testing, it's probably a good company.

Okay. Wow. So there's, there's basically what you're saying is not all essential oils are created equal. So because I, I've actually, I've gotten a lot of them off of Amazon. Like I've done like Echinacea and Astragalus. I've gotten lavender off of there. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they're good, huh?

No, because they can even say 100% pure and only they only have to contain 5% of the actual oil.

Wow, Amazing. Amazon. Amazon is not necessarily the gold standard then.

No. And you know, the company that I use, I mean, they will actually stop producing some blends if they can't get to the high constituent and therapeutic value of that oil, which ones you use, because they will not compromise. I use young living. Young living essential oils.

Okay, cool. Got it. Okay, I want to dig into some of your recommendations, like the fun stuff here. So let's just. Can I just like throw some conditions at or. Well, I got to be careful with my wording. Right. But can I throw some uses at you and, and you can tell me what some of your favorite oils are and how you use them for these.

Sure.

Okay, cool. So we talked about, like, how I had like a MRSA staph infection and I had to work on my immunity and fighting bacteria and all that jazz, like in terms of strengthening the immune system or helping out, like if somebody finds out they have bacteria in their bloodstream or staph or something like that. What kind of essential oils do you like, for the immune system.

Okay. So to support the immune system, there's kind of two classes. I would really go for citrus oil because they're high in linoleum, so they help the body, you know, defend against tumor growth. And they're also calming. So they're going to help the stress response, which we know decreases immune response. And they're high in these constituents called flavonoids in palluchino. And those actually feed the microbiome, which we know that the microbiome or the belly bugs, is the modulator of your immune system. Like, you know, 70 to 80% of your immune system.

So this would be like. Like a lemon essential oil.

Yeah, like, exactly. Yeah. So I have a lot of my clients put a drop of lemon in 8-16oz of water, and they just. Through the day and, you know, that's helping their immune system. It's actually helping cleanse their water. Right. Because the essential oil will help inactivate any impurities in the water.

So why wouldn't you just be able to, you know, because I've heard, like, lemon peel has oils in it. And you can. You can technically, like, what's it called when you. When you, like, grate the lemon peel? You know, I'm talking about. I forget the actual name of what it is, but, you know, like making like a grated lemon peel or like eating lemons. Like, doesn't that give you the lemon essential oil to do something like that?

Well, for example, like, you would need like one kilo of an oil to equal 3,000. So it's like a one to three ratio. One to 3,000 ratio for lemon.

One to 3,000.

It's pretty up there. Yeah.

Which I get. Which is why. Which is why oregano would burn my lips off if I have like a drop of oregano. But I could eat oregano all day long and it wouldn't do that.

Exactly. Because when you're distilling it, you're concentrating it. Right. You're. It's separating the actual constituent. So it's all in that bottle. All the other, like, dried parts of the herbs and all that, you know, that's separated out. So you're getting a really concentrated. It's kind of like, we'll do an alcohol comparison. It's like really cheap beer versus straight, you know, straight.

Absolute. Yeah. Okay, interesting. So you have to eat a heck of a lot of lemons. So citrus oils, in addition to the lemon citrus oil for the immune system, are there any other citrus oils that you recommend?

Orange is A really good one, too, that's been well studied for some of its ability to decrease tumor growth.

So let's say that you were traveling and you didn't want to get sick or you want to strengthen your immune system. You were going to use a lemon oil. You order a lemon oil, you get a bottle of it or whatever. Would this be something you put in a cup of water and you drink? Would you like smear it on your lymph nodes? Would you just put it into a cold air diffuser and smell it or how would you use it?

I would do all of those. The only thing with citrus oil you have to be careful of is there is a photosensitivity. So if, you know I was going to be smearing it on my skin, I wouldn't go directly in the sun for 20 to 30 minutes.

Is that just with lemon or is that with a lot of oils?

That's with the citrus.

Okay. With citrus oils. Interesting. Okay. So for the immune system, you like citrus oils?

Yes. And then the other ones are kind of like your favorite men like oregano, which are high in phenolic or monotubrin oil. So these oils are really good to protect against microbes, you know, and they also help the respiratory system, they help break up some mucus. And you think of any oil that's really strong and might make your eyes water, those are really good immune modulating oil.

Now you, you sent me like a. Like a little sample packet of these young living essential oils that you use. And there was one called Thieves. And it looked like it was just. It said it was for immunity, but it was just a. It was a ton of stuff. Like it was clove, and I think oregano was in there. I don't remember, but I think lemon was in there. Is this like a shotgun for the immune system or how does an oil blend like that actually work?

Yeah, that's my go to. That's clove, cinnamon, rosemary, lemon and eucalyptus.

Clove, cinnamon, rosemary, lemon and eucalyptus.

Exactly.

Okay.

Yeah. So you have all these different. So you figure one oil has 80 to 300 constituents in it. Right. So there's that many molecules. And then when you blend the oils together, there's a synergism where you're getting all these different molecules so they can hit different receptors in the body and have a more profound effect. It's kind of like an additive effect there. And so these oils specifically, like rosemary, that's an oil that's been studied for antioxidant, anti inflammatory, which is also high antioxidant they also have been studied to help, like I said, inhibit microbial growth. Eucalyptic is great for keeping respiratory. There's some oxygenating compounds in there and then there's lemon, which we talked about. So it's a really good oil to have on hand. And I just used it. There actually was a study with toxic mold with these for diffusing where an independent building biologist went in and he had found like 10,667. Stacky voice. I can never say that. Stacky Voite mold. You know how to say that? Whatever. It's a really bad mold.

I'm so bad with pronunciations and I get it. I get a hard time on pronunciation.

I really keep.

I can barely even do autophagy.

I used to spell things when we used to go around in clinic because I couldn't pronounce it, but I could see the word in my thing.

Yeah.

But anyways, he, he went in and he diffused after 48 hours. And the concentration went, went down, you know, from like 75,000 moles force or 10,000 in the meaning to like after 72 hours of diffusing, we couldn't find mold spores and, and that, that seemed to last for two to three days. And then my sister and I did an M versus one experiment. She has visible mold in her house and you know, like where it was leaking. And my brother in law is up on the roof, you know, making sure that no more water is going to come down. And we knew she had mold and we invited a building biologist in there and she, you know, she just used, you know, she keep diffusing, diffusing, diffusing. And there's mold, you can see the mold and he cannot pick it up on his samples. So that's, you know, we know how the environment affects our minds and our bodies and our, you know, can deplete our immune system. So I always recommend that my clients, the first thing that they get when they come in is because of where I'm in upstate New York and it's really damp and there's a lot of mold in the area is thieves. Because it's gonna, you know, to diffuse in the house. Because I'm like, no matter what you do on the inside, if you're living in a house and inhaling toxic mold or toxins, you know, you're just, you're gonna be spending a lot of money, more money on supplements than you need.

Right.

To deal with just living.

Right.

So we get, we have them diffusing the thieves and applying it at the bottom of their feet. But I think, I think it's really important.

I've just been. I've kind of been using it like oregano. I just doubled up. So what I started doing was before I travel, because I've been on airplanes so much lately is the morning that I travel, I've just been putting about 5 to 10 drops of oil of oregano and then about 5 to 10 drops of thieves in a glass of water and just drinking it. And I do that when I get to where I'm going to because that's what I like about essential oils is they're super portable. Like you've got these little like sample travel packs and all sorts of cool little ways to carry them, which I love. I want to, I want to dig into some other things though, in addition to the immune system. Like I mentioned, I've used lavender before and sometimes I'll sprinkle lavender essential oil on my pillow. I've even rubbed it into the back of my neck. Both of those things seem to really help me sleep. Although I've heard that you're not supposed to drink lavender oil because it somehow messes you up. I don't know exactly how. Is that true, by the way?

These ones you can. Then the young living is okay. Yeah.

Okay. So it depends on the lavender. So what, what do you like for sleep? Like is there anything other than lavender that can help sleep or de stressing lavender?

Yeah, lavender is probably the most well studied. Most, most backed up research as far as its calming effect. One that's great for kids is Roman chamomile. That's really good for calming.

What'd you call it?

Roman chamomile.

Roman chamomile. Interesting. I've never heard of that.

Yeah, yeah. It's really gentle for little ones and it helps come. It also helps, you know, it migrates the immune system and it helps calm down any inflammation and stress.

So you could, you could cold air diffuse something like that in a baby's room?

Yeah, yeah. And there's a great blend too that's a combination of citrus oils and blue tansy, which is also really good as far as modulating inflammation called teeth and calming. That's really good for kids. The citrus oils have these esters and aldehydes in them. That's very calming. So any of the citrus oils can help too and they can help relieve stress.

This peace and calming blend that you just mentioned. I think when you sent me the sample packet, there was like this little roller bottle that you can roll on the back of your neck. Was that the peace and calming one?

Oh, yeah, no, that's, that's stress away. That's a good one too. That's got vanilla. That's good for some Studies have shown that that helped reduce some cortisol. So yeah, that's a good one too.

Because I've just been going nuts trying all these things out. So I was rubbing that into my neck along with the lavender oil. And I mean like, it's amazing you hit the sack. Like I'm actually at the time we're recording this. I'm about to fly out to Ironman Hawaii tomorrow morning and I'm bringing that little, that little roller bottle with the peace and calming and the lavender oil. Just because I know like the night before the race helps so much with sleep. It's amazing. The peace and calming is a blend and the stress oil is a blend. What are the blends in both of those?

What's in there?

Yeah.

Well, the piece in calming is the citrus oils. The orange, I actually can't remember at the top of my head what specific citrus oils. But there's blue Tanzi in there too. And then stress away has. I know there's vanilla copaiba. I'd have to honestly, the vanilla is amazing.

I don't know exactly what's in it either, but it's called stress away. And by the way, what. Well, we'll put links to all this stuff over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com oils if you want to just go to the show notes and dig into the smelly goodness. And vanillavanila, by the way, that's an aphrodisiac too.

I actually pulled this up. So yeah, there's copaiba, which is like basically some of the scientists in essential oils call that frankincense on steroids. It's got really high of this, this compound that's anti inflammatory lime, so this is citrus oil. Cedarwood, which is one of your highest oils. And phosphoterpins, which is oxygenating and calming. Vanilla, like you said, that's good for taste receptors and stress. Achatia, which is good for modulating blood sugars that are healthy in a healthy range. And then lavender. So that's a really good one. You get your lavender in the stress away then.

Okay, got it. Cool, cool. Okay, so we've got immune system, we've got the sleep stress component. Another thing I wanted to ask you about is smart drugs because there's all sorts of things like Siltap and Tian Qi and caffeine, theanine compounds and think brain and all these different smart drugs popping up. What I was curious about though was are there essential oils that can be used for something like cognitive enhancement? Like if I wanted to cold air diffuse something in my office, or I wanted to rub something into the back of my neck or underneath my nose, or put a few drops of something in a glass of water. Is there any essential oil that's been shown to help with cognitive enhancement or that you would recommend for trying for something like that?

Peppermint is the one I found the most studies on. But even like lavender and lemon have been shown like they did. They did studies with kids taking tests and recall, and lavender and peppermint were the highest. Brian Rodenbach Bush, he's in the Wheeling Jesuit University. He's done a lot of research with peppermint and that's been shown to, in a lot of his studies, improve cognitive function, accuracy, helpless speed, processing, recall. They find that if, say you're studying and you smell that essential oil when you take the test, if you smell that same smell, or like, say you were going to give a presentation or you're reading over your notes the night before you give the presentation, you smell that same smell. And it actually helps you remember better when you're kind of on point. So William Denver, also in Cincinnati, studied peppermint's ability to help with mental accuracy. But if you figure the way that the oils work and how a lot of them, you know, they have these sesquiterpins and oxygenating compounds. So you're going to improve the way you think just by inhaling them and decreasing stress and getting oxygen to your brain, calming your system down, you know, modulating inflammation, making you just feel good. There's this cool study where I was reading about. I actually wrote about this in one of my blogs with how rats were actually. Their moms were taught to actually fear or smell rat moms. And when the babies were born, they feared that same smell.

I heard about this study. It's nuts.

Yeah, it's crazy. So the cool thing is, though, you can use that in a positive way, right? So we own. The effect of a sense of smell on our emotional brain is profound. And you can actually, people will actually, you know, help use these smells to calm them down in stressful situation or if they have a memory. A lot of people like to smell of an Alex that reminds them of baking, you know, and I'll help calm them down. And we know stress literally can make you stupid with the effect that it has on the brain. Yeah, so I used to pass around. Yeah, I used to pass around peppermint during wars. Me and my nd students there, they always knew I had the peppermint on them. Like, come on sir, give me some peppermint before we take a test. So I was known as, you know, the peppermint hustler there in school.

I'm gonna actually try because I always like to stack stuff, but I'm gonna stack, see what it, what it's like. If I take something like Siltap or Tian Qi or one of these other smart drug combos that I've got upstairs in my pantry, I want to try a little peppermint oil and see what happens if I, if I combine the two. That'd be really interesting. But that's also cool to know that you could just, you know, if you didn't want to take a smart drug or that's just not something you're interested in at the time, that you can just literally like cold air diffused peppermint oil in your office, for example, to help with cognitive performance. That's really cool. And that is another thing I'm going to try too. So the next thing that I'm curious about is I get a lot of questions about fat loss and specifically things like stabilizing insulin or stabilizing blood sugar or assisting with metabolism and that type of thing. And I'm curious, this is kind of a twofold question. I'm curious about if there are any essential oils that could be used for something like that. And then as a follow up, a lot of people when they lose weight, they get stretch marks and like a little bit of scarring. And I'm curious if there's a topical essential oil that could be used for that after you've lost the weight.

Okay, so the first part about the fat loss. So there actually have been studies that show that the, your sense of smell and taste are related. Right. There's different receptors in your tongue and that actually signal that are signaling molecules for say, if you're feeling full. And what they found in research is that actually the bitter tasting herbs or bitter tasting compounds like in green leafy vegetables actually help you feel more full. So like oils such as we talked about peppermint again, or some of the herbal oils, those will actually, when you taste it, it'll actually make you feel more full. And then if you smell the oil, that's actually going to have that emotional component of calming the brain and also affect your appetite. So Alan Hirsch, he's pretty famous for a study he did with peppermint to trigger a weight loss. And it was like the six month study with over 3,000 people. And they found that the weight loss exceeded about 30 pounds on average after six months just from inhaling peppermint. And then. Yeah. And then at the Wheeling Jesuit University again, they also did a six month study and found that people who inhale different scents before meals lost an average of 19 pounds in six months. And peppermint was used again for this one. But they also did like some weird smells like banana or vanilla, I think. Wow. Yeah.

So peppermint. Peppermint's a biggie.

Yeah, peppermint's been one of my favorite oils. It's probably why I have a lot more studies on it. But it's one that I never, you know, and if we do talk about athletic performance, that one's got some good studies.

Yeah, I want to try and squeeze in a little bit here about athletic performance too also. What about topical use for something like stretch marks?

Okay, yeah, thank you. So that's actually how essential oils kind of got back into modern day time is from this chemist called Rene Gursafe and he actually discovered lavender because he was playing around in his lab and he actually got really badly burned and he went to dip his hand and what he saw was water, but it was actually pure lavender oil. And when he removed his arm, there was no burn. So, you know, various, various. It's actually still today in the British pharmacopoeia for under treatment of burns. So essential oils are really good for skin health with cellulite and stretch marks. Now, you know, they can help the body, you know, like you said, with detoxification, they can help with circulation, they can help clear out lymph, help the immune system decrease inflammation, you know, modulate all the stuff related to weight control. But you also, as you know, Ben, you gotta work the muscle as well with the stretch marks. It's not just that theory that it's like a compilation of just like little toxins is kind of being debunked. So it can help with this, you know, probably help with the elasticity, keeping healthy elasticity and oxygenating the skin, which is going to make it appear overall healthier.

Okay, cool. So which, what was the name of the oil again for scars and stretch marks? Was there actually one that's lavender? So basically you can just use lavender. Wow. So the impression I'm getting here is that if you were going to start with essential oils, there's a few that you could start with that are going to have a myriad of benefits for a few different things like lavender or peppermint or this thieves blend for the immune system. So that kind of makes things easy. What about. And you, you kind of alluded to this physical performance.

Yeah. So that's where peppermint got a lot of studies. Again, they've actually, the Journal of International Society of Sports Nutrition actually released a 2013 study. This is backing on some of The Wheeling Institute 2001 study with Rosenbosch. He did a bunch of studies with peppermint for fitness, strength, endurance, helping just enhance overall perceived frustration effort that helped athletes. But this new study actually was a small study with 12 male athletes. And they studied the. They used 12 students who consumed one bottle of mineral water which contained a small amount of peppermint essential oil for 10 days. And they, they measured blood pressure, heart rate, forced vital capacity, peak expiratory flow rate and peak inspiratory flow. And they found a significant positive.

And how were they using it? How were they using it? Were they diffusing it?

They're just drinking it for 10 days before and after. And they used a treadmill based exercise test. So it wasn't naturally in real life.

So you could just put a few drops in a glass of water and take that before you, you go out and do your workout.

Yes.

Okay.

Wow.

Cool. I love it.

Yeah.

Okay, so I've got one other thing that I wanted to ask you about and that would be detoxing, cleansing, kind of like helping the bowel to move along, like all those little things that people of course love. And we can't have a podcast where we don't talk about poop, of course. So what type of bow blends or essential oils work for that? And also would that be orally or topically or how would you use them?

Probably the easiest way to start is kind of what I talked about with drinking a lemon in your water, because you're getting those constituents that help, you know, help your immune system in your belly and also help you detoxify. There's some of these oils that are high in these phenylpropanoids actually have been shown to induce glutathione, which is like a master antioxidant. So you know, like the seed blend, oregano, clove, those are really high in those constituents. And you can, if you never know, if you don't know what to do with an oil, you can always rub it on the bottom of your feet because you're less likely to get A skin response there. The pores are the largest pores in their body. And because the oils are liquid soluble, they're still travel, you know, into your bloodstream within about 20 minutes or so. So you know, you can also rub some oils directly on the skin. You can also dilute it with some carrier oil as long as it's organic because the oils will actually, those little phenylpro actually clean the receptor site. So if there's some people might use like pure quality essential oils and then they'll use non organic care products with it and the oils will actually cause an interaction because it's actually trying to stop those chemicals from getting into the cell. So you'd want to use organic like almond oil or olive oil or some sort of carrier oil for people that have sensitive skin drinks.

That's the oil of oregano that I use. I use an almond oil carrier in that one.

Yeah, that's, that's very high in constituents. It can be a little bit toxic to people that have sensitive skin. I've been using them for 14 years, so I can pretty much. My body's pretty used to them. But for people that are just starting, they probably want to go slow.

Yeah. Okay, interesting. Cool. So as far as rubbing the oils into your feet, would it work better like say for like sleep? When I'm using lavender, would I get better absorption if I rub that into my feet versus my neck?

You would. Not necessarily better absorption, but you know, it would technically it would be probably, probably be about the same. But if you rub that on your feet, you're also, you're also getting some reflexology points. It's not, you know, conventionally scientific, but you know, that also can be relaxing.

Yeah.

And yeah, but if you rub it, I always do both. Because you can. If you're rubbing it on the back of your neck, you're naturally inhaling it and then you rub it on the bottom of your feet, then you're still getting, you know, absorption.

Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, cool. Well, this is really fascinating and like I mentioned, if you're listening in and you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com oils I'll put a link over to Dr. Sarah's website in case you happen to be in the upper New York or Vermont area and you want to visit her for a consultation. But I'll also put a link to the oils that we talked about on the show like lavender, peppermint, the thieves blend this stress and peace and calming blend all of the young living brand essential oils. If you want to try check them out and try some of those out or order a sampler pack of like the lavender and peppermint and stuff like that, which it sounds like would be a pretty good blend to start with or a pretty good pack to start with. And if you have questions, you can also leave them over in the comments section. Either Dr. Sarah and I can help point you in the right direction as far as questions about oil, essential oils for specific uses as well. So, Dr. Sarah, thanks so much for coming on today and sharing this stuff with us.

Yeah, thank you. I listened to your podcast weekly, Ben. It's been very helpful. I actually probably half of my clients have listened to your bone broth podcast. I appreciate you and your science.

Yeah, well, now they can inhale peppermint along with drinking their bone broth and rub lavender. Rub lavender into their feet. Cool. Well, again, visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com oils if you want to delve more into this oily, aromatic goodness. And until next time, this is Ben Greenfield and Dr. Sarah Labisco signing out.

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Sam.