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

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

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

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield.

Power, speed, mobility, balance, whatever it is for you, that's the natural movement. Get out there. When you look at all the studies done, studies that have shown the greatest efficacy.

All the information you need in one place right here, right now on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

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

You know your immune system. Well, a thank you for having me be here, Ben. And how cool, man. I converted you. So yeah, man, your immune system, you're trying to boost it up. There's a lot of things you could do.

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

Oh, yeah, yeah. Like for 99% of all applications. I mean, you know, Ben, just kind of think of it, you know. I hate to say it, but we've gotten really lax when it comes to natural therapies. Like, you know, you're not gonna go to Walgreens or whatever and get an over the counter drug and just take a handful of pills because you want to, we've, we've really taken that approach to probiotics, to supplements, thinking, oh, it's natural. Well, just because something's natural doesn't mean that you're both with it in a way that you think it could or should. So you're not gonna find a pool of lavender in a lavender field that just doesn't exist. You need 30 pounds of lavender flowers to extract an itty bitty 15 milliliter bottle of lavender. Just, it's super concentrated. And our skin, I. I mean it's, it's proven our skin wasn't designed by God to have oils directly on it. I mean they're caustic, they can burn you. I mean they can cause what's known as sensitization, a dermcon contact dermatitis. So what do you do? I mean, you dilute it with a carrier oil. I mean, there's three reasons why, but I mean, main reasons that everyone can relate to in a way or another. But the bottom line is these oils are super concent. They literally can replace your medicine. We have friends that are using oils to treat cancer because chemo and radiation has failed them, or they just want to take a natural approach and they could be life changing.

Really interesting. So basically it canit can burn your skin.

Yeah, yeah. Oror also because the chemicals, I mean, like, justjust whatever. We could pick like a chemical like d limonene. You know, delimonene is one of the most, richest components of citrus oils. Now citrus oils are extracted from the rind, the grapefruit, the lime, the lemon. Lemon, the bergamot, whatever. Right. So when you extract again, 40 lemons to get one bottle of lemon oil, you have a lot of d limonene, like more than you'll ever get in nature. So the body can have an allergic reaction to that because it's just too much. And they're like, what do we do with the body? The skin microbiome can literally not handle it.

Really? So. So it's. So it's not the burn, it's the actual bacteria on the surface of the skin?

Yeah. All of it. Yeah, it could be all of it. Itit actually can annihilate the good bacteria on the skin where it shouldn't. I mean, wewe forget that the skin has a microbiome and the chemicals that we put on affect that. Uhm, I go into that a lot actually. II think we need to talk more about the skin microbiome because the skin is the first layer of the immune system. We seem to forget that are there.

Essential oils that you could put on your skin that would actually help the microbiome to flourish?

That's a good question. I have not seen that in the literature. However, most essential oils, when they are used the right way, the answer is yes. I mean, there's this innate ability that is known as cell selectivity, where whether it's cancer, whether it's some sort of pathogen, or whether it is the biome, oils have, like all natural substances have the ability to feed the good and to kill the bad. So again, I can't prove it, but I've seen it. But it's pretty profound, like when you do it the right way. But here's the thing though too, like combat medicine, and we got to remember lavender and tea tree and thyme. These oils were used in World War I, World War II. Straight with, you know, bleeding. I might just cut off my hand. What do I do? Like, this was what soldiers used to use before the antibiotic came out. So, you know, when I was out hiking with my son and my 4 year old boy was listening to me and he was running down the trail of a mountain, he. He tumbled, busted his head and we went to my car and I had lavender and he had a split open head. I thought he was gonna get stitches. I just put straight lavender on it. Like that's combat medicine. Other than that, you always dilute.

Okay, what do you dilute with carrier oil?

Like anything that is an oil, like a vegetable oil that you're familiar with. Your coconut, your grapefruit, your. I'm sorry, not grapefruit. I'm looking at. I actually just look on my screen. So the grapefruit, grapeseed, olive oil, almond oil, sweet almond jojoba, the ones that you'll see at youryour local health food store. Good oils that basically decrease the concentration of the essential oil. But here's the kicker. You know, essential oils, Ben, are volatile, which means they evaporate. That's what technically they are. They're the volatile organic compounds that are in plants. And so what that means is if you were to apply a straight essential oil on your skin right now, it literally is just gonna evaporate. And you know that because you smell it. And the air is the proof that there are particles being emitted. Once you put an oil on your skin, once it reaches your nose, you're like, wow, how did I get here so quick? Like you're literally wasting your money away. If you're gonna use them undiluted. A, it's cost effective, and B, it Helps the body absorb it using a carrier oil opens up the pores. It actually helps because these oils literally will penetrate into your bloodstream. And there's been studies that within 20 minutes the highest concent concentration of the essential oil will bewill be detected in your blood. And then guess what, after an hour and a half, it's gone. Because the body can completely metabolize these things. So again, a couple of reasons. You know, you're saving money, you're saving your skin, and also you're saving the planet because unfortunately, and I know you'll appreciate this, Ben, because we've talked about this, you know, about just we were consumerizing things to death and I could just tell when we met a couple months ago, like you care more just about your health, you care about the planet. And we have to because I want to make sure my kids can enjoy these precious plant based compounds. But we literally are consumerizing plants to death right now. And it's almost virtually impossible to find blue chamomile and helichrysum and other oils or other plants in their indigenous native forms.

Yeah, man, I never even thought about that. When I'm like blasting all these essential oils all over my house and these diffusers. It's kind of a good point.

It is.

I guess I'll think more intensively about leaving the diffuser running when I walk out of a room.

But when somebody point Matt.

Yeah, yeah. When somebody hands me, let's say a bottle of lavender and I don't want to apply it to my skin, but I still want, let's say I want some of the relaxing benefits of lavender or I want to de stress with it and I can get my hands on, let's say coconut oil, I think. Was coconut oil one of the carrier oils that you mentioned?

Yeah, yeah, just straight coconut oil you eat.

So, so how, how would I do that? Would I just like take a few tablespoons of coconut oil and put that in some kind of a jar, put X number of drops of the lavender into that oror. How do I actually do things logistically?

That's a good question. So traditional aromatherapy teaches us, and there are dermal limits, there are max dermal limits, max internal limits that we need to be careful of. So by and large, a 2% dilution is pretty good for everyone. I mean, babies, children, you want to go under a 1%. So let me explain what that actually is. So let's go ounces per ounce of a carrier oil. So let's say you get an ounce of coconut oil, there's about 600 drops there. So if you want a 2% dilution, 2% of 600 is 12. So you would use 12 drops of lavender per ounce of a carrier oil to get a 2% dilution, which is safe to apply on your body. You could go up to 5, 10%. Once you start getting above 10%, you really start getting into like a serious medicinal dose. Under 10 per, you know, under 2%. 1% below is for babies and children, pets, that sort of thing. So that's it. You just mix it. You can do a number of things. Put it in a mason jar, you can put it in a bowl. You know, one ounce will last you several applications. It's good. And folks, this is a good idea. You know, you want to apply these on your, on your body, you know, two, three, four times a day. If you're trying to treat something like Sibo or trying to boost your athletic performance, I mean, again, like I just shared, your body will completely metabolize these within like 2 hours. The half life is relatively quick compared to all drugs. So it's a good idea just to have a regular. I have tons. I have roller bottle blends. Like you could go get a roller bottle on Amazon for like a couple bucks. You could get a carrier oil. And here's the kicker though. One that won't harden. Like your coconut oil that you eat, that will harden. And I'm in Georgia right now. We just got two inches of snow. So I mean, crazy enough like that our coconut oil is cold. It's hard around my house. So you could get something known as fractionated co Oil will actually fractionates out the long chain fatty acids which cause coconut oil to harden. So you could get, you know, or your MCT oil, whatever it is, a liquid form of a carrier oil that won't harden. And you can make roller bottles. You could have premixed blends. I mean, we got stuff all over.

Interesting. How'd youhow'd you kinda get interested in essential oils? Because like I mentioned, you don't have an essential oils company. You're not selling these things, you know, you're not part of one of these. Like. Yeah, well, it's always. You always know when you're on a popular essential oils website because there's somewhere on the menu on the top of the website that says opportunity. So that you too can join the pyramid scheme for selling essential oils. And granted, like, you know, all these companies like Doterra and I've even got like young living on my website that I don't think the oils are bad. I just think that a lot of times it's kind of like the fox guarding the hen house, so to speak, when you're picking somebody's brain about essential oils and they friggin sell the essential oils. But in your case, how did you actually get involved with the essential oils and becoming kind of like one of the, one of the go to resources, at least in the health community that I'm in for. Essential oils and essential oils education.

Really that's why is because of what's out there. And I didn't want that, man. I didn't plan on this. You know, I went to school to become a chiropractor. I was a researcher at school, I was a medical writer. And one of my clients commissioned me to write a series of public health reports about oils. And up until that point, I mean very openly here, man, be transparent. I marginalized them as smelly stuff. Like I couldn't imagine playing beach volleyball with my guy friend smelling like Ylang Lang, you know, they take my guy card away. I couldn't, I couldn't get in that mindset. And, and my wife has been using oil since we've been married and I just thought it was her thing, man. I'm just her smelly stuff. And I never needed them. Like, I never had like a healing from them. I, I healed from nutrition through exercise, mind body practices. That's like my personal story. So when my client, you know, paid me a good amount of money to write and I read hundreds of HUD studies and I was like, whoa, what is this stuff? And then I went up, you know, I went up to a friend of mine, Dr. Josh Axe, and I'm like, hey, why don't we host a telesummit about essential oils? We'll get all the people together and not have it be branded. Because like you mentioned, Ben, all literally 99.9% of every website talking about an oil is selling the oil. I'm like, that's like financial bias 101. I mean, I can't do that. I'm a trained public health researcher. So Josh and I put it together, brought on my friend Jill Winger, who's a Homestead blogger. And 165,000 people from around the globe came. It was the largest event at its time three years ago. And that's when I had my aha moment. Because literally, Ben, thousands and thousands of comments and I read them all. I remember thousands and thousands of comments poured through and the resounding request from everyone was we need someone to help us. We don't know who to trust. The aromatherapists say this, these persons say that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, you know what? It's time to learn. So I went to aromatherapy school and next thing you know, get this book deal with Random House, and next thing you know, you know, coming out with a masterclass. And my website's getting half a million hits a month. Like, people are finding me because they basically, they need me. And my wife and I have been determined to step up to the game and to deliver them just good, scientific, brand free information. And truthfully, we're helping a lot of people.

Interesting. So this new book, this Healing Power of Essential Oils book, is this just taking all the information that you've learned from all these different essential oil summits that you've put together and disseminating it all in one single book? Because it's kind of like a bible of essential oils. Oils.

Yeah. And, you know, it's that. But it's my personal research. It's all of the blogs, all of the recipes, all of the formulations. You know, you'd be surprised. There are like, literal, proven recipes for things like, you know, fibromyalgia and others that just the research has. Has shown. So that's what the book is, Fibromyalgia.

You mean like, like joint and. And muscle pain?

Yeah, yeah.

Like what? Like what. What would you do for that?

Oh, man, you put me on the spot. Give me a second. II Like, I don't have it. The memory. It's on my website. You go to my website, I have the fibroblend. Like, seriously, it's like a blend that researchers have shown.

It's called the fib. Is it in the book, the fibro blend, Dr.

It should be. Dr.

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

Hold on, man. I got this. I got this. My website, this is proven. Okay, here it is, folks. For people that battle with fibromyalgia, like, research has shown that this blend can help. And what I got is two drops of bergamot, two drops of camphor, two drops of lemon, two drops of peppermint, two drops of rosemary. You mix that with two ounces of a carrier oil, whatever it is that you want to use. And I like to add a little bit of aloe. Aloe gel. Aloe vera gel is a good one. And you just mix that up in a 4 ounce glass jar and you got yourself something that researchers have shown that really, really can Help people because fibromyalgia is really elusive. But anyway, there's again, I'm looking, I'm doing research on this stuff and people needed a resource and I'm like, hey, you can go to my book or I'm sorry, you can go to my website and check out a summit. But the truth is, Ben, there's a million books out there about essential oils, but they're all like reference guides a lot. All of them are like A to Z. No, this is like a legit, like you read, this is like a legit health book. Wewe go into what causes autoimmunity. Like, let's dig into inflammation, let's talk about how to heal at the root cause. And yeah, essential oils aren't gonna cure you of death, but they can help. And like everylike, I say this all the time. You can't live the American fast food lifestyle and expect to put a couple drops of essential oil and be cured. It's a holistic lifestyle. And that's really what the book's about, is helping you implement oils in everything. Your food, your daily life, your just whatever it is, they can help.

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

Yeah. So at the end of the day, there are different species of, let's say frankincense is a great example because there are several different, several brands that tout that their Frankincense is the best. Right. So you have a different variety of. There's Frankincense serrata, there's Frankincense Sakura, there's Frankincense serrata. Like there's all kinds of different Frankincenses species. But just like how you can go out to your rose garden if you have like a local garden and you see all kinds of different roses. They're all roses, but the species is different. Some are yellow, some are red, some are fragrant, some are not. So when it comes to the chemo type, this is the tricky thing because in spite of appearing the same, again, imagine you're in a red rose garden, right? Everything looks the same. The chemical components of each plant might be different, even though they're literally standing next to each other. So the chemo type of a plant is that plants are similar. They're the same, they are identical to the naked eye, similar in chemical compound. But there are chemical anomalies, which is essentially like a twin. You know, no two twins are alike identical. They're always gonna be some sort of differences. So for rosemary, for example, there are rosemary species, the same rosemary. Again, we're talking rosemary officinalis, the irregular rosemary you get. Some are rich in a chemical known as camphor and chemical, and that's a chemical that acts as a muscle relaxant, a diuretic and actually can promote menstruation. So again, that's one, there's a camphor chemotype, there's a cine, 1H cineole is actually a proven cancer fighting agent, it's an anti inflammatory agent. There's another chemo type of verbenone, which is highwhich is high in pinene and verbenone, which is a chemical that acts as expectorant or can help with muscle spasms. So what does that mean? The same rosemary plant has essentially 99.9% of the same chemical compounds, but one of them is rich in camphor, one of them is rich in cineole, one of them is rich in those, you know, in the other ones. So the bottom line is if you could get your hands on the chemical analysis or this company knows what they're doing that's selling them, they'll actually say rosemarinus officionalis, CT standing for chemotype cineole. It will actually indicate on the bottle what the chemotype is. And all it's saying, bottom line, all it's saying is that this version of rosemary has more than average, more than normal amount of this one chemical. And that can make the biggest difference in the world. Because, you know, if you don't wanna relax your muscles, then you don't really wanna go for the camphor phenotype if you don't want something that will help with muscle spasms and you don't want that version. And we go, there are several different essential oils that we know that are actually marked by the right companies. So how do you figure it out at home because this is now getting a little deep. But there are guides out there you could buy that tell you. And on average your essential oil should have this amount of this chemical, this amount of this. So all you do is you go to the company and all your good companies should have this, a chemicala chemical analysis, a gas chromatography. And so you get the report and it says, hey, this chemicali'm sorry, this rosemary has this amount of camphor, this amount of cineole, this amount of these chemicals. And it's a little bit of back work. But here's the point. We gotta kinda take our health into our own hands a little bit. And if you literally are trying to treat a disease, then a little legwork, a little bit of research will go a long way. Because people don't realize, especially when it comes to cinnamon, you know, cinnamon bark versus cinnamon leaf, completely different chemical compounds. And if you're trying, yeah. So if you want to help promote blood sugar balancing, that's your cinnamon bark. But if you don't, you know, cinnamon leaf ain't gonna cut it because it has completely different chemicals like cinnamaldehyde versus eugenol, which is the chemical that's, that's high in cinnamon leaf. Again, you gotta, gotta go back to plant chemistry basics 101. So that's what the book's for. That's what my masterclass is for. Kind of to teach people like, okay, here are the basics, here are some guides. This will help you, those of you who really want to get deep into this stuff. Here are a couple of books you might want to buy. And let's go to work.

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

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

Okay, cool. So C Ne Ol, that's how you, that's how you pronounce that? Cine Ol?

Yeah.

C I, N E O L E. I want to look for that in the actual rosemary that I use.

Yeah, yeah, the one that, that's chemo type. It just has more senile than the other versions.

Dr. Now why do you need to be careful? You know, even if it's, even if it's the right chemo type, like if it's the right rosemary, why do you need to be careful? Just like buying essential oils, let's say like Walmart, I mean Walmart has essential oils. Like what? Why is it that that would be any different than what you might get from say, you know, one of these. Well, I mean honestly like a lot of those multi level marketing websites I talk about like Doterra or Young Living. Like I get the impression that they have a higher quality oil, but what's going on with the actual oil itself that would make this so important?

You know Ben, my first Summit I interviewed Dr. Robert Pappas. He's out of the, what is it? University of Indiana I think or Indiana University, either one. He's the foremost chemist in essential oils and he's test, this is what he does. I mean he tests them and he is one of those third party testers that every, virtually every company has used to test their oils and make sure they're pure. He got, he's gone on record during one of my interviews to say 75%, at least 75% of all oils on the market are adulterated. They're fake, they're synthetic, like totally.

What do you mean fake?

They actually, they mimic chemical compounds to put into the oil and there might be like one drop of real essential oil, but they manufacture their synthetic compounds, the body doesn't know what to do with them. I mean these synthetic compounds, the body, I mean again, you want to talk about the contact dermatitis, I just shared sensitization, it causes that, it causes just neurological outbreak. The body doesn't know what to do with these things. Again, they're highly concentrated anyway so chemists can mimic the chemical structures of these oils. And also you know, people like certain things and you know, going to my friend, you remember Stephen, right from my greenfields, the man who invented this non toxic laundry solution, they did a test.

And they found out how I met this guy.

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

Oh, okay. I'm not putting a name, any face either way. Go ahead.

Cool dude, Bigger dude, bald head, cool guy.

Oh, yeah.

Remember Stephen? Yeah. Yeah. So Stephen tested this and he gave people. It was crazy. He tested people and what they decided, what they determined was the best, cleanest laundry. And what he did was they took dirty rags and they straight up dirty rags and they give to a person and they put on some really fake smells to make it smell clean versus just the normal dirty rag. And then they had another rag that was straight white, whiter than anything you've ever seen, but it didn't smell like anything. People by far chose the dirty rag that smelled clean versus the actual clean rag that didn't smell like anything as being the cleaner one. We're so attracted to smell. So what does that mean in peppermint? People wanna smell like candy canes and they like that Santa Claus smell. So these companies will add synthetic chemicals to peppermint to make it smell mintier, sweeter. You know, real true peppermint shouldn't have that fake, yucky kind of sweet smell. Makes me sick. But most people who've never smelled it, they don't know any better. So that's what they do. And so all these big box stores, like, I'll say this flat out, Walmart, they've had their oils tested, they've been proven they're fake. And you're not going to find frankincense oil for five bucks. It just doesn't exist. I mean, just the raw material necessitates that the bottle is going to at least be 20, 30, 40 bucks. And then if your company wants to make money, you got to charge 50, 60, 70 for a bottle. So you get down to it. Like these things, it's just a mass craziness because no one's monitoring it, Ben. The FDA doesn't care. It's the wild, wild west and anyone can sell anything.

Another one that I use a lot is oregano. And I actually looked into this a while back because, you know, full disclosure, my company Kion, we actually sell like this really high quality oregano. People use it for like athlete's foot and fungal issues topically, or they'll use it for things like, you know, gut issues or immune system orally and, you know, strong oil of oregano, like freaking, like burn your mouth off. I've. When I was trialing some of the oregano, I would get 100% olive oregano. And occasionally I, I'D forget that a certain batch that I had wasn't actually diluted with, you know, usually we use like sweet almond oil and put it in my mouth and literally just had like mouth burns for days. But when I was, when I was working on this olive oil, I found out like, like they can use like GMO oregano when they're making the oil. They can, they can have extremely low levels of this stuff called carvacrol, which is like the active component in oregano. It can be just like time and not even oregano. So I ran into all these issues where everything from GMO to no laboratory certificate of analysis where you don't even know what's in it. So, yeah, I hear you, but I think a lot of people will just see whatever rosemary, it's going to make me smarter, grab it off the shelf at Walmart, because you heard on a podcast or whatever and you wind up doing more harm than good. So it's a good point. One thing I wanted to ask you about too, because I've got a bunch of essential oils upstairs and my kids, I forget what the recipe was. It might have been lemon bars. They were doing some recipe for their podcast and one of my boys grabbed it was either orange or lemon essential oil from the pantry and he put a few drops in the batter for what they were making. I'm pretty sure it was a lemon bar and it was actually really good. Like it gave this really great flavor. Can you actually cook with essential oils? And if so, is there anything you need to be aware of? Are there any best practices for using essential oils in cooking and for oral consumption?

Yeah. Oh yeah, for sure. So by and large, you don't really know what flavor is until you taste food with essential oils. My wife makes this knockoff, I love it, seven layer vegan bean dip thing. Andand once she started adding like that one drop of Lem or one drop of lime and one drop of cilantro, just makes it just pop, you know, that flavor. So by and large, the rule of thumb is per teaspoon of whatever it is, whether a teaspoon of cinnamon, a teaspoon of oregano, a teaspoon of lemon zest, you use two to three drops of essential oil. Now there is max, like, you know, if something calls for 15 teaspoons, you're not gonna put like 30 drops in. I wanna be careful because you wann three, four, five drops max per dish. So at the end of the day, this is a culinary dose and you will get a minor medicinal benefit. Nice One. I mean, we're not looking to heal cancer here, so. Yep, just a couple drops per dish works fantastically a consideration though, especially with lemon. Now think of it this way. I get this question asked all the time. Well, does cooking with oils affect the chemical compounds? Like you know about denaturing proteins because they get heated? Well, think of it this way. To get an essential oil, most of them are steam distilled and steam requires intense heat. So for all of your herb oils, for all of your minty oils, you're totally fine with cooking them. But with the lemons and the citrus oils, they're not steam distilled. Typically they're cold pressed like an olive oil press. So these oils haven't been heated. So you will change the chemical compounds. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but you can't expect the same medicinal effect if you're gonna cook your lemons or your citrus ones. Okay, but you can get steam distilled citrus. And the bottle should indicate whether an oil has been steam distilled or cold pressed if it's citrus.

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

No, no, I mean literally. I mean, two to three drops per teaspoon is the rule of thumb. But in total though, again, you don't want to have like, like two drops of cinnamon, two drops of clove, two drops of like 15 different drops. Like you gotta use common sense. But you'll see just a few drops in total. Really just pop, just pop the flavor. And to me, you know, Ben, that's my soda. Like I haven't drank pop soda in 15 years. So I add some liquid stevia, one or two drops of lemon, and I add my, my sparkling water. Like, that's my soda. That's my drink, you know?

Yeah, yeah, I totally hear you. I'll use like, oh my God, organic stevia. I don't use a lot of, a lot of essential oil in soda. But what I've been doing, because it's winter here right now, while we're recording this, I've been making like drinking chocolate where I'll, you know, brew some decaf coffee or some tea and then dump that over like a nice, I've got like an organic mix of like cacao and cinnamon. And I think there's a little bit of coconut milk powder in there. And then I put one drop of peppermint and I blend it all up and it's got this amazing like peppermint hot chocolate flavor, it's, it's really good. And you put too much mint in there, you're frickin screwed. You can't even get your nose near that thing without, you know, feeling like it's gonna burn your sinuses off. But just, just one drop of cinnamon works really well. And from what I understand about cinnamon and about some of these other essential oils is they could even be used for things like gas or bloating. Or in your, in your book, you even go into like small intestines, bacterial overgrowth, and the different ways you found, yeah, sibo, that essential oils could be used for the gut. Can you go into how you would use essential oils for gas and bloating? And I gotta tell you, like, one thing I picked up from your book I've been doing is when I get gassy, that same peppermint, I'll just like put a few drops in my hand. I guess I should be putting in a carrier oil after I just learned from you and massaging the abs. Just a clockwise abdominal circle and it works really well. But can you fill me in a little bit on best practices for using essential oils just for general gut health or even for knocking out critters in the gut?

Yeah. We need to remember that the gut is the stomach, the gut is distal, it's further down the GI tract. So we're talking the intestines. So for something to bypass your gastric juices, you gotta use what's known as an enteric coated capsule. It's basically a polymer coated capsule that bypasses that won't get digested by the acid in your stomach and it will start to digest in the intestines, the distal colon especially. So I guess, you know, for people, because it's such a buzzword, leaky gut, I mean, proven oregano oil can actually repair leaky gut when it comes to sibo, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. Peppermint has been proven to help. And there's actually a mix that was. Research actually suggests that. Write this down, folks, this is an interesting one. Caraway, lavender and neroli. Neroli is in the orange family. Caraway, lavender and neroli. You mix that in a one to one to one ratio, you make a blend. You know, make your quote, sibo blend. Make your gut health blend. And you have a blend ready inin ain like a bottle. And you put two to three drops in a capsule. Fill the capsule with an edible carrier oil. Because you never wanna even have these oils straight when you consume them for a number of reasons protects youryour gastric lining, but it also helps the body absorb them. Remember folks, oil's your friend. And I know, Ben, you teach so well. I mean, we're not afraid of oil here, but most people are. We gotta remember our cells are coated with.

What do you mean most people are afraid of? You mean like, like because I think fat is bad to eat?

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

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

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

So if you put it on your stomach, you don't even need to encapsulate. You can just put it on the skin of your stomach.

Yeah, you don't have to. But for people with serious issues, that's kinda like you wanna do both. Like you literally will want to do both. You just gotta be careful. You just don't put in water because you don't wanna burn yourself and you don't wanna cause reflux.

Okay, but you talk about peppermint being relaxing, but then you have like a, you have like a performance enhancing inhaler. And I thinki think peppermint is an ingredient in that. So how's that work if peppermint is relaxing?

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

Interesting. So how do you make this inhaler exactly? And how would you use it?

Cool. Go online, go to Amazon. You get in and type up aromatherapy inhaler. All it is, it's the tube. It looks like a chapstick container or lipstick. Inside is a cotton swab or a cotton tube. What you do is you buy it, you get the tube, you fill the tube up, or you put the, you put the essential oils on the cotton. So what for us, we're using 10 drops of peppermint, five drops of orange, and five drops of spearmint. That's my thing for ourfor a number of reasons. It's a really invigorating blend. So 10 drops of peppermint, five drops of orange, five drops of spearmint. You put that actually on the cotton too. You put the cotton tube inside the inhaler and you got it like on the go. There's a, there's a lid. So every time you wanna open it up, you can take a couple deep breaths. And I would encourage you to take five to ten nice deep breaths. Focus. And that's something you do right before you workout. Also, you can have that same blend, mix it to like a 2% dilution, like we talked about. 12 drops of the blend per 1 ounce of a carrier oil. Put on the back of your neck. Put it on your chest, like, that's great to do right before you work out. Alright, here's another one. You get a spoon of coconut oil, you know, a teaspoon of coconut oil, one or two drops of that blend, mix it together and swallow it. Take that before you work out. Like, that is extreme. Like, I promise you, for those athletes out there that want something, a noticeable boost, you will experience that if you do either one of those things.

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

You can, but you know what you're doing? You're decreasing the shelf life life. So oxygen's our enemy here. Oils. Don't believe it, folks. I see the crazy stuff out there. Oils have a shelf life of two to three years max. And what you did, Ben, you know any better? But every time you open up the bottle, you're decreasing the shelf life because you're exposing it to oxygen. So by doing that, you're. I would guess that your oil would last six, seven months max, because you're, you'll actually notice the oil go rancid. The smell will be different. It won't be as sweet or as fragrant. You'll notice the effect will change. Oxido, literally be oxidation happening. So the point of an inhaler. I'm so glad you asked this actually, because I totally glossed over that. The whole point of the inhaler is to have this little. Again, it's just 10 or 15 drops or 20 drops. It's there. You can do whatever you want with it. And every six months or so, you're gonna wanna put oils back into it. Just that way you get that effect because it saves the bottle. Folks, this bottle is precious. Like, I literally have people treating themselves for cancer with these essential oils because chemo failed them or because radiation failed them. Keep it in a dark place, a cool place. Don't expose it to oxygen as much as you can. You know, open it, use it and close it. It's. It's legit.

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

Yeah, there' sw I have two actually. You know, our inhaler is technically a diffuser when you consider it that way. So anything you could do just to get the essential oils to inhale them. There' sthere's a highly concentrated version. This is for someone dealing with an upper respiratory condition or some, someone who's really trying to treat a specific disease. It's called a nebulizer. You could get this thing, actually, I sell it on my store, at my, on my website. It's pure essential oil. You add 15, 20, 30 drops in this glass container and you push a button and this thing vibrates. This, this apparatus vibrates at such a high level, it emits pure essential oil vapor into the air. You only want to use this thing 15, 20 minutes at a time. It's that concentrate. I've actually done it, Ben, like you, you know, I love about you, Ben. You and me, we're like limiting experiments. We're gonna try stuff and you know, we make mistakes, but we learn. And I got myself dizzy, got myself nauseous because I was overdosing on essential oils one day, had my office room closed. I was diffusing nebulizer for like two hours. I'm like, whoa, I feel, I'm tripping out, man. I felt like I was on some kind of psychotic drug. Don't do that well. And well, ventilated room. It's intense. That's only for people literally trying to take.

It's called a nebulizer.

Yes, a nebulizer. Essential oil nebulizer.

How much essential oil do you put into it?

Anywhere from 15 to 20, 30 drops. The instructions depending on thethe glass container. You know, some are larger than others. Uhm, but yeah, I mean, you don't trust me. Folks don't overdose on this stuff. It's notit won't be good. There is such a thing as too much. But most people, and this is what we have all day long, is one of the, you mentioned these misters or they're called ultra ultrasonic diffusers. There's basically a vibrating disc on the bottom of a water tank and it just vibrates at such a high level that it breaks up the water, it breaks up the essential oil into millions of particles that are emitted into a fine mist. And that's totally safe around babies, around pets. You can have that thing kicking all day long. It's not concentrated again, it's Dispersed throughout the room. Those are great for just, just mood. Those are great for just creating an atmosphere. Folks, if I leave you with one thing, and this is something every one of you can do, I would leave you with throw away all of your aerosols, all of your fake smells, Whether it's a wallflower plug in spritzer spray. If it's not pure essential oil, I promise you what it is. It's a synthetic ingredient that has been shown.

Except those little pine trees that you hang in your car.

I think those are pretty fun. Especially those things, man. If I go into your car and I get that, I get nauseous. I can't even handle.

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

Yeah, I would get one if you can make sure. I'm noti would get one with a glass container. There's a couple. I mean, it's a couple more bucks. It's a little fancier, but you want, you know, oils. We didn't talk about this, Ben. But oils and plastic don't mix the chemicals. The petrochemicals in plastic are so weak, essential oils will leach them, break them down. And if you're gonna mix oils with anything but a pet known as PET plastic, it could break it down. So I would be careful. I like anything with glass. You have glass encasements that fit into like a metal tube. Again, it looks like lipstick. I will go for that one. It's a couple extra bucks. But if you don't have the money, the PET plastic is fine. And there's so many things and folks, it's just not performance, it's anxiety, it's stress, it's mood boosting. Like there's so many blends. Like I have, I don't even know how many blends on inhalers I have in my book, at least 50. Because they literally can change the chemistry in your brain. They impact the limbic system, your primal brain, your memory, your mood, your emotions. So. So there's so much science behind this and it's just capturing the scent, the chemistry that your body needs. It could be life changing.

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

Yeah, I mean, you know, when it comes down to cravings, there are two when it comes down to anything, addiction wise. Black pepper for those people who are struggling with nicotine. Black pepper has been proven to help decrease the nicotine withdrawals when it comes to unhealthy food cravings. Specifically grapefruit. You know, grapefruit essential oil can literally stimulate lipolysis, which is breakdown of fat. It's thermogenic. It will actually cause your body to burn calories. And it has the ability, because again, these affect the limbic system to decrease food intake. It helps to me, I haven't seen the exact research on this specifically, but the only way I can understand it, like why would animals and people evaluated just smelling grapefruit not be as hungry? Well, it has to be because of the two hormones, leptin or ghrelin. Because if those hormones are out of whack, you're not gonna feel full or you're gonna have unhealthy cravings. So again, they haven't tested it. And that's the only problem I have with research right now in essential oils, Ben, is because they haven't really gone to the mechanism. But if you know enough about the body, I guess you can make a conjecture. So for me, my thing is, is for those people who are battling just overeating in general, who want something maybe to help them feel full and to help really burn some fat and to help cravings, my little trick is going back to mymy Dr. Z soda pop. I'll get a drop or two of grapefruit, mix it with some liquid stevia extract, which actually acts as a carrier. You fill that up with 32 ounces or so of sparkling water and the carbonation will help you feel full, the grapefruit will add that nice fat burning, flavor enhancement and you're good to go. You know, so you that, that's great. You can add lime to it if you want lemon, you could add bergamot. You can add so many others. But grapefruit's the one that the research has shown.

I wonder if you were to just like eat grapefruit or drink grapefruit juice with thei mean, obviously then you're kinda feeding the purpose because you're getting a bunch of, you know, not a lot, but some fructose and some calories. I wonder what the comparison would be. Like, do you think the essential oil is that much more powerful? Kind of like in the same way a drop of lavender is the equivalent of like 30 pounds of lavender leave or lavender? Is it the leave or the, the flower?

Yeah, the flower. Now good. So, you know, that brings up a good point. Citrus oils are extracted from the rind. So if you want to get the benefit of citrus essential oil, you would have to consume the rind. And for me, Ben, when I'm making my, my smoothies or something, I don't do them every day, but if I ever have want like a sweeter fruit smoothie, I'll put a whole lemon. Just I'll get everything. The rind or the fruit. So I this is interesting because what about people who can't take or eat grapefruit because they're on a blood pressure pill or some. Because grapefruit has an uncanny ability to counteract a lot of medicine, especially cardiac medicines. Well, we find that people that use grapefruit essential oil, well, it's totally fine because the chemical compounds of the rind are different than the fruit. I get. This is another question I get asked all the time. I just got asked this yesterday on my blog. Dr. Z, I'm allergic to orange. Does that mean I can't have orange? Well, not necessarily. The fruit is different than the rind, different chemical makeup. So I don't know. But I would think that if you do want it, you gotta take a bite of the whole entire grapefruit. You can't just take the fruit because the fruit doesn't have it.

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

Oh yeah. I mean, you know folks, we've created a problem with these superbugs. We've just used too many antibiotics. And so these, these, these little microorganisms are resistant to fungus, fungal agents, antifungal agents, resistant to antibiotic, antibiotics. And there have been research studies and it blows my mind they've done research studies showing that antibiotic resistant RA bacteria like MRSA and others. And here's another thing too, fungal antifungal resistant fungus that using oils like eucalyptus, lemongrass, tea tree, thyme is when we don't hear too much about thyme, they actually kill these bacteria, these fungi that are resistant to medicine. And so these are actually saving people's lives and are in hospitals right now that the medicines are doing nothing for. And so there's a number of ways and all these are edible. So this is where for some people who want a good systemic benefit, put two or three drops into a capsule, fill the capsule up with an edible carrier oil, like olive oil or something and take that two, three times a day. Or you can just apply it over the area. Uhm, here' syou know, we didn't talk about this Ben, but it's really important, you know, don't waste your money. If you want a medicinal benefit, don't put oils on the bottoms of your feet like they've done transdermal tests. Like you know the patch that goes on your arm. There's a reason why they say put it on your arm, not on the bottoms of your feet. You know, out of everywhere in your body. In my opinion the best place to put oils are on your abdomen. Because out of the ranking from most permeable to least permeable, the top are the most sensitive areas like your genitalia, your nasal mucosa and then it goes to the neck, then it goes to your trunk, which you know, your stomach, your lower back, then youryour arms, your hands and then your legs and feet. So at the end of the day if you're applying oils on the Bottoms of your feet. You're wasting your money. It's just not getting in your bloodstream. But your abdomen is the way to go. That's why, Ben, you experience such good results with peppermint when you have a stomach ache or something, because it literally gets in there within minutes.

But put it in a carrier, put it in like a coconut oil every time, every day or something like that. I gotta remember to do that because it's so simple for me to just kinda like grab it and put it on. But I'll remember to use that carrier. Okay, that's good to know. So something like eucalyptus would be in a carrier oil. Very, very good for some like staff or mrsa.

Yeah. And I would add though key lemongrass and thyme.

Okay.

I would add those. And tea tree. I mean there's several.

Well, that's, I mean like this, this thieves is pretty good then because it's clove lemon. Well, it's lemon peel, cinnamon bark oil. Eucalyptus and rosemary leaf oil.

Yeah. I mean, you know, there, there's a reason every major company has a version of that blend.

Okay.

Every one of them. Yeah. I mean that is a really kind of rock solid. It has many things, benefits to it, high in antioxidants, antifungal, so many different things.

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

Yeah, Ben, you know, we got to remember, they didn't have steam distillation back then. I mean, distillation was invented by Arab alchemists around the 9th century A.D. what we have here is, you know, when Moses told. I'm sorry, when God told Moses to make the, the holy anointing oil, he said basically, hey, get this big vat of olive oil, put a bunch of calamus, bunch of cinnamon, a bunch of, you know, these different ingredients in it. And he goes, let it steep. Basically he told the Israelites to make a salve. You know, when Mary was anointed or when Mary anointed Jesus with pure nard. That wasn't like pure spike nard. It was, it was this spike.

You call it nard?

Yeah, yeah. You know the story where she, she and all the disciples were like, hey, you're wasting money. And she like massaged his feet and anointed it with her hair, made the whole room. Yeah, it was nard. It was spike gnard. And it was.

Well, I meanwhat's nard?

Oh, man, Spikenard. For those people. Spikenard's a great essential oil. It's a great plant. It's fantastic for meditation, for calming, for focus. It is really a good oil. It's. Yeah, it's, it's not to be confused with lavender. Somehow there's a myth out there that got spread that it was lavender. It wasn't spikenard. Again, this is a plant. Look it up. It's really interesting. But the oil itself, it's kind of stinky, I'm not gonna lie. I mean, it's really strong. It's earthy. I mean, stinky meaning earthy. It's not like, oh, it smells like, you know, a wedding or holiday. No, it's like earth. It's super grounding. So what, what our ancient ancestors did was they took frankincense resin, myrrh resin, these, you know, cinnamon bark, and they, they put them in olive oil and they allowed it just to steep extract. And so what you had was, was just highly, highly diluted essential oil based products that had minimal amounts of essential oil, but it wasn't the pure oil like we have today. So I don't care what you see out there, it just was impossible. Like they just didn't have the ability to extract these oils the way that we do. And so we gotta remember what we have today is nothing like our ancient ancestors used. But yeah, there's so muchso much herbal medicine. Like they used to burn the incense. Like there was a reason, you know. You know, tribal cultures in the Bible especially talks about burning frankincense and burning these oils. Well, because it had that, that, that inhalation benefit would change someone's brain chemistry to help them pray. Like, think about that. So if you meditate, if you do yoga, Pilates or something, you want to diffuse your essential oils, it could literally just transform your experience. So there's so many ways that we could use essential oils. But interestingly too, this anointing oil oil was like this antibiotic. It was this cleansing agent. Like, yeah, they, you know, God told the priest to sacrifice the animals and there was blood everywhere. Just imagine the E. Coli and all this stuff. Well, they anointed it. They, they, they just doused it with this oil that was rich with cinnamon and calamus and, and other essential oil based products that was again highly diluted but it was still antimicrobial. So it had a really, you know, God, God knew what he was doing. He just didn't say, just do this for a reason. There was purpose behind it.

Interesting. Yeah. I think that's like the first part of the book. It says somewhere in the book it talks about harvesting stuff from trees and plants. I forget the. Do you remember the verse from the Bible that you have in there?

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Revelation 22. The leaves of the trees are for the healing of the nations. And just think about that like what are we going to heal ourselves with? What has God given us to use as medicine? And ancient tribal cultures since the beginning of time has always known, you go to medicine, go to roots, go to bark, you go to leaves. The power is there. The power is there to give nature healing. And so we extract that. We get to tap into that nature. It's awesome.

Yeah, I like it. The leaves of trees, baby. Well, this is a good book. Healing Power of Essential Oils. I'm going to link to it and I also um, I'll hunt down some of these things that Eric talked about on Amazon like the, the nebulizer and this glass aromatherapy inhaler and some of that stuff. So just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Healing Oils. That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com healing oils and I will link to all that. And then also like I mentioned, Eric does these online summits. They're actually really good and he's got one coming up. It's a, it's like a 10 video course summit with like Sayergy and Robin Openshaw and some people who, who kind of run in the same circles as us, who I know are really, really good resources on especially essential oils. They're, they're true essential oil masters. So I will link to that particular docu series as well. If you just want to become an essential oil ninja, this would be a pretty good way to do it. And what I like about it is it's not like sponsored by a specific essential oils company. So it's relatively non biased and people aren't just like on it trying to sell their own brand of essential oil. So check that one out too. I'll put a link to that one in the show. Notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com healing oils. In the meantime, Eric, thanks so much for coming on the show and sharing all this stuff with us, man. It's a great book, man.

I love you, Ben. I really do. I appreciate you, brother, and appreciate all you do. Thank you. And folks, to leave you with one thing. Don't get overwhelmed. There's so much information out there. Just start step by step. Get a couple quick wins, learn some basics. Do that 2% dilution we talked about. I want you to do something today and then work on that. That's one thing I get. Ben. So many people tell me. I'm so overwhelmed. I have a whole case of essential oils. Never opened them before. I don't know what to do. It's easy. Just follow the steps. Join the masterclass, get the book, go to Ben's website. Let's crush this thing. Thanks, brother.

Cool. Thanks, man. All right, folks, BenGreenfieldFitness.com essential oils till next time, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Dr. Eric Zelensky signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have an amazing week.

You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.

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