Essential Oils for Menopause Hormones | Essential How-to for Essential Oils

Real quick, before we dive into this episode, I have a little sleep secret I want to tell you about. Look, sleep is crucial for your fitness, but it's crucial for just plain old everyday life and function. And I find I sleep great unless I have a migraine. And I've had more than my fair share since perimenopause all the way through postmenopause. My secret weapon was Blue Sky CBD sleep gels. Each gel contains 25mg of CBD and 25mg CBN for deep restorative sleep. Something about it helps to reduce inflammation, which I believe for me was key in helping me get to sleep. But the biggest thing is so many of the over-the-counter solutions, whether for sleep or migraines, can ruin gut health, and liver health. Neither one of those did I want to be problematic for me. So this option is recommended by healthcare providers worldwide and backed by thousands of happy customers, many of whom come from our Flipping 50 community. There is zero THC, so it's non-habit-forming. It's made by a trusted family-owned company that we all can feel good about. Third-party tested for purity and potency. And if you're interested, you too can try a sample for just $6. But even better, you can get 30% off forever with discount code FLIPPING50. That's FLIPPING50. Just go to flipping50.com/blueskycbd. We'll put that link in the show notes and you'll find it everywhere on Flipping 50 at My Favorites. What are you waiting for? Good night. Do you or do you not use essential oils? I am going to guess that— an educated guess— that yes, you do. I would guess that 90% of all of our listeners have some essential oils in their home somewhere, whether they use them on a regular basis or not. But I'd love to hear from you about whether you do. And you are gonna stay tuned to this where we do a little match.com with your what's going on and the essential oil to solve that problem.

I'm Debra Atkinson, and you're listening to Flipping 50. I started this podcast over a decade ago to answer questions about fitness and menopause and beyond before you know to ask them. The goal: to help accelerate your results with the science and the practical application of proven protocols while living your your best life. There's no more powerful health influencer in the world than a midlife woman. It's not just you, but it's the 3 generations that you influence. My unique 40-year career, including being a university senior lecturer in kinesiology, an industry subject matter expert, an international speaker, to founder of the first and the only exclusively made for menopause and beyond fitness membership in the world. Every week I interview experts behind the science of optimal hormone-balancing fitness and longevity and share answers to our community's questions so you can have the vitality and the energy you want, need, and deserve.

For the introduction to this episode, I have to tell you that most of the time— I mean, in fact, probably 99.9% of the time— I will record this introduction after the fact so I can tell you all of the goodies, or at least tease some of them, that are behind the scenes that we just talked about. I have just recorded with my friend Jodi Sternoff Cohen, and she's been a guest before. We're talking essential oils. That topic is not new here either, but the way we did what we did today is very new, and I think you're gonna love it. If you're looking at midlife in the same lens that I am, you know, there is this and there is that, and then this comes up, and then there's that. And if not you, it's for a friend or a sister or a colleague, and/or maybe, just maybe, you're wanting to help your daughter avoid some of the things that we've gone through. But here's what we did. I asked a series of questions about essential oils and if a listener was going to use them. You will find out what was her solution for adrenal fatigue, for sleep, for a low libido, for cravings, or cravings for sweets and/or the need for caffeine to get through the day, for headaches, for lack of motivation to exercise, all the things, including water retention. So my guest today is no stranger to our podcast. Again, Jodi Cohen. She's bestselling author, award-winning journalist, functional practitioner, and founder of Vibrant Blue Oils, where she's combined her training in nutritional therapy and aromatherapy to create unique proprietary blends of organic and wildcrafted essential oils. She's helped over 50,000 clients heal from brain-related challenges including anxiety, insomnia, and autoimmunity. For the past 10 years, she's lectured at wellness centers, conferences, and corporations on brain health, essential oils, stress, and detoxification. She's been seen in the New York Times, Wellness Mama, Elephant Journal, numerous other publications including Flipping 50 Podcast, and her website vibrantblueoils.com is visited by over 300 natural health seekers every year. And she has rapidly become a top resource for essential oils education on the internet today. And on today's episode, I reveal my favorite blend, and I think you're gonna love it too. Let's dive in. Jodi Cohen is in the house. Hey, thanks so much for being here.

Oh, it's so fun to connect with you and talk about all the things I've been learning since I flipped 50.

You know, I think about when I see you, our listeners would be like, what are you talking about? I remember bumping into you in a Lululemon just out of the blue, just like, what are you doing here in my neighborhood?

It was so fun.

All right. We like the dirt here. Like any good woman, we like gossip. But we want to know the backstory, like how did you, how did you end up doing this? So refresh, you're not a stranger to this podcast, but tell us how you, you know, I mean, you're probably in kindergarten, didn't go to career day and say, I want to be, you know, in essential oils. That's my deal.

No, necessity is the mother of invention, you know, and especially as a woman, a mom, when you're busy, you know, when something hits and you're like, all right, I have a new problem. I need to figure out how to solve it. Let's trial and error. You know, we'll throw some pasta at the wall and see what sticks. I just started playing in essential oils. Originally it was for my son. You know, when my son was 3, I realized that his complete ADD personality improved when I removed certain foods and when I added in other foods. And he, you know, he was my biggest teacher, which meant that he wasn't the most easy to support. So, you know, I think I tried like 70 different kale recipes. He would sometimes eat kale chips, but he never said no to oils. I could rub anything on the bottom of his feet and he would let me. And I started noticing that certain things helped him kind of relax and calm down and regulate. Certain things helped him pay attention when we were trying to do homework. So I really got into it through him. And then my own little bump in the road occurred where I literally had kind of adrenal fatigue and supporting the adrenals weren't enough. And so I was like, all right, what can I do that's upstream? And so I started playing with oils 'cause I knew from my research that they could get into the brain, that they were kind of the right size and shape to pass the blood-brain barrier. And I knew enough about what I wanted to target in the brain and what I wanted to target in the nervous system that I just started trial and erroring. Playing and it worked really well. And then friends were like, oh, we want to try it. And it was almost a joke. There was a Nutritional Therapy Association conference in 2013. My background was kind of marketing and focus groups and product testing. So I put together a test kit and we sold out in the first hour. And I thought, okay, this is— no one is really using smell. And topical application in a way that can really, you know, complement what the other lifestyle choices that we're making. And so it just felt like a natural— no one's serving this market, and so I, I can do this. And so that's how I kind of got involved.

That is amazing. Okay, and you already had my attention. You had everybody's attention when you said adrenal fatigue. So we are coming back to that one, by the way, because I already had a short list of questions. It's growing. So, uh, Don't go anywhere. So just, I want to say that nobody listening is a stranger to essential oils. I mean, everybody knows what it is. I would bet 80 or 90% of us here has lavender somewhere, and they, they know it's good for sleep, and that's all they know, and they bought it. They may not be using it, but they bought it. Can we go back to the origins of essential oils? I mean, when did humans actually consciously start using them as a basis for? And what was it for? Was it medicinal, or what, what was it for?

Um, I mean, they were theoretically found in the Egyptian pyramids. You know, what people don't realize is that plants are the basis for most of the pharmaceutical drugs out there. White willow bark is aspirin. Valerian root is Valium. You know, we just slightly change them so that we can, um, turn them into pharmaceutical drugs, but Oils are really the concentrated essence of plants. You know, we know, we might remember from pregnancy, if we're feeling slightly nauseous, we can eat ginger and it helps. So ginger essential oil is just, you know, you steam distill it. So you put the ginger in a big vat, you put in steam, it kind of rises, the hot steam rises, and then you cool it and it becomes kind of the hydrosol, the water, and then the oil, which is really the concentrated essence. So it's very powerful medicine and you really, they only need a very small amount. And what's great, so many of the remedies that we're using, we need to ingest, right? And our digestive tract can get inflamed and it can get overwhelmed, it can get overloaded. But topical application, our skin is our largest organ. It's super open to fat-soluble remedies. So you can just roll something on your skin. You can put it on a reflex point so it has even more power and then smell. People forget, you know, of our 5 senses, smell is the most powerful and the most underutilized.

You know, trust me, I know this. I'm baking cookies so that we can sell this dang house.

But yes, yes. And the people will come in the house and they will smell the cookies, and that will register in their memory that this is safe, that this is positive, and they will associate positive things. Because smell is critical to survival. We have to smell food. We smell water. We smell predator odor. We smell the gas leak or the fire. It's so key to keeping us alive because it has direct access to the part of your brain known as the amygdala. The other 4 senses have to go to the thalamus first. So we smell something that's positive, we store that memory so that we know in the future if we smell that, that's positive. If something negative happens, similarly, we store that memory so that we know the next time we smell fire, oh, you know, we should be on high alert.

Very cool.

Now, to basically signal the brain to kind of process certain emotions, to calm the nervous system, to kind of calm anxiety, you know, alleviate depression. It's so powerful. And people don't necessarily know this. Yet.

So question on essential oils then. I know in some— there are some, I believe, and I don't— I wouldn't know what, so I know enough to be dangerous— that there are ways you can ingest them. So you, you describe topical. Can you use essential oils? Can they also be powerfully used just the aromatherapy? So if I wave this bottle of my favorite right under my nose, am I still getting the benefits? Do they amplify if you do 1 plus 1, or how does this work?

Well, it depends really. I mean, I think that less is more, right? And smell is so powerful, that can be enough. You know, for certain things, like there are certain oils like oregano that, you know, if you're trying to battle Lyme or some other chronic illness and you're working with a practitioner and they're telling you how to use it, that's totally fine. But you can also overdo it and kill the good things along with the bad. And so I guess the way I'm looking at it is I just wanna make sure you're never really going to hurt yourself smelling something or topically applying it. If you drink too much of something, you could do damage. So I'm just trying to err on the side of caution. You know, don't try this at home, kids. If you're gonna do this at home, what are we making sure that you will never hurt yourself doing?

I love that. Okay, so rather than just start out blank, for anybody who's like me, honestly, I think I've got a case of them under a counter, but I don't always use them. And I don't know— I wouldn't know if I went to it, what would I use? What would I want? If somebody's shopping for exercise, you know, a lot of times they'll pick up a Shape magazine and they're like, I'm gonna try that exercise, that's a good one. I'm like, Let's talk about your priorities. What, what transformation do you want? And then let's do exercisematch.com and say what exercises actually get that for you. And let's go there to the bullseye instead of somewhere out in the range. Do essential oils work a little bit like that, in that if I told you here's what I need or want or I'm dealing with, and you could say here's what would work for that?

I think yes. And I mean, one of the things that I've really tried to do is take the guesswork out of oils because, you know, single oils, you mentioned lavender, most people do own lavender. It's a wonderful, wonderful choice. Frankincense is a wonderful choice. Peppermint is a wonderful choice. Some oils, you know, it's like food, right? You can eat an apple by itself. You don't necessarily need to like cut it into a salad, but sometimes when you combine it with other foods, you bring out different tastes and flavors. And it, you know, different foods kind of synergize with each other. In the same way, what I try to do with my company is do done-for-you blends, so it takes the guesswork out. And it also takes, you know, some people that maybe have been hurt, like maybe they threw their back out doing weightlifting, and so they're a little cautious.

We not use that example, thank you. But gardening— they threw their back out gardening.

Through their backyard gardening. Someone who's had a bad experience might be terrified that they're they don't wanna hurt themselves again. And so what I try to do with oils is alleviate that concern. You know, here's something that's done for you, that here's how to use it so you won't hurt yourself.

That's great. Okay, and now I have to tell everybody, so this was right before we sat down. In fact, I was a minute late. Jodi can attest to that. But I went and got this. This is on my shelf 'cause it's absolutely one of my favorite. It sits outside of the cabinet because I put it on often. I will put it on in the evening to chill out. My cortisol can be a little bit high in the evening. Spoiler alert. So this one is the parasympathetic. I love it. I love just smelling it, having it close to me a little bit here. It's amazing. So it is definitely a blend though, right? You put together certain things. Can we play a game? So if I said a woman's dealing with this, what would support that?

Of course.

Yeah, okay. Well, and I interrupted, so what were you gonna say?

Oh no, just that parasympathetic is clove and lime, and it's such a wonderful combination. Last night we went to a nice restaurant and the salad was like fennel, and they had like oranges and all these things that I would never— it would never in a million years occur to me to combine them the way they did, but it was delicious.

Yeah, lovely. And I would never go seeking clove and lime. Like, if they were sitting there, I would have never picked them out.

Great point.

Okay, so I'm gonna start with your lead. You led with— you started doing this looking at adrenal fatigue, and there are a lot of women here who are dealing with it. And, and if you have never identified with that I don't want to label you, listener, but I do want to say that we have a lot of women who come into our community and the membership, and you're finding it takes you a long time to recover from exercise. You're getting up in the morning feeling a little bit more like a hangover, but you never had the fun last night. You know, those are just some initial ways that you might say maybe my adrenal's just in a little pampering. What works for adrenals?

We have many things, and you know, the adrenals really do a lot of the heavy lifting. Like you mentioned, blood sugar, you know, all of our stress hormones. So, you know, the stress response, we turn on the news and see something scary, we're driving our car, someone doesn't see us and is gonna change lanes. Like every day, there are a million things that basically tell our body you're in danger. Your body prioritizes survival. So it could be, you know, that it's your nervous system stimulates your, um, your vagus nerve to kind of turn on your fight-or-flight response. And you want to let your body know you're safe so you can stimulate your vagus nerve with our parasympathetic blend. And that's kind of an upstream response. There are many things for adrenals. There are adaptogenic herbs, which kind of— it's like Goldilocks, right? It's never too hot, never too cold. It's always just right. And that's what I really loved because for a long time I was playing that game of like Oh, I'm, I'm hypoadrenal. I need to kind of calm them down before bed. Oh, I'm adrenally insufficient. I need to crank it up. And it was almost like this weird guesswork of, you know, am I overstimulating when I'm already stimulated? Am I kind of dampening when I'm trying to bring it down? And so I realized, as opposed to playing the guessing game, herbs— like, we have an adrenal oil that you topically apply on the adrenals on the low back. And what that does is You know, most of us— cortisol is not a flat line, right? If you've ever done the saliva test, for many people, you know, it's supposed to kind of be high in the morning so that you wake up and have energy for the day. For many of us, it's not, you know. And so topically applying it in the morning would kind of help give you that little bump up. And then usually around 4 o'clock, you're a little tired. You might crave carbohydrates or sugar or coffee or something to pick you up because you're kind of pooped, you know, and you still need to make dinner and do all your evening plans. And so that would actually give you a little bit more energy. So we have one for the adrenal glands, one to kind of send the signal to your nervous system that you're safe. So the nervous system doesn't then signal the adrenal glands to pump out even more cortisol. And then one for the hypothalamus, the endocrine controlling area of the brain to kind of signal to the endocrine system. You know, sometimes what happens is it's like a thermostat, right? It's called a negative feedback loop. The adrenals kick out cortisol, cortisol gets into the system, the hypothalamus in the brain is reading all of the signals. And at a certain point, like if there's too much cortisol, it almost like gets a little numb. It doesn't necessarily tell the adrenals to turn off. So they're continuing to dump out cortisol, even, you know, it'd be like the thermostat is 90 degrees and somehow it's still kicking off heat. Like it's just a bit of a reset so that the body knows, you know, You know, or like rebooting your phone, it kind of returns you to factory settings so that everything gets the right signal.

So good.

So many women wishing they could return to factory settings out there. Is there anything specific to sleep? Hey, this is Debra Atkinson, and there's one thing that you can't do in the gym.

At your age, and that's get all the protein that you need. You've got to do that in the kitchen. To make it easy for myself to not only get the protein but the fiber, fruits and veggies that I want daily, I started drinking a smoothie a day over 30 years ago when I realized all the junk, the sugar, and the extras that you don't want hiding in most protein powders or pre-made shakes. I finally caved in after years of saying I'd never ever ever sell supplements. Look, stop skipping, skimping, and sabotaging yourself in the morning and after workouts by always being prepared. Protein plus fiber kill cravings and boost satiety and build muscles and a strong future. Use code PODCAST for 10% off your first order at flipping50.com.

Yeah, well, you know, one thing about sleep is it's not one panacea. Like, if there are different issues going on, right? So if you're having trouble falling asleep, that's also a cortisol thing. Cortisol and melatonin almost work like a teeter-totter, right? Um, melatonin is released by the pineal gland in response to darkness, except if there's danger perceived, like cortisol in the system you're not gonna fall asleep because if you fall asleep in the midst of danger, you could die. And so we have one that's kind of great for falling asleep and insomnia. We call it Circadian Rhythm. And what it basically does is it triggers the pineal gland to naturally release melatonin. Pineal gland is right in the center of the brain between the eyes to help kind of measure light and darkness. And so you would just put it on the top of the head, above the ears, back of the head. I don't tell anyone to put oils on the face before bed because I'm a topsy-turvy sleeper and it would wind up in my eyes. I don't want to do that to you. So that's a great one for falling asleep. And then if you're night waking, you know, sometimes we wake up around 1 AM and we are so awake we could go clean the kitchen, you know, we go get work done. That is kind of nocturnal hypoglycemia. That's a blood sugar wake-up. So what happens is, you know, your blood sugar crashes, your body releases kind of emergency blood sugar, often from the adrenal glands, and then it's the pancreas that releases the hormones to kind of pull the blood sugar out of the bloodstream and into the cells. So we have an oil for the pancreas that you can either leave on your bedside table or smell, and that helps kind of calm that adrenal reaction in the middle of the night so you can fall back asleep. And then the last one is kind of the 3 AM wake-up, which is often related to either your liver and gallbladder and detoxification or hormones, like as we get older because, you know, the hormones are changing, that kind of ups the job for the liver. So at 3 AM we wake up, we might need to go to the bathroom, we might fall back asleep fairly easily. But just topically applying our liver or gallbladder blend before bed or when you wake up just helps you kind of sleep through the night.

Amazing. Is there anything that— and you kind of hit on almost all of these, it's like the adrenals are so tied to so much. Cravings, sweets, or the, I want— I'm gonna need caffeine to get me through the afternoon. Something that you can do there?

Yeah, I have two things. I either use the adrenal on the low back, or I have one called circulation that is so invigorating. It's interesting, both my kids, um, like to night ski, which seemed like a good idea until you have to drive home, you know, at 11 on like icy dark roads.

True.

And that would not be my time to caffeinate. So instead, I would use our Circulation Blend, which is really, it kind of does the same thing. So I smell it or I topically apply it around the neck. I do this actually before I have to write anything 'cause it gives a lot of blood flow. It basically vasodilates. You know, if you think of traffic construction, right? Or even, you know, when they're working on the roads and suddenly from 4 lanes you go down to 1 and it slows way down and kind of creeps along. It's because there's not space. And then the construction ends, or you pass the accident, and there are 4 lanes again, and everyone moves quickly. Same thing with the fluids in your body. If you can kind of dilate and give more space, you know, the good things can get in, the blood flow, the oxygen, the nutrients. The bad things, the toxins, you know, everything that the lymph kind of carries out can move out.

So is that the same then that you would suggest I just literally had this question yesterday from a client. So she's, she's in a moment where she's got some adrenal insufficiency going on, but she's in a moment of life where it's very hard for her to remove the things that are putting her there, you know. And so she was complaining about water retention. Is this also helpful then, or is there something else?

Yeah, well, I, I love our lymph blend for that. You know, it's interesting, I've been playing a lot now that I'm 56. You know, everything's kind of shifting around, things are landing in different places, and I'm like, huh, what an interesting time to play. So we have one for the fascia that encases everything, one for the lymph, and one for the circulation, and they all play together. And lymph in particular, it's so interesting, you know, um, I'll tell you a story. I was actually in Arizona, I was hiking up Camel's Back, and then I was coming down and it started raining. And somehow I slipped and kind of twisted my ankle. And I'm like, what? I'm not going to get airlifted. Like, it's ridiculous. I'm just going to figure out how to get down, right? So I get down. It was actually that weekend I saw you. I was in town for a conference. And I go have lunch with everyone. And then I go, stupidly, take an incredibly hot shower. Like, what a dumb idea for somebody who just twisted their ankle. Guess what? Swelled up. Couldn't even move. I'm like, oh my God, did I break— you know, like— All of a sudden, I'm like, it hurts to stand on it. Fortunately, my better half is way smarter than I am, and he's like, yeah, hot water, you inflamed it. He's like, let's elevate it. And I was putting kind of— I was supporting lymphatic drainage and just helping to move the fluid out, you know. And that's what icing does, is it kind of, you know, constricts so there's not too much fluid in there. Suddenly it was fine. I was like, this is really interesting. I think inflammation is misunderstood and it's really about like moving the fluid appropriately. And when it's congested, like in the— in this case, I think that it could be, you know, we've got these clusters of lymph nodes around the bodies, right? So the neck, the clavicles, the sides of the neck, under the armpits, the gut, you know, the hip creases, inguinal area, and then behind the knees. There's this guy like Perry Nickerson, Stop Chasing Pain. He has what he's calling the Big Six. And so I teach people how to use this oil, the lymph oil, on those Big Six points because it's literally like opening up the traffic jam, you know, or those of us that have long hair, we sometimes get tangles, right? We don't need to call the professional stylist. We just kind of untangle. You can kind of untangle the congestion so that all of a sudden the lymph isn't blocked, it's not stuck, you're not getting inflamed, it has somewhere to flow, and you just help it move in the right direction.

That's amazing. Okay, I'm making a little list over here for shopping later, but, uh, and right now I'm hating you, but there's that. Um, talk to me about fascia. So this is one that almost every woman here can identify with. She you know, has the best of intentions. I hear over and over two things. One, what I used to do that worked doesn't work anymore. That one, of course. But I also hear, every time I start, I get injured. So there's such a, you know, huge mass of surged— more plantar fasciitis, more tendinitis, more bursitis. We're seeing these chronic— so it's been a long time coming, but we know it's also related to midlife minimalism. You keep talking about fascia, so I want you to bring me back to that and, and help, help everybody understand. We maybe— Jodi should define it so we don't assume everybody understands what fascia is.

It's, I mean, the general world is kind of connective tissue, extracellular matrix. Like, it surrounds everything and it's supposed to kind of glide, and it's not one-dimensional, it's, it's like multi-dimensional. So it's, it's basically what gives us structure and shape, but also what allows for mobility, and it's supposed to be hydrated. And like, time or stress or tension or even emotional sadness, you know, if you have some kind of heartache, what, what is fetal position? You're like protecting your heart, you're bracing for impact, you're tightening up your back to protect your heart. So that impacts your posture. So if you're trying to do like a heart-opening pose, or, you know, lift your arms above your head, that can impede your range of motion. Because instead of sliding, it's like more stuck and more rigid. And so this is my current obsession because I think it impacts everything. And especially, I do believe that there's an interplay of fascia and the hormones and that they influence each other. So when our hormones are changing, that's also kind of tightening and condensing our fascia. So it's a little bit like, you know, like when your kids are little, right? The terrible twos, you know, the troublesome— like, you kind of know a certain age.

What do you call it when they're 30?

What, what's that one? Emptiness? I don't know, I don't know. But like, every age has its own little pleasant surprise, you know. But if someone— if you know, like, your 16-year-old is not going to be nice to you, you're a little prepped. You're like, okay, I have to get some new skills. You know, when you hit menopause, when your hormones are changing, certain things are going to work differently. So the more you can kind of grease the wheel with, you know, I call it fascia release. And what I love about it is that it addresses the emotional stuff. It addresses the tissue. Like, I actually— this, it's funny, the reason I started doing roller bottles, I bring this with me into yoga and literally I'll be like, oh, you know, we're doing all these crazy hip openers. That hurts. Like, let me just put it on my hip. Under, you know, my Lulu. Oh my God, on my back. And it just allows more range of motion. Actually, this is my new favorite, you know, Midlife Knees. I put this on the front of my knee and the lymph on the back, and that really helps. Suddenly I can go not just up but downstairs. What a crazy concept, right?

Using both legs.

Yes, yes. But the point is, is that fascia is kind of the overlay on everything. You know, when it really gets exposed to the weathering. So, you know, I think that flipping 50, I almost feel like it's misunderstood. You know, like I have a bonus baby that's 15. You could not pay me enough money to be 15 again. I mean, you know, yes, you're a toothpick, but it's just a lot. And 50, you kind of know yourself. You, you know, things don't bother you the way they used to.

Right.

Girls aren't as mean, you know, and so just figuring out how to— I almost feel like it's really getting into that flow. And the more you can put your body into that flow so that, you know, whatever you're doing, be it weightlifting, be it, you know, trying different food, that everything just kind of moves and flows with more ease and grace.

Yeah, I love that. And I keep coming back to Jodi for, you know, 3 years ago I would have said said something quite different. I would have said it's all about strength and it's all about muscle, and that's the thing that's going to empower everything we do as we age. But I would now say, I think based on thousands of people coming in our programs, my own, you know, looking at older people and myself, it's mobility, you know. So even if you're trying to do the right thing, yeah, but mobility is going to open up the door for us to gain the strength. And yeah, and so this would be so very helpful. What if, what if the energy— or, you know, so often women rely on motivation. I hate to use that word, but I'm going to because it's the one they land on. What if exercise and motivation or energy to exercise has left the building? Is there something that can give you that little boost of, okay, I'm ready, I'm going?

Yeah, and I tumbled into this So I'm obsessed with kind of your nervous system and your vagus nerve and Dr. Stephen Porges, who created the polyvagal theory. It's this idea that your vagus nerve almost has different gears. I'm oversimplifying, but when there's the perception of danger, you're in kind of the sympathetic branch of your nervous system. When you're in kind of safety, restore, regenerate, heal, you're in the ventral vagal branch of your nervous system. And then when there's kind of shutdown, and this is what happens, you know, like in child abuse or sexual assault, when you really can't fight back, you kind of play dead. And that's called dorsal vagal. And that can present as like, you know, everything's too much, everything's too hard, you're depressed, you don't have motivation, you're just really shut down. And so I have a blend called Limbic Reset because What's interesting to me is that what you need to do when you're really shut down is send safety signals to the body. You know, and there are ways to do that. There are like tapping exercises, there are somatic exercises, there's, you know, things you can do around your heart. But smell, smell is a really, really easy way to send that safety signal. And so I don't even remember what tipped me into it. There was something traumatic that happened that suddenly I was like, I have no motivation and all I want to do is like scroll stupid YouTube videos, you know, and I'm like, I'm like, this is not me. And so it's, again, it's this interesting, like, all right, like, I guess I'm here now. How do we crawl out of this dark cave? And so I started playing with smell. And it's actually, it's, it's a really expensive blend. It's a lot of these sesquiterpenes that are very oxygenating. So like sandalwood, frankincense, Melissa, um, you know, just really expensive things that just when you smell it, It's almost like it brings you back. It brings you back in your body. It brings you back to this sense of safety so that when you're safe, the world looks different and you can maybe do that next step.

Love that, love that. There's also a lot of women who— and I put my hand up every time I talk about migraines, I feel like I'm coming back to myself— but headaches and migraines, you know, common with a lot of midlife women who are maybe for the first time with hormone surges or ups and downs and drops and dips. Anything that you recommend to help with that?

Yeah, we do have a blend called Migraine Relief that's really good. You put it on your temples if you're in it. The other things that contribute to migraines, you know, like drainage in the neck— like, our mutual friend Christine Schoffner does a lot of work with chronically ill clients, and what she finds is that sometimes the lymph nodes on the neck— like, you know, the neck is kind of this underappreciated area of the body. It's literally what connects the brain brain to the body and the body to the brain. And all the good things have to travel through the neck to get to the brain, and all the toxins have to drain down from the neck to like leave the brain. And if you have any pathogens or amalgams or things in the mouth, that can kind of cause congestion in your lymph nodes. So anything you can do to kind of open, um, you know, all of the lymph drains through the clavicles. So even if you feel your clavicles now and it feels ever so slightly tender, It's again a little bit like a tangle in your hair. You can just gently kind of unpack that and then allow the lymph to drain down. So suddenly there is not that pressure, not that fluid buildup, because it's draining. And then the other thing that contributes to headaches, your gallbladder is often on your gallbladder meridian. And that would be like kind of those mild headaches in the front of the head. And they might correlate with like if you get motion sick or if you ever have kind of that pain between your shoulder blades, or, you know, if you had a lot of morning sickness when you were pregnant. And so we have a gallbladder blend that just helps open that meridian.

Hmm, awesome, awesome. Yeah, I had never heard that about the neck. So, um, here's another question I get a lot. Why I get this, I don't know, but, uh, the, the va-va-voom has left the bedroom, and, you know, a lot of women are wanting it back. It's not so much even about you know, painful intercourse or something else with pelvic floor. But it's just, I don't really care about that anymore. And I'm so sorry, I want to care, but I, I don't.

Yeah, well, that, you know, like, as, um, your estrogen kind of shuts down from your uterus and the adrenals take over, if the adrenals are already tired, they're not going to kind of give you that vava voom. So That definitely, I mean, I'll be super transparent, I went through that. What helped me, I did use the adrenal blend, the parasympathetic, the fascia. Interestingly, I was putting it kind of on my belly button because I feel like that impacts that whole kind of pelvic region area. And then I'm not against hormone replacement, you know, test, don't guess, do your Dutch test, do your blood work. But yeah, right, I do believe that, uh, estrogen, testosterone, and progesterone helped that as well.

So you are— I want to say this, just, you are like this right brain and left brain, if I'm not misunderstood. So scientifically, you know so much about the body, the human anatomy, but you have said 'feels like,' 'I feel like' so many times. So do you trust your gut? Do you use intuition as a big part of what you're doing? Yeah.

Um, yes, and I start with intuition and then I test like crazy.

Awesome. That is, that is awesome. I'm going to come back and circle way back for beginners before we close up. If they are just dabbling and they're like, they're in their cabinet and they've still got these things and they're like, okay, I'm going to start here, um Do most essential oils need a carrier oil? Do they need to be diluted or?

It depends. I mean, so there are different essential oils, right? Like some people would say all of them do, and that wouldn't be totally wrong. You know, it depends on how you're using it, right? Like if you're adding lavender to your bath or your Epsom salt bath, it's probably fine. You know, frankincense is probably fine. There are certain oils that are perceived as hot, right? Like oregano, cinnamon, clove. And so you would maybe test that, like put a little bit on your arm and just make sure that it doesn't feel hot or get red. If it does, you're not gonna put water on it 'cause water and oil don't mix. You're gonna use any oil in your kitchen, olive oil, coconut oil, and you're gonna dilute it that way. Another super safe application point is the bottom of the feet. The bottom of the feet, the skin is thicker and it has a million reflex points. So, you know, there's that old kind of joke, put a dab of peppermint on the bottom of your foot and see how long it takes to taste it in your mouth because it travels really quickly. So that's always kind of a safe place. And what I would say is, you know, just like food, right? You kind of, you know, if you are craving iron, if you're craving a hamburger, you might need iron. If you're craving chocolate, you need magnesium. You know, if something smells good to you, that's probably a good choice. If something doesn't smell good to you, it's not your cup of tea.

Wow, I love that. I really love that. Okay, knowing that, first or last and final question, knowing that we're talking to women primarily, you know, 45 to 70— you're an outlier, you are still welcome here, by the way, I didn't mean to miss you— is there a question that we didn't cover that I should have asked you, Jodi?

Um, I think just kind of that, that anxiety, overwhelm question. Again, yeah. One of the things that I wanna share, it's not just sometimes where you apply the oil is more important than what you apply. And so as someone who's prone to anxiety, who used to have panic attacks, I will tell you my favorite way to smell oils when I'm having an anxiety moment. And I learned this from our colleague Titus Chu, who's a functional neurologist, which means you're trying to kind of balance hemispheres of the brain. So what he taught me is that an anxiety attack is the right frontal lobe, your right forehead being overactive. So the best way to balance that is to smell anything through your left nostril. So you just, you know, take your right thumb, plug your right nostril, smell through the left nostril. It can be, again, anything that smells good. That left nostril travels directly to the left forehead, balances the two hemispheres of the brain, and suddenly you're not having that panic attack.

Wow, that was worth the price of admission, folks. You should probably rewind and play that again. Okay, Jodi, okay, most important piece: where can listeners find you and learn more?

Um, Vibrant Blue Oils is our website, and that's also our tag for like Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Facebook so they can find us there.

So great. Thank you again for being here. Thank you for having me, and thanks for making it easy to use essential oils.

Thank you so much for listening. To listen and access a decade of episodes and the show notes, visit flipping50.com where you'll be able to find all of our prior episodes. And I made it easy for you to make make the most of your listening time by selecting 5 specific areas most commonly high priorities for our community and giving you top 10 lists if you let me know you'd love them. If you know a midlife woman or a soon-to-be one who wants to optimize her midlife energy and time with the right exercise and lifestyle changes and a mindset shift, shift about just what is possible, share this podcast with her, and I thank you. There is no more powerful health influencer in the world than you, midlife woman.