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Essential Oils: Nature's Cure? · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Hello friends, we have a book coming out finally and
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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
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Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
1:23
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Joshua Josh e um Clark h And there's
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Speaker 1: Charles W. Charles Chuck, Wayne Chuck, Wayne Twayne Bryant, and Jerry.
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Speaker 1: The Jade Dog Roland is floating around somewhere in the ether.
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Speaker 1: So this is stuff you should know, everybody. Hi, Hi,
1:46
Speaker 1: this is uh the episode. I'm nervous about why because oh, well,
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Speaker 1: what's I mean? Why? Because she knows so much about it,
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Speaker 1: She's going to be like, you got this wrong. That wrong,
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Speaker 1: not so much getting it wrong us. You know, it's
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Speaker 1: one of these it's close to our hearts. So I
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Speaker 1: feel like I got to do right by it. Oh,
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Speaker 1: I'm sure you will. Like I usually don't care at
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Speaker 1: all about anything we ever talked about, jeez, but this
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Speaker 1: one I care about. You're like a nihilist like flee. Hey.
2:18
Speaker 1: By the way, we should mention, uh, we got a
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Speaker 1: book coming out? Yeah, we do. Um, which not only
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Speaker 1: do we have a book coming out, we have a
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Speaker 1: preorder gift that's ready to go now too. I think
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Speaker 1: we have a pre order gift which is a custom poster.
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Speaker 1: It's written, written by us and designed by h Carly
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Speaker 1: are amazing illustrator for the book. And we even have
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Speaker 1: a book website. Now. Oh, is it up already? Yeah?
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Speaker 1: Have you seen this thing? Yeah? I saw the drafts
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Speaker 1: of it. I didn't see that it was up. I'm
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Speaker 1: so glad you're handling things. So thank you for doing that. Yes,
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Speaker 1: we are. But so here's the deal. You can go
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Speaker 1: anywhere and preorder the book now, uh, and then come
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Speaker 1: I think sometime in is it October? November? Chuck the
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Speaker 1: when the pre order gifts, When when the actual book
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Speaker 1: arrives when it comes out. I think we pushed it
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Speaker 1: back a little bit into November, right, Okay, so you
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Speaker 1: will eventually get the book, but in the meantime, if
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Speaker 1: you go on to the website, uh, stuff you should
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Speaker 1: read books dot com. Um, you can upload an image
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Speaker 1: of your receipt and they'll say, oh, thank you for
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Speaker 1: pre ordering the book. Here's your preorder gift, and you
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Speaker 1: can hang it in your room next to the torn
3:56
Speaker 1: out posters from Tiger Beat magazine, wouldn't it Team Beat?
4:00
Speaker 1: I don't think so. Smart smart plants. Uh yeah, So
4:05
Speaker 1: we're we're gonna be mentioning this a lot because, as
4:07
Speaker 1: John Hodgman told us, the secret so A B, C,
4:11
Speaker 1: A BP always be plugging. That's why I know, man,
4:16
Speaker 1: that is it's gonna be on his headstone and they'll
4:19
Speaker 1: probably be a QR code on his headstones. He can
4:21
Speaker 1: buy his books. Oh man, that's a great idea. Um.
4:25
Speaker 1: So we're talking today not about books necessarily. We're talking
4:29
Speaker 1: more about essential oils than books, although there's plenty of
4:32
Speaker 1: books on essential oils, but that has nothing to do
4:34
Speaker 1: with our book. Instead, essential oils has to do with
4:38
Speaker 1: our podcast, in particular this episode of our podcast, which
4:41
Speaker 1: is on essential oils. That's right, And these are the oils,
4:46
Speaker 1: these little chemicals that are stored in plants, in the
4:51
Speaker 1: glands of all different kinds of plants and all over
4:54
Speaker 1: the plants from pedals to stems to roots, and depending
4:58
Speaker 1: on where you are in the plant, you might be
5:00
Speaker 1: getting a different kind of oil from that particular spot. Yeah,
5:04
Speaker 1: there there might be a certain type of essential oil
5:07
Speaker 1: found in the seeds and a totally different one found
5:09
Speaker 1: in the leaves or the roots, or the bark or um,
5:12
Speaker 1: the stems, the twigs, the hair, the teeth. Basically every
5:17
Speaker 1: part of the plant can hold some sort of essential oil.
5:21
Speaker 1: And one of the things that I love about this,
5:23
Speaker 1: chuck is that science isn't sure exactly what the functions
5:30
Speaker 1: are of essential oils, but they know that it's some
5:33
Speaker 1: form of communication. I mean, like scent as a form
5:36
Speaker 1: of communication in the plant world in the animal world, um,
5:40
Speaker 1: and these communicate different things, likely things like getaway, cow,
5:46
Speaker 1: I don't want you near me and eating me instead,
5:50
Speaker 1: bring on the honey bee to help pollinate me. That's right.
5:54
Speaker 1: And we'll get into, um what they have been used
5:57
Speaker 1: for and are used for. But uh, it's safe to
6:01
Speaker 1: say that since the times of ancient Egypt, people have
6:04
Speaker 1: been using essential oils, certainly back then before there was
6:08
Speaker 1: modern medicine as medicine, so so we'll talk about all this.
6:14
Speaker 1: Let's let's get into also a big shout out to
6:16
Speaker 1: Julia Layton for helping us out with this one. Yeah,
6:19
Speaker 1: Julia is back in the rotation, very happy about that.
6:22
Speaker 1: So um essential oils duce. You know what in essential
6:26
Speaker 1: oil is? Most people do um. But as far as
6:29
Speaker 1: like plants go, as far as chemistry goes, they're really
6:34
Speaker 1: just a certain kind of compound. You can divide them
6:37
Speaker 1: into two different categories. One is oxidated compounds and the
6:41
Speaker 1: other is hydrocarbons. And oxidated compounds come in all different
6:45
Speaker 1: forms and shapes, things like alcohols, phenols, oxides, esters, alde
6:51
Speaker 1: hydes um, and then on the hydrocarbon side there's a
6:55
Speaker 1: there they follow under worn category called terpenes. If you
7:00
Speaker 1: have ever been in a drug education class and the
7:03
Speaker 1: the educator brought out that briefcase full of different drugs,
7:08
Speaker 1: you may have gotten a whiff of the marijuana. That is,
7:11
Speaker 1: the terpenes in the marijuana that give it that distinctive smell.
7:16
Speaker 1: That's right. And by the way, I'm gonna read it
7:18
Speaker 1: on a listener mail. At some point, uh, someone said
7:21
Speaker 1: that we should not use the term marijuana anymore, Oh
7:23
Speaker 1: my gosh, why, and and use the term cannabis because
7:27
Speaker 1: apparently the term marijuana was created as sort of a
7:31
Speaker 1: racist term, uh, to make it sound wow, foreign, south
7:36
Speaker 1: of the border and evil. Yeah news to me, so
7:42
Speaker 1: well it makes sense. Yeah sure, wow, Okay, well we'll
7:47
Speaker 1: start calling it um. Okay, that's the new name for pot. Everybody,
7:54
Speaker 1: X Factor. I think that's a TV show. We might
7:57
Speaker 1: get sued. That's a Joe Rogan TV show, wasn't it. No,
7:59
Speaker 1: that was fear Factor. I bet you anything that was
8:02
Speaker 1: an X Factor, and a bet Joe Rogan had something
8:04
Speaker 1: to do with it. But he's like, we've got to
8:06
Speaker 1: come up with a good name for the spinoff. So
8:10
Speaker 1: you were talking about um, Like you mentioned one thing,
8:14
Speaker 1: you said something about an alcohol. People are like, what
8:17
Speaker 1: in a plant? But that's true. Like if you look
8:21
Speaker 1: at peppermint oil, that that great scent that you get
8:25
Speaker 1: from peppermint oil is the alcohol menthol right, And all
8:29
Speaker 1: of these, all these different things, they're different kinds of
8:32
Speaker 1: compounds there. Um, they have different kinds of atoms put together,
8:36
Speaker 1: they do different things, They provide different functions. Again, they
8:39
Speaker 1: probably all largely have to do with plant communication to
8:43
Speaker 1: other plants or two animals, but they smell different. They
8:47
Speaker 1: combine to make different smells. The thing that they all
8:50
Speaker 1: have in common is that essential oils are all v
8:53
Speaker 1: o c's volatile organic compounds, which are just a type
8:57
Speaker 1: of compound. Usually I guess car been based. They might
9:00
Speaker 1: have to be, yeah, because it's organic. So they're all
9:03
Speaker 1: carbon based compounds that have in common the fact that
9:06
Speaker 1: at room temperature or at low temperatures, they um evaporate.
9:11
Speaker 1: They have their their boiling point is so low that
9:14
Speaker 1: it happens at room temperature, and it can happen at
9:17
Speaker 1: such a low point that it doesn't actually even go
9:20
Speaker 1: from solid you know, alcohols too, to liquid into gas.
9:26
Speaker 1: It can sublimate sometimes just from solid into gas. And
9:30
Speaker 1: it's that gas that spreads out off of the plants
9:33
Speaker 1: stems or leaves or roads or petals, whatever, and and
9:37
Speaker 1: hit our olfactory senses through our nose and we smell.
9:42
Speaker 1: But that's all it is. It's a compound that that
9:44
Speaker 1: vaporizes very easily at low temperatures and spreads through the air. Yeah,
9:49
Speaker 1: and you know those little tiny droplets they diffused through
9:52
Speaker 1: the cell membrane and then all of a sudden they're
9:55
Speaker 1: on the surface of the plant, just waiting for somebody's
9:58
Speaker 1: nostrils to come by. But it's kind of like that
10:01
Speaker 1: that old question like if a tree falls in the woods,
10:04
Speaker 1: does it make a sound? Like if if there's nobody
10:07
Speaker 1: there to smell a volatile organic compound, does it actually smell?
10:12
Speaker 1: And the answer is clearly yes, yeah, and just the
10:16
Speaker 1: tiniest I mean, sometimes you can just smell with your
10:19
Speaker 1: nose and it smells great. But sometimes the tiniest bit
10:21
Speaker 1: of activation, we'll get it going. Um. One of my
10:25
Speaker 1: favorite things to do is on a walk when someone's
10:28
Speaker 1: got one of those big, beautiful rosemary bushes out in
10:30
Speaker 1: there by the sidewalk, it's just, you know, Emily and
10:33
Speaker 1: I both and my daughter to just run our hands
10:36
Speaker 1: up one of those stalks and just rub our hands together,
10:40
Speaker 1: and you've got delicious steak hands. Which is why I mean,
10:44
Speaker 1: that's also a good example why if you grow rosemary
10:48
Speaker 1: that you use in your food, you want to grow
10:51
Speaker 1: it away from the side because who knows people are
10:55
Speaker 1: touching who was walking by with what on their hands
10:57
Speaker 1: rubbing your food. Basically, hey, man, if you if you've
11:01
Speaker 1: got edibles in your front yard, then that's your fault.
11:06
Speaker 1: I know I'm saying, yeah, but you so you you
11:09
Speaker 1: need like the public rosemary bush for people to walk
11:13
Speaker 1: by and smell. Then you need like your head stashed
11:15
Speaker 1: rosemary bush up by your house, you know, right, And
11:18
Speaker 1: if you go up to the house, you can lean
11:19
Speaker 1: out the window and say, hey, sir, that's my private bush.
11:22
Speaker 1: Stay away, Steer clear, steer clear. So um okay, So
11:26
Speaker 1: volt organic compounds, we've kind of gotten that across I think, um,
11:31
Speaker 1: and with essential oils, this is I think pretty essential
11:35
Speaker 1: to know m hm, that when you smell something like
11:40
Speaker 1: lavender or rose or juniper or something like that, like
11:45
Speaker 1: you know what that smell smells like. And from researching
11:48
Speaker 1: this stuff, I think scientists have managed to isolate the
11:51
Speaker 1: essential oils found in like three thousand different species of
11:55
Speaker 1: plants so far, um, three hundreds of of which and
11:58
Speaker 1: we'll talk about this more later, but three hundred of
12:00
Speaker 1: which have been shown to have some sort of biomedical properties,
12:04
Speaker 1: which is pretty important. Um. But from all of these
12:07
Speaker 1: they've realized there is a central player, right, Like, um,
12:12
Speaker 1: what was the one that you called out? Peppermint oils?
12:15
Speaker 1: Menthol It's a type of alcohol. But if you just
12:19
Speaker 1: smell menthol, you're you're not like that that smells like
12:22
Speaker 1: peppermint instead. The essential oil is that main component, that
12:28
Speaker 1: main volatile organic compound with dozens or hundreds of others
12:32
Speaker 1: in varying quantities and amounts, all mixed together just perfectly
12:37
Speaker 1: so that you have not menthol, but peppermint, the essential
12:40
Speaker 1: oil of peppermint um. And that is what in essential
12:44
Speaker 1: oils is. It's a really intricate, complex combination of volatile
12:49
Speaker 1: organic compounds. That is the essence of that plant. That's right,
12:55
Speaker 1: the essence of the plant. That's exactly perfectly said. And
13:00
Speaker 1: I'll just say this now. We're going to talk about
13:02
Speaker 1: them in a minute. But there is a Swiss chemist
13:04
Speaker 1: chuck Um named Paracelsus, and he was an alchemist, and
13:11
Speaker 1: it turns out the alchemists are the ones who coined
13:13
Speaker 1: the term essential oil because the alchemists believe believed in
13:18
Speaker 1: five elements. The four elements were earth, wind, water, and fire,
13:22
Speaker 1: and then there was a fifth element that was like elusive.
13:25
Speaker 1: It was the one that bound all the other elements
13:27
Speaker 1: together and just it was the glue that bound reality
13:30
Speaker 1: and existence in the universe together. And so quintessential comes
13:36
Speaker 1: from quinta essence, meaning the fifth essence or the fifth element,
13:40
Speaker 1: and so quintessential is was shortened eventually into essential oil,
13:45
Speaker 1: which was the thought to be the purest, most um,
13:49
Speaker 1: basic fundamental essence of a plant. So that's where we
13:54
Speaker 1: get essential oil is from alchemists. Boy, why wasn't there
13:58
Speaker 1: a soul band in the seventies named the Fifth Essence
14:02
Speaker 1: featuring Billy d Volumes they could open for earth, wind,
14:05
Speaker 1: and fire and water and they would have done the
14:08
Speaker 1: soundtrack to the Fifth Element. Yeah. Whatever, So if we
14:14
Speaker 1: go back in time, if we hopp in the old
14:15
Speaker 1: way back machine, Boy, we haven't been in this thing
14:17
Speaker 1: for a while. Think about it. Kick it, Jerry, it's
14:28
Speaker 1: fired up. It smells a little musty. I don't think
14:33
Speaker 1: we've been in this thing since. You didn't dry out
14:36
Speaker 1: the life preservers from last time. You just threw them
14:38
Speaker 1: in there in a pile, and now they're all well.
14:42
Speaker 1: Luckily we have some essential oils on hand, because we're
14:45
Speaker 1: going back to ancient Egypt and this is when they
14:49
Speaker 1: started using essential oils, integrating them into medicine. Um, the
14:55
Speaker 1: trades between you know, of course in China they were
14:58
Speaker 1: doing stuff like this and the Orient and trade routes
15:02
Speaker 1: between the Orient and the Mediterranean really opened up this up,
15:05
Speaker 1: opened up this trade to these sort of magical oils
15:09
Speaker 1: as far as they were concerned. We know it's not magic. Now,
15:14
Speaker 1: back back then, this was this was early medicine, you
15:17
Speaker 1: know for sure. Yeah, and I mean it was. It
15:19
Speaker 1: was used in traditional Chinese medicine still is. UM. It's
15:24
Speaker 1: spread from Egypt to the Mediterranean, to the Greeks, to
15:28
Speaker 1: the Romans, um over to the Persians who figured out
15:32
Speaker 1: how to distill ethyl alcohol from sugar, which was become
15:36
Speaker 1: a really big component in UM. Extracting essential oils from plants.
15:42
Speaker 1: It was a huge innovation. UM. And then that trickled
15:46
Speaker 1: over to Europe in the Middle Ages, and um, that
15:50
Speaker 1: is where we join up with our friend Paracelsus, that
15:53
Speaker 1: Swiss chemist who's birth name was Philippus theo ast Us
16:00
Speaker 1: Aerolis Bombastus von Hohenheim. Oh man, it's amazing, and't an
16:07
Speaker 1: amazing just von Hohenheim gets some statue in my mind. Yeah, yeah,
16:12
Speaker 1: that's that's pretty amazing. But he was known as the
16:15
Speaker 1: Luther of medicine because at the time people were like, oh,
16:18
Speaker 1: this Galen guy had it all figured out. There's four
16:20
Speaker 1: humors and that explains everything. He's like, no, no, let's
16:24
Speaker 1: use like evidence based science. Let's use things like chemistry.
16:28
Speaker 1: And this guy was an alchemist even and he died
16:30
Speaker 1: bitter and angry because no one would listen to him.
16:33
Speaker 1: But he really helped kind of push things forward as
16:36
Speaker 1: far as reforming science into thinking scientifically is concerned. Yeah,
16:41
Speaker 1: and he was a big proponent of these plant oils
16:44
Speaker 1: that he was extracting, and uh, the compositions were revealed
16:49
Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century, and then of course, you know,
16:52
Speaker 1: the twentieth century comes along and we get much more
16:54
Speaker 1: efficient with our extraction and that just means more essential oils,
16:58
Speaker 1: which means more experimentation basically, Yeah, you know, and good smoking,
17:05
Speaker 1: a little X factor and a little fooling around. Who knows.
17:10
Speaker 1: Should we take a break? Definitely? Now, all right, let's
17:14
Speaker 1: take a break, and we'll talk about this extraction process.
17:18
Speaker 1: Something that I see under my deck a lot these days.
17:22
Speaker 1: Right after this, so I want to say something chuck
17:43
Speaker 1: with extraction um one of the reasons why essential oils
17:47
Speaker 1: are so expensive, and if you get really good at
17:50
Speaker 1: essential oil, you're gonna pay a lot for it. I
17:54
Speaker 1: saw if you bought a leader, which seems like a
17:57
Speaker 1: lot of rose oil. But if you're going to turn
17:59
Speaker 1: around and sell in smaller amounts of other people, you
18:02
Speaker 1: probably buy a leader if you have twenty one thousand
18:05
Speaker 1: dollars to cough up for a single leader of rose oil.
18:09
Speaker 1: And the reason why essential oils are so expensive is
18:12
Speaker 1: because it takes so much plant material to to get
18:18
Speaker 1: that essence from it. Right, So with with roses in particular,
18:22
Speaker 1: you can expect to need about five metric tons of
18:27
Speaker 1: rose petals just to get a kilogram of rose oil,
18:32
Speaker 1: three thousand lemons to get a kilogram of lemon oil,
18:35
Speaker 1: and something like four hundred and forty pounds of fresh
18:38
Speaker 1: lavender flowers to get a kilogram of lavender essential oil. Yeah,
18:44
Speaker 1: for our American friends who are like, dude, what are
18:47
Speaker 1: you even talking about? Um, six hundred pounds of rose
18:52
Speaker 1: petals for one ounce of essential oil or forty to
18:57
Speaker 1: sixty rosebuds for a single goal drop of rose otto
19:02
Speaker 1: essential oil. I love stuff like that. Well, essential oils,
19:07
Speaker 1: they're my favorite new thing. No, it's cool, but it's
19:10
Speaker 1: also you know, sustainability is an issue because of that, um,
19:14
Speaker 1: they use the most plant material to produce produce that
19:17
Speaker 1: very small amount of oil. So you're throwing away the
19:20
Speaker 1: rest of the plant. Well, yeah, I mean that is true.
19:23
Speaker 1: But here's another way to look at it, Chuck. If
19:26
Speaker 1: if the purpose of life, genetically speaking, is to multiply
19:30
Speaker 1: as much as possible, we are helping plants by propagating them,
19:36
Speaker 1: and we're doing it because those plants are producing a
19:38
Speaker 1: smell that we like. So in this sense, we are
19:42
Speaker 1: the slaves of plants who were propagating as much as
19:46
Speaker 1: we possibly can to produce that smell. More. Yeah, and
19:50
Speaker 1: you know, Emily is all about essential oils for sure,
19:52
Speaker 1: but she's also gotten much more into using the whole
19:56
Speaker 1: herb and the whole plant, um and trying to use
20:00
Speaker 1: like as much as the plant as possible, which is
20:02
Speaker 1: pretty cool. She's like, here, just stick this whole twig
20:04
Speaker 1: of rosemary up your nose and you'll be fine. She's
20:08
Speaker 1: really learned a lot. Man. It's it's pretty impressive to cease,
20:10
Speaker 1: you know, and inspiring to see someone learning so much,
20:14
Speaker 1: you know, midlife, uh something brand new, like going back
20:17
Speaker 1: to school. Basically, yeah, I can actually attest. This is
20:21
Speaker 1: not a paid plug, everybody, Chuck, does not give me
20:23
Speaker 1: money for these. Um. We got some soaps and some
20:28
Speaker 1: room sprays. I think I told you from from Emily
20:32
Speaker 1: from her company, and we actually sent some to some
20:36
Speaker 1: friends and within like a couple of weeks, they were asking,
20:40
Speaker 1: they were dead. Where can we they said, where can
20:43
Speaker 1: we get some more of this? Because we're spraying this
20:46
Speaker 1: lavender spray on our pillows every night to go to sleep.
20:49
Speaker 1: And they wanted to make sure that they could secure
20:52
Speaker 1: more because they were halfway through the bottle. That we
20:55
Speaker 1: said them, not even like we're out where you know,
20:58
Speaker 1: where'd you guys get this? It was we're halfway through.
21:00
Speaker 1: We want to make sure we can get some more.
21:02
Speaker 1: So Emily making the good stuff for sure, that's right,
21:05
Speaker 1: and go to love your Mama dot com and and
21:07
Speaker 1: check it out. She's a small business and they're all
21:09
Speaker 1: hurting right now. So we always appreciate the business so extraction.
21:14
Speaker 1: There are have been a lot of different methods over
21:17
Speaker 1: the years. As Emily told me, she's like that, you
21:19
Speaker 1: know these are all ancient methods, or not all ancient methods,
21:22
Speaker 1: but many of these are ancient methods. Does she say
21:25
Speaker 1: things like low first, low, these be ancient methods, wonderful?
21:32
Speaker 1: She does say all flourage, which is a very interesting
21:37
Speaker 1: older technique where you isolate these essential oils by using
21:43
Speaker 1: purified fats. And this all sounds gross, but what you
21:48
Speaker 1: would do back in the day, and I'm sure there
21:50
Speaker 1: are probably still some people doing it this way, um,
21:53
Speaker 1: and you can probably go, like pay five dollars to
21:55
Speaker 1: watch them dress up an al temy clothes and stuff
21:58
Speaker 1: and do this. But you would get a tallow and
22:01
Speaker 1: large mixture and spread it out on a flat surface
22:04
Speaker 1: and then, uh, the first thing you have to do
22:06
Speaker 1: with any of these is you got to crush up
22:08
Speaker 1: the plants really well, and you you coat it with
22:11
Speaker 1: these crushed up plants, and the fat absorbs these v
22:15
Speaker 1: o C s. It takes a few days. Then you
22:18
Speaker 1: filter out those plant parts, you know, because you don't
22:21
Speaker 1: want those around anymore. You've gotten what you needed from them.
22:24
Speaker 1: You're done with them, get out of my sight. And
22:26
Speaker 1: then the fat will eventually become saturated with this essential oil.
22:31
Speaker 1: And then you extract that oil with a solvent basically
22:34
Speaker 1: like alcohol. Yeah, from what I saw though, it is
22:37
Speaker 1: this is a multi step process where once you extract
22:40
Speaker 1: or once you get rid of like the plant material,
22:43
Speaker 1: once you've gotten the essential oil out of it, you
22:45
Speaker 1: repeat the process again and again and again until like
22:47
Speaker 1: the fat is saturated with essential oil. Yeah, that's pretty
22:51
Speaker 1: cool and that I mean, that's great. That seems very ancient. Indeed. Um,
22:56
Speaker 1: And there's another variation of it called maceration hot at,
23:00
Speaker 1: which is um where you do the same thing, but
23:03
Speaker 1: you warm the fat to kind of speed up the
23:05
Speaker 1: absorption process. So I guess that means that essential oils,
23:10
Speaker 1: or at least certain kinds of them, are fat soluble,
23:14
Speaker 1: is what I'm taking from this. Yeah, I couldn't really
23:17
Speaker 1: figure out this maceration. That may be an old term um,
23:22
Speaker 1: because like a macerated oil is basically an infused oil
23:26
Speaker 1: for use a carrier oil. Now. Yeah, my understanding or
23:29
Speaker 1: my familiarity with masceration is um. When you make a shrub,
23:33
Speaker 1: a vinegar shrub to put in cocktails or whatever. Macerating
23:37
Speaker 1: is where you basically chemically mash the fruit by putting
23:44
Speaker 1: so much sugar on it that it just breaks it down.
23:48
Speaker 1: And then you take that and add vinegar to it
23:50
Speaker 1: and shake it up and let it sit for a
23:52
Speaker 1: few weeks and thank me later. One of my favorite
23:57
Speaker 1: ways of extraction is good old fashioned mechanic cold expression
24:01
Speaker 1: another good band name. And this is like uh citrus rhyns,
24:06
Speaker 1: like all those great essential oils that you get from
24:09
Speaker 1: an orange peel or or lemon peel, and you cold
24:13
Speaker 1: press this stuff and just extract those oils with good
24:17
Speaker 1: old fashioned elbow grease. This is what Lucile Ball was
24:20
Speaker 1: doing to those grapes and that classic episode where she's
24:24
Speaker 1: mashing grapes by jumping around a tub with another lady.
24:29
Speaker 1: I mean, is there anything better than taking a lemon
24:33
Speaker 1: twist and squeezing that thing into a drink and seeing
24:37
Speaker 1: those little that citrus sneeze come out of it. Yeah,
24:41
Speaker 1: and then like that it kind of floats like oil
24:44
Speaker 1: on top of the drink. It's when you get it
24:47
Speaker 1: just right, it is very satisfying. Agreed or two. You know,
24:51
Speaker 1: if you ever just like use some lemon juice and
24:54
Speaker 1: then throw away that lemon without using the peel for something,
24:57
Speaker 1: then you're doing it wrong, like just rayed in the air,
25:00
Speaker 1: sprayed on your counter, sprayed on your hands. Do whatever,
25:03
Speaker 1: Oh friend, this is what you do with a lemon peel.
25:05
Speaker 1: You never throw it away. You throw it into your
25:09
Speaker 1: um garbage disposal and eventually run your garbage disposal, and
25:14
Speaker 1: not only does it make your garbage disposal smell really good,
25:17
Speaker 1: it actually disinfects the garbage disposal so that it doesn't
25:21
Speaker 1: smell funky nice. Yeah, do that, Like if you drink
25:26
Speaker 1: a lot of lemon water, your garbage disposal is going
25:29
Speaker 1: to thank you for it. I saw one of those,
25:31
Speaker 1: and I hate calling them hacks, but one of those
25:34
Speaker 1: food hacks lists the other day, and this was pretty good.
25:38
Speaker 1: You take, instead of cutting the lemon and then getting
25:41
Speaker 1: like a cheese cloth or something to keep those seeds
25:44
Speaker 1: and things in there, you just roll it on the
25:48
Speaker 1: you know, before you do anything. You roll it on
25:49
Speaker 1: the counter like a rolling pin with your hand and
25:52
Speaker 1: just get it all soft and squishy, and then you
25:54
Speaker 1: just stick like a like a skewer or like a
25:57
Speaker 1: kebab skewer through the little what is it called the nipple, Sure,
26:03
Speaker 1: the nip, the nip of the lemon all the way through,
26:08
Speaker 1: and then that's just a little spout and you can
26:10
Speaker 1: just squeeze the heck out of that thing. The only
26:12
Speaker 1: thing that's coming out as the juice. I've never heard
26:15
Speaker 1: of that food hack. That was a good one. You
26:17
Speaker 1: know what else we could call that part of the
26:19
Speaker 1: lemon is the lemons moose knuckle? What do you think
26:24
Speaker 1: about that? That or the nip? Make your choice? What
26:30
Speaker 1: else do we have? Well, Emily is a steam distiller.
26:32
Speaker 1: You know, she's got a still and she uses uh
26:35
Speaker 1: steam distillation process, which is very cool to see. So
26:40
Speaker 1: with steam distillation is basically the same thing that you
26:43
Speaker 1: would use to make um like gin. The still that
26:47
Speaker 1: we talked about in Gin is basically the same thing
26:50
Speaker 1: where you've got some hot water that's producing steam. The
26:52
Speaker 1: steam rises up through like a great or a grid
26:56
Speaker 1: or something. Um, it passes through that and then up
26:59
Speaker 1: past these mashed up bits of whatever plant you're extracting
27:03
Speaker 1: the essence from. And then that water vapor carries those
27:06
Speaker 1: essential oils from the mashed up plant up, up, up,
27:09
Speaker 1: and then down down, down again to another part of
27:11
Speaker 1: the still where it's cooled and turns into a combination
27:15
Speaker 1: of oil and water. And correct me if I'm getting
27:18
Speaker 1: any of this wrong, because I've never actually seen this firsthand.
27:21
Speaker 1: And then the oil and water goes into the final
27:24
Speaker 1: little area with a spigot at the bottom for the
27:28
Speaker 1: water and speak it at the top for the oil,
27:30
Speaker 1: which will eventually start to float. It sounds about right, Okay, great,
27:35
Speaker 1: And then I saw something else chuck that ties into
27:37
Speaker 1: another episode of ours that I found very satisfying. Ultrasound
27:41
Speaker 1: is used sometimes two premash the um or I guess
27:48
Speaker 1: pre extract the essential oils. So you'll take say I
27:52
Speaker 1: saw a demonstration using this ultrasound wand basically, and they've
27:57
Speaker 1: had a cup of water and um like hops that
28:02
Speaker 1: they mashed up some hops and they just stuck the
28:04
Speaker 1: ultrasound wand in the water and made the water go crazy.
28:08
Speaker 1: And what they found is that using a lot less
28:10
Speaker 1: energy and even less plant material, you can extract more
28:15
Speaker 1: essential oil because the cavitation that's produced by those sound
28:19
Speaker 1: waves in the walls of the cells that hold the
28:23
Speaker 1: essential oil in the plant, those cell walls get busted
28:27
Speaker 1: open and so when more essential oil comes out, so
28:32
Speaker 1: you can actually get more essential oil out of the plant.
28:35
Speaker 1: And it takes lower temperature steam to look that essential
28:39
Speaker 1: oil out, so there's no thermal degradation. There's a lot
28:42
Speaker 1: less thermal degradation, so you use less plant material, less
28:45
Speaker 1: energy to get more essential oil out thanks to the
28:49
Speaker 1: beauty of ultrasound. Now, before they did that demonstration, did
28:53
Speaker 1: they say this wand has not been up anyone's but
28:56
Speaker 1: of course that's how they start every single video in Germany.
29:03
Speaker 1: Oh boy, that was the German company. Sure, and they're
29:06
Speaker 1: into that kind of thing. Yeah, and Germans listen to this,
29:09
Speaker 1: hey Germany, because we have a specifically tailored ad for Germany,
29:16
Speaker 1: which I'm proud of punch about. Yeah, guten talk everyone.
29:21
Speaker 1: Uh do you know what that means? Uh? It means
29:24
Speaker 1: this wand has not been up anybody's But that's right,
29:27
Speaker 1: guten talk. So the uses of essential oils um depending
29:32
Speaker 1: on who you ask, and we'll get into the controversies
29:35
Speaker 1: of how they're marketed, because there are some for sure. Um,
29:40
Speaker 1: you know, if you read some sites, they'll say basically
29:43
Speaker 1: they'll cure anything, or maybe not cure anything, because you
29:46
Speaker 1: have to be careful of how you say things. But
29:48
Speaker 1: they still say that. Yeah, it's bad. But some of
29:53
Speaker 1: the legit uses of essential oils um. They can be
29:57
Speaker 1: a preservative, they can be a flavoring agent. They are
30:00
Speaker 1: certainly used as scent agents and all all kinds of things.
30:04
Speaker 1: Um Emily makes her own insect repellent, mosquito repellent. Was
30:07
Speaker 1: she used like citronella um jeez, I should know this
30:12
Speaker 1: because I sprayed all over my body like every night.
30:16
Speaker 1: I don't know. I just strussed her that she's doing
30:18
Speaker 1: it right. Uh, it can be a fungicidal, herbicidal, and
30:23
Speaker 1: pesticidal agent for crops. And then there's a Roman therapy
30:27
Speaker 1: which we'll get into in a few minutes as well. Yeah,
30:30
Speaker 1: and all those will make a lot more sense than
30:32
Speaker 1: a second once we talked about the actual evidence based
30:35
Speaker 1: research into what um kind of biomedical properties essential oils have. Uh.
30:43
Speaker 1: One of the things that we found like pretty early on,
30:47
Speaker 1: and we should say, there's you know, hundreds of essential
30:50
Speaker 1: oils that are used um for a Roman therapy or
30:54
Speaker 1: for industrial purposes, and we really have studied just a
30:58
Speaker 1: handful of them. The ones that we have studied have
31:01
Speaker 1: turned up some pretty interesting results. Like we've found that
31:04
Speaker 1: very clearly some essential oils are antimicrobial and antifungal as well.
31:11
Speaker 1: Some essential oils are both at the same time, Like
31:13
Speaker 1: clove oil. If you're a bacteria or a fungus, you
31:17
Speaker 1: do not want to be around clove oil because it
31:19
Speaker 1: is going to mess you up pretty bad, worse than
31:22
Speaker 1: than Rocky on Draco. Eventually. Yeah, Tea tree oil is
31:28
Speaker 1: something we use a lot in our house as well,
31:30
Speaker 1: UM to like dry out pimple, let's say, or to
31:34
Speaker 1: heal something, uh you know, uh, something like on your skin.
31:40
Speaker 1: It's very good for skin treatments. Uh what else here? UM?
31:43
Speaker 1: I mean? And we should mention to the reason people
31:46
Speaker 1: are turning to these is because there's a big movement
31:49
Speaker 1: UM and there always has been, but there's seems like
31:52
Speaker 1: it's really gained steam in the last decade of people
31:55
Speaker 1: trying to find uh natural alternatives to UM synthetic treatments. Sure,
32:02
Speaker 1: which is laudable and commendable UM as long as the
32:05
Speaker 1: science backs it up. And part of the science also
32:07
Speaker 1: too is showing that it's not actually harmful, which we'll
32:10
Speaker 1: talk about two. But one of the things that they're
32:12
Speaker 1: figuring out about essential oil, and they are scientists, I
32:15
Speaker 1: should say, is that because they have antifungal properties and
32:19
Speaker 1: anti microbial properties, UM, and because those properties survive being vaporized,
32:26
Speaker 1: that you could use this stuff as a spray for
32:29
Speaker 1: a cleaner conceivably. And that's not to say like just
32:32
Speaker 1: stop using any other cleaner and just use clove oil,
32:36
Speaker 1: although we use clove oil a lot to disinfect things.
32:39
Speaker 1: We use lavender oil to disinfect things. So I don't know,
32:42
Speaker 1: maybe do what you want. But um, we're probably going
32:46
Speaker 1: to start seeing more essential oils in cleaning products than
32:51
Speaker 1: we do even now, and they're starting to be all
32:53
Speaker 1: over the place. Yeah, I mean, the air based disinfectant
32:57
Speaker 1: is pretty interesting. We use um, you know, Emily makes
33:01
Speaker 1: room sprays, and those I don't think are so much
33:04
Speaker 1: for the disinfectant as just a good, you know, scent
33:06
Speaker 1: based poop cover up. Yeah. Oh, I hadn't thought about that.
33:11
Speaker 1: I was just using it to make the room exponentially
33:13
Speaker 1: more pleasant. Yeah, but they're good to have in the bathroom,
33:17
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, what do you mean empty poop?
33:21
Speaker 1: I got you. Another cool thing is is there is, uh,
33:27
Speaker 1: increasingly there is drug resistance among infectious microorganisms, and so
33:33
Speaker 1: that is opened up the doors for more research into
33:37
Speaker 1: the anti pathogenic properties of essential oils because they're saying, like, hey,
33:42
Speaker 1: maybe some of this stuff can be replaced these synthetic
33:45
Speaker 1: compounds with these natural compounds. So they're so they're talking
33:49
Speaker 1: about MERSA here, right. So, like one of the problems
33:53
Speaker 1: with Mercy's that it's resistant to the drugs. We have
33:56
Speaker 1: so even if you even if even if you're like
33:59
Speaker 1: I don't care if it's all natural or the most
34:01
Speaker 1: horrid industrial compound we've ever come up with, kill the
34:05
Speaker 1: mersa because it can kill us and we can't treat it. Um.
34:08
Speaker 1: They're finding that the essential oil has properties that mersa
34:12
Speaker 1: can't UM develop our resistance too. So not only can
34:16
Speaker 1: I kill mersa, we would expect that Mercy is not
34:19
Speaker 1: eventually going to evolve to be resistant to these essential
34:22
Speaker 1: oils as well. Yeah, and um, I mean maybe now
34:27
Speaker 1: would be a good time to take that next break
34:29
Speaker 1: because we were going to dive into a roman therapy
34:31
Speaker 1: and that's the one area, like you said, they've done uh,
34:35
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say a lot, but they're doing more and
34:37
Speaker 1: more studies on a handful of essential oils in their
34:41
Speaker 1: and their uses. But aroma therapy is the one area
34:44
Speaker 1: where they still have not done a ton of studies.
34:46
Speaker 1: And that's probably the most controversial area of essential oils,
34:51
Speaker 1: wouldn't you say it is for sure? And before we
34:54
Speaker 1: take a break, I do want to say we're talking
34:56
Speaker 1: about individual studies that are basically the first apps in
35:00
Speaker 1: a scientific understanding of the properties the biomedical properties of
35:06
Speaker 1: essential oils. So it's all like g whiz and everything.
35:09
Speaker 1: But it's not. It's not, it's not it's not settled
35:14
Speaker 1: by any any stretch of the imagination. We're still just
35:17
Speaker 1: beginning to investigate this stuff, so bear that in mind
35:19
Speaker 1: as well. Alright, Chuck, we're back. It's right to talk
35:43
Speaker 1: about aroma therapy and um, this is when you get
35:47
Speaker 1: into how the different applications for essential oils. Um there
35:52
Speaker 1: and Emily told me to make sure I mentioned that
35:54
Speaker 1: there is, uh, there are people out there that are
35:56
Speaker 1: recommending people actually ingest essential oils more and more, and
36:02
Speaker 1: she's saying, don't do that. That sounds a lot like
36:05
Speaker 1: injecting bleach or um cleaner to combat viruses. That's not
36:13
Speaker 1: that's not how these work. Yeah, she's saying that there
36:17
Speaker 1: are people out there recommending that you literally ingest this stuff.
36:20
Speaker 1: And she's saying, don't just don't do that. M much. Yeah,
36:24
Speaker 1: it's much much better in a tincture maybe, or a
36:28
Speaker 1: topical thing, or in this case, we're talking about a
36:31
Speaker 1: Roman therapy, which is breathing stuff in either through your
36:36
Speaker 1: skin or into your mouth and the lungs. Yeah, but
36:40
Speaker 1: either way, apparently, however, you ingest it like that through
36:43
Speaker 1: your lungs or your nose or mouth, um, your your
36:48
Speaker 1: old factory center is initiated and it starts doing all
36:52
Speaker 1: sorts of different things depending on what the what volatile
36:55
Speaker 1: organic compounds are hitting it right. And when I found
36:59
Speaker 1: that was really good. Example my favorite smell of all
37:02
Speaker 1: time lavender and lavender through some studies, isn't it great?
37:07
Speaker 1: Through some studies, lavender has been shown to um prevents
37:13
Speaker 1: serotonin reuptake. They they've shown what kind of neuro neurochemical
37:19
Speaker 1: mechanisms lavender affects our brains through, and one of them
37:22
Speaker 1: is it prevents serotonin transporters from doing their job. Once
37:27
Speaker 1: the serotonin transporter gets ahold of like a serotonin molecule,
37:30
Speaker 1: that thing gets taken out of your brain and you're
37:33
Speaker 1: no longer feeling your mood from that particular molecule serotonin. Well,
37:38
Speaker 1: lavender or specifically I think laven dual, which is a
37:42
Speaker 1: turpin from lavender, prevents the serotonin from taking up or
37:48
Speaker 1: the serotonin transporter from taking up that serotonin. This step one,
37:51
Speaker 1: and then another one is that it's an n d M,
37:53
Speaker 1: a receptor antagonist, which puts it in the same class
37:57
Speaker 1: of chemicals, uh that dissociative chemicals as ketamine. So it does.
38:05
Speaker 1: They they've actually studied lavender now closely enough to say
38:09
Speaker 1: this is how it affects your brain, and it definitely
38:11
Speaker 1: does affect your brain. So there is something to the
38:13
Speaker 1: idea that aroma therapy does have therapeutic effects, and lavender
38:19
Speaker 1: in particular. Now we understand how now do you mean, uh,
38:23
Speaker 1: S s R I potential like a natural S s
38:26
Speaker 1: R I. I don't know, because I think part of
38:29
Speaker 1: the other thing about essential oils too, is like the
38:32
Speaker 1: impact and the effects that they have on us are
38:35
Speaker 1: pronounced enough that we could study them and see them.
38:39
Speaker 1: But it doesn't necessarily mean we're going to be able
38:42
Speaker 1: to just take lavender pills as like a mood enhancer
38:46
Speaker 1: or to combat depression. There it's just not pronounced enough
38:50
Speaker 1: for that. It could conceivably open a door to some
38:54
Speaker 1: some inquiry or some investigation that could lead to new
38:57
Speaker 1: synthetic compounds based on what we find it. Just taking
39:01
Speaker 1: like lavender is not going to cure your depression from
39:04
Speaker 1: from anything I've seen, Yeah, And I think I mean
39:08
Speaker 1: it depends on who you're talking to. Some people might
39:11
Speaker 1: advocate for complete replacement of you know, a practice or
39:16
Speaker 1: of TCM. Let's say, might be like, no, man, not
39:19
Speaker 1: don't take any any of these uh um quote unquote
39:23
Speaker 1: Western medicines, Like this is the only stuff that you
39:26
Speaker 1: need to be taking. But other people will say, hey,
39:29
Speaker 1: you can augment uh with things like lavender or eucalyptus
39:33
Speaker 1: or cedar wood and stuff like that. I have no
39:36
Speaker 1: problem with augmenting. I have no problem with traditional medicine
39:39
Speaker 1: of any culture. As long as it works, it's not
39:43
Speaker 1: harmful to the user, and it's not harmful to other
39:47
Speaker 1: sentient beings or the planet. Those are really my only qualifications.
39:51
Speaker 1: As long as it works, just go for it. But
39:54
Speaker 1: just make sure that those those caveats are are checked
39:57
Speaker 1: or else it's harmful. Yeah. Well, let's let's talk about
40:01
Speaker 1: some of these uh purported benefits of these various oils.
40:06
Speaker 1: We talked about lavender. Of course, relaxation. Sleep is where
40:10
Speaker 1: you're gonna see a lot of it, like springing on
40:12
Speaker 1: your pillow. Um. Eucalyptus is a big one for congestion,
40:17
Speaker 1: for burns, for cold sores, arthritis. Even rose is a
40:22
Speaker 1: big one for anxiety. UH and a lot of these
40:25
Speaker 1: two have to do with skin things like eczema or
40:28
Speaker 1: dan druff or rosatia and stuff like that, and all
40:32
Speaker 1: of these you should say, these are all ones that
40:34
Speaker 1: like the essential oil industry says that not not that
40:38
Speaker 1: science necessarily backs up right. Well, that's what I meant
40:41
Speaker 1: by purported health benefits. Okay, gotcha, I got you. Yeah,
40:45
Speaker 1: I didn't pick up on that. Uh. Or if you play,
40:48
Speaker 1: uh the video game dead Red Redemption, you can spend
40:53
Speaker 1: a lot of your time gathering herbs because it's the
40:55
Speaker 1: Old West. What do you do with those herbs? You
40:58
Speaker 1: use them in craft to print things with them to
41:00
Speaker 1: help yourself. Oh that's do they have X factor in it?
41:04
Speaker 1: And I got a bit by a rattlesnake the other
41:07
Speaker 1: day in the game, and I said, you've you've been poisoned.
41:10
Speaker 1: You might want to go find some medicinal herbs and
41:13
Speaker 1: can eat them. Did you survive? I survived And I
41:17
Speaker 1: shot that snake too. You shot the snake. That's gotta
41:20
Speaker 1: be tough to shoot a snake. Yeah, Uh, they are
41:24
Speaker 1: tough to hit, yes, unless you pull out the old shotgun. Oh,
41:27
Speaker 1: well there you go. Yeah, it's funny. Someone who loves
41:30
Speaker 1: animals and hates hunting as much as I do. Really
41:32
Speaker 1: gets a kick out of hunting in this game. Oh,
41:34
Speaker 1: it's different. I don't think it counts. It's not real
41:39
Speaker 1: as far as we know, it's not real. UM. So
41:42
Speaker 1: you know, some of these oils have been studied to
41:45
Speaker 1: a certain degree. UM. And I like the way that
41:49
Speaker 1: Julia puts this studied enough to confirm or strongly suggests
41:52
Speaker 1: a positive association between oil and a health outcome. But
41:58
Speaker 1: it's tough because the and we'll get to the f
42:03
Speaker 1: D A part. But all these plants are different. And
42:06
Speaker 1: and it's when you're talking about these scientific studies, it's
42:09
Speaker 1: that's all built on consistency of the product that you're testing. Yeah,
42:15
Speaker 1: and because these are plants, it's it's tough. But where
42:17
Speaker 1: it depends on where the plant grows and what month
42:19
Speaker 1: you pick it, and how it was distilled. You know,
42:23
Speaker 1: there's so many X factors. Yeah, that that kind of
42:29
Speaker 1: confounds things, right, it does. And I mean apparently, depending
42:35
Speaker 1: on the time of day, UM, the plant might be
42:38
Speaker 1: producing different levels or types of of essential oil. And
42:43
Speaker 1: because no one has said this is the chemical compound
42:46
Speaker 1: of or the chemical recipe of UM, lavender essential oil,
42:53
Speaker 1: because there's nothing like that. Then, even if you are
42:57
Speaker 1: trying to apply science to studying essential oils, you don't
43:00
Speaker 1: know if you're studying the exact same thing that somebody
43:03
Speaker 1: else is studying, who's getting results that you're having trouble replicating.
43:06
Speaker 1: It's it's very um. It's definitely like the wild West
43:11
Speaker 1: right now, like people are getting bit by rattlesnake's level
43:13
Speaker 1: wild West. Yeah, and it's you know, it's important because
43:17
Speaker 1: it's not regulated by the FDA right now. Uh, it is.
43:22
Speaker 1: It falls in that weird gray area between being a
43:25
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical medicine and being a cosmetic and so they aren't
43:31
Speaker 1: FDA regulated, so they don't have to go through that
43:34
Speaker 1: testing and approval process that medicines do, right, So technically
43:39
Speaker 1: they can make vague claims like if you are an
43:42
Speaker 1: essential oil producer, you could take some of these studies
43:47
Speaker 1: that you found um that may not have been peer reviewed,
43:51
Speaker 1: that may have had a very small sample size, UM,
43:54
Speaker 1: that may have been virtually made up, UM, but that
43:58
Speaker 1: support your your claim. Let's say things like, um, you
44:02
Speaker 1: know roman came meal is good for heart health or
44:05
Speaker 1: something like that. You can put that on the label.
44:07
Speaker 1: But if you say something like Roman came meal, UM
44:12
Speaker 1: helps stave off heart disease, you'll you'll then you'll get
44:17
Speaker 1: a letter from the FDA saying like, hey, you're making
44:19
Speaker 1: health claims that you can't back up, that science certainly
44:22
Speaker 1: doesn't back up, and you need to stop. The problem
44:25
Speaker 1: is there's a lot of companies out there making these
44:28
Speaker 1: claims right now, UM all over the place, and a
44:32
Speaker 1: lot of them come in the form of UM multi
44:35
Speaker 1: level marketing or pyramid schemes like I think Young Living
44:39
Speaker 1: is a really good example of that, where you can
44:42
Speaker 1: find UM Young Living products in your neighbor's garage or
44:47
Speaker 1: on Twitter or Instagram, and uh, not necessarily in a store.
44:52
Speaker 1: And so it makes it very difficult because it's the
44:54
Speaker 1: centralis it makes it difficult for the FDA to find
44:56
Speaker 1: out about this stuff, and then even when they do,
44:58
Speaker 1: they don't have a lot of record worse to UM
45:01
Speaker 1: to stopping it, aside from sending threatening letters threatening you know,
45:04
Speaker 1: legal action. Yeah. And I think they were one of
45:07
Speaker 1: the ones that markets to pregnant women specifically. Yeah. Yeah,
45:13
Speaker 1: And this is where we get to like, this is
45:15
Speaker 1: why it's actually problematic. Yeah, I mean, you know, any
45:19
Speaker 1: time that you're UM. Anytime it's an unregulated substance, and
45:25
Speaker 1: they're saying, hey, use this on your baby, or use
45:27
Speaker 1: this if you're pregnant, and there's been so little peer
45:31
Speaker 1: reviewed research, then that's when it can get a little
45:35
Speaker 1: bit dodgy, because there is very little research on how
45:38
Speaker 1: these oils should be used at all on kids and babies. Right.
45:44
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, I mean there's UM a
45:46
Speaker 1: couple of of companies UM. Let's see Young Living. UM
45:52
Speaker 1: has a like a series of essential oils that they
45:55
Speaker 1: recommend for different stages of pregnancy. Hopewell has a whole
45:59
Speaker 1: baby art for UM for your child to use for
46:04
Speaker 1: things like teething or um ear infections, that kind of stuff.
46:08
Speaker 1: These are all the such A oils and the problem
46:10
Speaker 1: is some essential oils have been shown to actually potentially
46:13
Speaker 1: be harmful UM for women, for pregnant women, Like there's
46:17
Speaker 1: a whole class of essential oils that are UM that
46:22
Speaker 1: can produce sudden and heavy menstruation, which is not what
46:26
Speaker 1: you want to do when you're pregnant. So those oils
46:28
Speaker 1: should not be marketed towards pregnant women who should not
46:32
Speaker 1: be using them, Like Rosemary is a really good example
46:34
Speaker 1: of that. It's actually used as an aborta fashion in
46:37
Speaker 1: Brazil and traditional medicine in Brazil because it can bring
46:41
Speaker 1: on heavy sudden menstruation. UM So there's there's a lot
46:46
Speaker 1: of reasons not to use these things, depending on your situation,
46:51
Speaker 1: who you are. And the problem is is not not
46:54
Speaker 1: only that kind of marketing is being avoided, they're actually
46:58
Speaker 1: being aggressively mark getting toward women without proven results, but
47:03
Speaker 1: also without being proven as safe because they skate, you know,
47:08
Speaker 1: the the edges around f DA regulation. Yeah, or that.
47:13
Speaker 1: You know, there may be like one study that is
47:15
Speaker 1: sort of cherry picked and overstated. Um, I know that
47:20
Speaker 1: in this article, it's mentioned a two thousand eight study
47:22
Speaker 1: about lemon oil, uh and the effects on mood. And
47:26
Speaker 1: in that study, they you know, the subjects did say
47:29
Speaker 1: that their mood improved. But then the scientists were like, well,
47:33
Speaker 1: your actual biological markers UM on stress and mood isn't
47:37
Speaker 1: really changing. So is it the placebo effect that's going
47:41
Speaker 1: on here? Which I mean the yeah, and that's that's fine.
47:45
Speaker 1: The placebo effect is fine, Chuck. It's just that, um,
47:49
Speaker 1: if you're not treating something else, or you're not you're
47:52
Speaker 1: not using something else to actually treat a problem, like
47:55
Speaker 1: lemon oil improving your mood, that's who cares. But if
47:58
Speaker 1: you're if you're using something that's actually harmful, then that
48:01
Speaker 1: that is problematic. And and what you were just talking
48:04
Speaker 1: about also about how you could just cherry pick a study.
48:08
Speaker 1: That's essentially what we were doing towards the beginning of
48:10
Speaker 1: this podcast when we were saying, there are some studies
48:12
Speaker 1: that have shown that it's you know, these definitely do
48:15
Speaker 1: have anti microbial and anti fungal properties, so maybe we'll
48:19
Speaker 1: end up seeing them as like you know, aerosolized disinfectants
48:23
Speaker 1: spray in the future. That's really close to what some
48:27
Speaker 1: of these companies are doing. But instead these companies are
48:29
Speaker 1: actually selling these things and saying here, drink this or
48:31
Speaker 1: take this or use this um based on these cherry
48:35
Speaker 1: pick studies. Yeah, and I know the company Tera T
48:39
Speaker 1: E A T E r R A UM. They've come
48:42
Speaker 1: under fire. They're one of the giants of the industry.
48:46
Speaker 1: In two thousand fourteen, they got a big warning from
48:48
Speaker 1: the f d A about crossing that line into making
48:51
Speaker 1: medical claims. And they're like, you know, you're you're basically
48:55
Speaker 1: touting yourself as a as a pharmaceutical um and you
49:00
Speaker 1: you're not bal Yeah. So so a really good example
49:04
Speaker 1: of this is UM some some essential oils. There are
49:09
Speaker 1: studies out there that have shown that they may have
49:12
Speaker 1: anti viral properties, right like how clove oil has anti
49:16
Speaker 1: bacterial and antifungal properties. Some some essential oils are showing
49:22
Speaker 1: the possibility of being anti viral as well. So then
49:26
Speaker 1: those essential oils will be taken by a company like
49:28
Speaker 1: Young Living or um Doughtera and marketed as a cure
49:35
Speaker 1: for ebola or coronavirus. That's a big problem. That's a
49:39
Speaker 1: huge leap that's totally unfounded, and that people really should
49:43
Speaker 1: not be using rather than say seeking medical attention, because
49:48
Speaker 1: you have to. You have to assume that somebody who
49:51
Speaker 1: is turning to essential oils to cure their ebola is
49:55
Speaker 1: probably doing so because they don't want to to use
49:59
Speaker 1: Western medicine. In the problem is is western medicine is
50:02
Speaker 1: one of the few, if only courses of treatment that
50:05
Speaker 1: has been shown to be able to take on a
50:08
Speaker 1: botla um and certainly not something like clove oil. So
50:12
Speaker 1: that's really again, I don't know if I'm getting this
50:14
Speaker 1: across or not. That's problematic. Same with UM using marketing
50:19
Speaker 1: essential oils to cure things like and again we're using
50:22
Speaker 1: the word cure here, Parkinson's disease, autism, diabetes, hypertension, cancer, insomnia,
50:29
Speaker 1: maybe insomnia, heart disease, PTSD, dementia, MS, UH, tetanus. All
50:35
Speaker 1: these things have been marketed to be curable by certain
50:39
Speaker 1: kinds or combinations of essential oil, and there's just not
50:41
Speaker 1: science to fully back that up or even come close
50:44
Speaker 1: to backing that up right now, right, And but that's
50:48
Speaker 1: not to say that you can't use certain essential oils
50:50
Speaker 1: to help with UH nausea because of your cancer treatments
50:53
Speaker 1: or something like that. Yeah, Or apparently lavender also is
50:57
Speaker 1: good with UM helping curtail UM agitation and aggression in
51:03
Speaker 1: dementia patients, which is great because those are really tough
51:06
Speaker 1: to treat UM pharmaceutically. So there is stuff that it
51:10
Speaker 1: can do. It's just it can't cure a bowla like,
51:13
Speaker 1: stop and think for a second. It can't clove oil
51:16
Speaker 1: can't cure a bowl. I'm sorry. Maybe if you take
51:19
Speaker 1: a bowl of virus and put in a peatree dish
51:21
Speaker 1: and put a drop of clove oil on it. Then, yes,
51:24
Speaker 1: I would not bet you a single scent that that
51:27
Speaker 1: that clove oil wouldn't kill the bowl of IRUs. I'm sure,
51:30
Speaker 1: but that's not how our bodies work inside. So stop
51:34
Speaker 1: and think for a second. If you actually are walking
51:36
Speaker 1: around believing that clove oil cures a bowla stop for
51:40
Speaker 1: a second and just do me that favor. Just stop,
51:45
Speaker 1: that's what you're saying. Just stop and think. Don't forget.
51:48
Speaker 1: The second part is very important. Oh see, I usually
51:51
Speaker 1: just stop. That's not good. Thank you for letting me
51:56
Speaker 1: go off there, chump. Regardless, this is a big industry
52:00
Speaker 1: and the market is is booming and growing. It's expected
52:04
Speaker 1: to reach seven point three billion uh in just the
52:08
Speaker 1: next three or four years. And that's up from about
52:12
Speaker 1: four and a half billion just last year in two
52:15
Speaker 1: thousand nineteen. And they're looking by uh fourteen billion dollar industry. Yeah,
52:25
Speaker 1: big money. It is big money. So you got anything else?
52:30
Speaker 1: I got nothing else. I've said my piece too. So
52:33
Speaker 1: since we don't have anything else about essential oils, everybody,
52:37
Speaker 1: it's time, of course for listener mail. I'm gonna call
52:43
Speaker 1: this fellow bruck sist. Hey, guys, just listen to your
52:46
Speaker 1: episode about brucks is. Um, I'm myself grind teeth like
52:50
Speaker 1: a champ. But I got really excited when I heard
52:53
Speaker 1: that Chuck and I have the same mouth. I just
52:55
Speaker 1: went to the Orthodon us in the list of atrocities
52:58
Speaker 1: inside my mouth could take up a stuff episode. So, Chuck,
53:01
Speaker 1: I feel your pain. I have a cross by a
53:03
Speaker 1: weird underbite. I feel like my lower job belongs in
53:06
Speaker 1: a different mouth, just like you. I left the orthod
53:08
Speaker 1: honest feeling like a freak of nature. Uh, And hearing
53:12
Speaker 1: that one of my all time favorite personalities has the
53:14
Speaker 1: exact same diagnosis made me feel less pitiful. Eventually, I'll
53:18
Speaker 1: have that horrible jaw breaking surgery and the plan was
53:21
Speaker 1: to recover with cheeseburger smoothies and stuff. You should know, Marathon.
53:25
Speaker 1: Now it'll mean a whole lot more. And that is
53:28
Speaker 1: from Erica. Mccaren's from Memphis, Tennessee. And Erica with my
53:33
Speaker 1: family is from Memphis, so you might be my sister
53:37
Speaker 1: from another mother. That's right, that's great, that's a good one.
53:41
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, Erica. I'm glad Chuck could make you
53:43
Speaker 1: feel a little better about things, because that's what Chuck
53:46
Speaker 1: does best. Huh. Who's gonna make me feel better me okay?
53:51
Speaker 1: Or one of Emily's rooms. Phrase will help too. You
53:55
Speaker 1: need to get those things out of the bathroom and
53:57
Speaker 1: get them more involved into your life, Chuck. They're dude,
54:00
Speaker 1: I'm constantly being slathered in tinctured and poulticed and dipity. Dude,
54:09
Speaker 1: I'm a guinea pig. Nice. That's a pretty pleasant thing
54:12
Speaker 1: to be a guinea pig for. I have to say
54:14
Speaker 1: I agreed. Well, if you want to get in touch
54:15
Speaker 1: with this like did Eric, that's right, Erica. I just
54:19
Speaker 1: want to make sure you knew you still too. Thanks again, Erica.
54:23
Speaker 1: You can send us an email to Stuff podcast at
54:26
Speaker 1: iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
54:32
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54:35
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