Transcript #180 Best Essential Oils for Stress with Jodi Cohen

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  • 01:34 Detox fact
  • 03:34 About Jodi Cohen
  • 09:29 Essential Oils for detoxification
  • 12:08 Blends for the liver
  • 14:07 Gallbladder blends
  • 16:47 Supporting the parasympathetic nervous system with essential oilss
  • 21:23 Sleep and essential oils
  • 24:35 Supporting the hormonal system with essential oils
  • 26:58 Getting started with essential oils
  • 29:35 Choosing the right essential oil
  • 33:15 The most pressing health issue in the world today
  • 36:03 Where to find Jodi and Vibrant Blue Oils
  • 37:18 Blends for the lymphatic system

Wendy Myers: Hello, thank you so much for tuning in to the Live to 110 Podcast. My name is Wendy Myers. I am thrilled today to have Jodi Cohen on the podcast. We’re going to be talking about essential oils.

She’s created an amazing line of essential oils for specific health issues. So it’s easier for the novice in essential oils to choose the blends that are going to be right for the specific issue or health condition that they’re trying to target. I think it just makes it so much simpler to start using essential oils.

So, that’s what we’ll be talking about in the podcast, essential oils that she’s created for the gallbladder, for the liver, for lymph, for the parasympathetic nervous system, for stress. It’s so, so interesting. I’ve really enjoyed interviewing Jodi for this podcast.

But before we get started, please keep in mind that this podcast is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease or health condition and is not a substitute for professional medical advice.

Please keep in mind that this podcast is for entertainment purposes only. Please consult your healthcare practitioner before engaging in anything that we suggest today on the show.

01:34 Detox fact

Wendy Myers: I have a fun, little detox fact for you guys. My favorite thing in the world is detoxification. I have worked for years to develop my detox program called Myers Detox. You can learn more about it at MyersDetox.com.

I’m going to begin incorporating some essential oils into the program because I’ve been really impressed with how much essential oils have helped me with liver and lymph and gallbladder things. And they’re a lot easier to use than taking a ton of pills.

Of course, supplements are important for detoxification. You absolutely have to take them. But it’s great to use everything in your arsenal to facilitate detoxification.

And one of those is rosemary oil. Rosemary essential oil is known as an iron chelators. A lot of us are iron toxic. A lot of us don’t realize that we might have low ferritin levels, but that doesn’t mean that you have low toxic levels of iron in your body.

So many of us, we’re eating wheat products and grain products (i.e. flour) that has been enriched with iron. And it’s a toxic form of iron. It’s not a nutritive form of iron. It’s a form of iron our bodies cannot absorb.

So, iron chelation is something that should be on people’s radar. I did an amazing podcast with Morley Robbins on this very subject. Go check that out. I highly recommend it.

Rosemary oil is a fantastic oil for detoxification. It’s been proven to protect DNA. And it’s actually one of the most well-studied and promising detox oils.

In one study, rosemary outperformed other health and detox superstar oils like oregano, thyme, sage and clove. And one study found that all the essential oil study were capable of chelating iron, but the rosemary essential oils produced the highest effects. Very, very interesting.

03:34 About Jodi Cohen

Wendy Myers: Our guest today is Jodi Cohen. She combined her background in nutritional therapy and aromatherapy to create unique, proprietary blends of organic and wild-crafted essential oils that balance different organ systems in the body.

These blends, in combination with dietary and lifestyle change, help the body return to homeostasis, so it can heal.

Jodi founded the company, Vibrant Blue Oils, to distribute these blends along with appropriate education to help clients identify and properly support the underlying issues that contribute to ill health including proper digestion, detoxification, blood sugar balance, sleep, stress management and gut repair and inflammation support.

When used to support the underlying organ systems, essential oils can expedite healing of many, many health issues.

In addition to her essential oils business, Jodi is a certified yoga instructor and mother of a beautiful daughter, son and new puppy. Jodi enjoys all physical activities including hiking, skiing, yoga, running, biking and paddle boarding along with reading, cooking and time with family and friends.

To learn more about essential oils and how to use them to support underlying health challenges, you can take her free health assessment. That will be in the blog post on myersdetox.com. It’s a long URL. So go to myersdetox.com, search for Jodi Cohen and you’ll find her podcast on essential oils on the site.

You can also download her Beginner’s Guide to Essential Oils on her website, VibrantBlueOils.com

Jodi, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

Jodi Cohen: Thank you so much for having me.

Wendy Myers: Why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to find Vibrant Blue Oils, your essential oil company?

Jodi Cohen: So, my journey to health actually began with my children. My second child had a lot of issues—no impulse control, no focus. I was taking every parenting class I could find. Our big key was “Look at my nose” and he’ll be like all over the place. Really spazzy, it was really challenging.

One day, we were on a group play date and my girl friend was like, “Oh, my gosh! Your son is being so calm today.” And then, some mom was like, “Hey, anyone hungry?” and she handed out Goldfish or Ritz crackers.

My son ate them, and he literally picked up the shovel and hit the kid next to him.

My friend said, “Oh, my gosh! I’ve never seen that happen before.” My brother was on Ritalin his whole life and it turned out he was just allergic to weird foods. You should look at that.

I thought, “I can do that. I’ve done everything else.”

I took him to a nutritional therapist. We took him off corn, soy and dairy. And the next day, he was a different child. I’d be like, “Look at my nose,” “Oh, okay, mom.”

It was so night and day. I was like, “This is crazy! I’ve been pounding my head against the wall, and I could’ve just changed his diet.”

And so, I started studying nutrition. I went back and got a degree in nutritional therapy. I started to try to help other people. But as you may know, trying to get kids to take supplements can be really challenging.

They can’t swallow pills. You can grind them up and put them in apple sauce which they may or may not take. You can make smoothies which they may or may not take. You can bake them into muffins. It just felt hard.

And so I started dabbling with oils because of that.

And then, a situational depression kind of—my bottom fell out. I really just couldn’t function. Someone suggested oils. And so in my practice, I would muscle test supplements. I knew that worked.

And so I started muscle testing oils to see what’s going to help my adrenals.

And I got fine!

I thought, “Well, that’s interesting.”

So, I kind of combined them and put them on.

It’s interesting. Sometimes, people say like, “I don’t really know if they work.” If you can’t get out of bed—basically, your day looks like binge watching the Kardashian—and suddenly, you put on an oil, you’re like, “Okay, maybe I can go on a 3-mile run,” you take a shower, then you crash again, putting it on just really helps you, you know it works.

And so I used them very aggressively for a month and started to feel like myself. Finally, my friends are calling me, “Oh, I can’t get out of the house. I just can’t do it,” so when I finally went to lunch with them and was telling them about it, they’re like, “Oh, my gosh! We want to try it.”

And so I gave it to them, and they had similar results.

And then, someone said, “You should do something with this.” I thought, “Well, this is so obvious. Of course, everyone is doing this with oils.” I went to look… and no one was! The way oils were communicated was very different from how I was intuitively guided to use them based on my knowledge of the body and my background on nutrition.

And so I started putting it out there just because when you feel awful, it’s the worse. And no one would ever want anyone else to have to go through that. And if you know something that helps you, of course you’re going to share it.

And people just started finding me, especially people that were really sick and tried going the conventional route with doctors and the doctors would say, “Oh, you’re fine. There’s nothing wrong with you. Maybe you need an antidepressant.” They’d be like, “No!” And so they would start changing their diet.

Everything helps, but sometimes, you want to be at a hundred percent, and you were at say ten. So getting to 50% is huge, but you know there’s still more than you can do.

People tend to find me when they’re at about 50% or 60% and they’re like, “I want to go that extra 40%.” The oils just seem to help fill in the gaps.

Wendy Myers: I really like how your essential oils target specific health issues like your liver or your gallbladder and stress and things like that. You don’t see that very often. A lot of times, you’ll see just individual oils. And unless you’re an aromatherapist, you’re like, “Okay, what the heck do I do with this?” So I really like it that your essential oils are problem-specific so I don’t have to think about it.

09:29 Essential oils for detoxification

Wendy Myers: Are there some essential oils that you have in your line that best support detoxification?

Jodi Cohen: Yes, absolutely! The way that I look at it, the paradigm that I went through when I went into nutritional training was that you look at the underlying issues. So, if someone says, “Oh, I have varicose veins” or “rosacea,” well, that’s often the liver. The organs of detoxification are the liver, the kidneys, the lungs, the gallbladder and the lymphatic system. And if they’re overloaded, then it gets pushed out through the skin, which is also a key organ of detoxification.

So, when I look at detoxification, I don’t just look at it like, “Oh, look, I have lemon water.” I mean, that’s probably fine. We don’t actually recommend taking anything internally because we think that puts another burden on the liver.

But we look at it more if we’re going to ask the liver to work harder (because now we’re mobilizing the toxins and they’re leaving the system), how do we support the liver?

And what I found is that there’s really a blueprint in nature. I think this is part of the reason that food work so well and that stem cells work so well. There is a blueprint. If you cut off a salamander’s tail and put foot cells there, the tail grows back because there’s that blueprint. Clients have that blueprint. We have that blueprint. Stem cells have that. Stem cells kind of grow into the blueprint.

So, I think what I’m trying to do is give the organs that boost. They get out of alignment, they get fatigued, they get tired, we’re just overlaying it with what it should be.

So it’s like a little bit like you’re trying to teach a kid to swim. What do you do? You give them the flotation devices, so it keeps them afloat while they’re figuring out that mechanism.

The same thing for the body. The body is working harder. The body is trying to work through something. So you just support it a little bit more as it gets through it.

And a little bit like a child, if you’re teaching them to ride a book, it’s a weird, weird sensation. They’re moving forward, they’re balancing. But it’s not like, “Here, you go through these five steps and they suddenly get it.”

It’s kind of like you spot them, and then their body kicks in and remembers how to do it.

So, that’s what we’re doing with the oils. We’re supporting the liver, so that it can function more optimally and transition toxins.

We’re supporting the gallbladder so that the bile doesn’t get all gunked up and it can actually flow.

It’s the bile that carries a lot of the toxins out of the body. And if the bile isn’t flowing, the toxins are re-assimilated and absorbed. This happens a lot with hormones like estrogen.

We’re helping the lymphatic system to move things because that’s what’s really cleaning things out of the intercellular spaces or the kidneys to have more resilience so they can maintain optimal function.

12:08 Blends for the liver

Wendy Myers: And so what are the essential oils that in your liver formula? What is the product called exactly for the liver?

Jodi Cohen: We have a couple. We have a general liver support formula that vitalizes the liver. And then, we also have one that gets into the emotions of anger. In Chinese medicine, there is a strong corollary between different organs and different emotions.

And especially for women, we don’t really voice our anger. We just kind of hold on to it, and it just gets stored there. So, all those little resentments like, “Oh, God! I was planning on going out tonight. Now my husband has to work late. I guess I’ll just shove my plans and shove my angers.” We just don’t voice it, so it gets stored.

And that’s one thing people might find when they start to detoxify—they can get really angry.

Wendy Myers: Hello? Yeah, over here!

Jodi Cohen: We all do because we’re releasing all of those toxins and, with them, the emotions kind of come pouring out.

Wendy Myers: Yes, absolutely!

And that’s interesting you say that. A lot of my clients report that they have anger coming in when they do my detox program, Mineral Power. And then they stay angry for a little while. You have all these stuff coming out and you have anxiety and anger and other types of emotions tied to those metals just like you said.

So if your liver is toxic, you’re going to be a little bit angry.

Jodi Cohen: The liver and the gallbladder.

And what I was getting to is that the ingredients, I see so many oil people talking about “Use these oils for detoxification,” and I’m sure they’re fine. What everyone’s are, they’re not necessarily—

I did it backwards. I didn’t read the handbook of “this is good for this,” and then combined it. This is more that I intuitively tested what combination puts the liver in balance. And then, I went back and looked them up and they all made sense.

So, for our detoxification support, we have one that gives the liver optimal vitality.

14:07 Gallbladder blends

Jodi Cohen: One that’s really good for the gallbladder—and it’s interesting because a lot of people have gallbladder issues that they’re not even aware of. It can present as headaches. A lot of times, people get migraine. It can present as a pain in the upper area or between the shoulders. So, often, just applying or smelling that gallbladder oil can be magnificent for really helping people to heal.

A lot of times, the bile that is released by the gallbladder and goes through the small intestinesand actually is instrumental in elimination, it gets congested either because we’re eating too much fat, bad fats, we have too many hormones. It just isn’t flowing.

And when it doesn’t flow out of the body, all of those toxins that it’s supposed to remove from the body get reabsorbed.

And this happens often with hormones. A lot of people, they’re estrogen-dominant. They need to work on getting the gallbladder to flow.

And so this oil, one of the challenges when people are digestively impaired—and this happens a lot with drugs as well. They’re taking something topically, but it’s not necessarily assimilating just because of digestive dysfunctions. So they have to take more and more to take the same effect.

So, when you’re able to apply something topically (outside of the body), it’s just a different channel. It doesn’t need to go through the whole digestive process.

We’ve got an oil that you can apply right over the gallbladder. Or if you have a headache, gallbladder is on the meridian line for headaches and it often causes headaches. You can just smell it or put it over your eyes. Or if you’re starting to have gallbladder pain, it just helps to get things moving.

Wendy Myers: I think that’s so important. So many people (including women) have trouble with bile flow, whether their bile flow being thing enough or adequate enough. I always give bile salts to all my clients, OxBile, because it’s so important.

Jodi Cohen: It’s usually important.

Wendy Myers: There are so many things. People have gallbladder stones. People are getting their gallbladders removed with surgery which is crazy because it’s such an easy fix.

Jodi Cohen: It’s so relevant. If your stools are floating or if you have a baby and they have mooshy stools and you throw the diaper contents in the bathroom, not only is it causing digestive dysfunction, but it means that you’re not assimilating your fats. And so you’re not assimilating your fat-soluble vitamins like vitamin A and vitamin D.

Those people that get blood work and they’re like, “Oh, my vitamin D is low,” so they’re just supplementing with vitamin D and they don’t get anywhere, it’s because your fat isn’t being assimilated, so you’re not then absorbing the fat-soluble vitamins.

Wendy Myers: Yes, yes. Very, very good point.

16:47 Supporting the parasympathetic nervous system with essential oils

Wendy Myers: So how do you use essential oils to support the brain and the parasympathetic rest and digest state—and detox state too?

Jodi Cohen: Yeah! That’s my favorite thing. As many of us know, when we’re in stress, we’re not able to digest and absorb and assimilate. It’s not just what we ate. It’s the state that we eat in.

And so, let’s say that the body goes into stress either because a car almost hits us or our kids are having a meltdown and we’re overwhelmed or maybe our husband had a bad day and he’s just grumpy or we’re watching something on the news that feels very scary, we switch into that fight-or-flight sympathetic state.

And that means that the heart beats faster, the respiration increases, the blood flows to the external muscles. If you’re trying to run from a lion, it maybe doesn’t matter if you’re digesting your food, if you’re able to reproduce, if you can even have a rational conversation with your husband, right? You just need to flee and survive.

So, most of us are in that stress state like, “Oh, my gosh! I’ve got a PTA meeting. I have to get the kids to bed.”

You’re running around rushed, and so you’re not really eating in that calm state.

And the on-off switch between this sympathetic fight-and-flight state and this parasympathetic rest-and-digest state is this vagal nerve. It’s cranial nerve no. 10. It starts at the base of the head. It runs down behind the ear lobe through every digestive organ. And it’s actually most accessible to the surface right behind the ear lobe.

If you take your fingers right behind where your earing would be and feel that bone, that is the mastoid bone.

And so, one of the most interesting things to me about essential oils is that they can be used to stimulate or sedate the brain. You can topically apply them. The brain needs oxygen, glucose and stimulation. And they can be used for the stimulation.

And so by applying it behind the earlobe on that mastoid bone where the vagal nerve is most accessible to the surface, it’s like turning the light switch off. It’s on. You’re in stress. It can drop you immediately into that parasympathetic rest-and-digest state—which is fabulous not only for you, but for your children.

Trying to give a kid supplements before meals, it might work well for you, but for me, it was always a challenge. And so many of our children aren’t producing HCl, hydrochloric acid, which means that they’re not able to break down their protein and that’s really important for their growth and their brain function.

So, that one small health hack can make a huge difference in everyone’s health.

Wendy Myers: Yeah, I love that essential oil. I use it myself. I have a little, tiny, baby sample you gave me that I put in my purse. That’s just my to-go sample. And I have the big bottle at home.

And it’s really, really helpful because running a health website is not always so healthy. It’s actually really stressful. I work really, really long hours.

And I love what I do. I wake up every morning just absolutely excited to get started. But it’s very stressful sometimes.

I really love utilizing the essential oils, the parasympathetic one that you’ve created to help me to relax.

And it really helps! I was really blown away. I was kind of on the fence about essential oils for quite a long time because I’ve never really studied them at all. And when I started to use them, I was just blown away by how dramatically they work, how quickly they work when you put them in a diffuser or, like you said, on your mastoid bone. I’m really blown away personally.

Jodi Cohen: Yeah. It’s great!

I think there are a lot of challenges that we’re facing in the modern world with our health. I think the stress piece is one of the biggest especially with detoxification.

There are gut challenges, there are detoxification challenges and there are stress challenges. And they all play into each other.

It’s kind of a vicious cycle. It’s very hard if you’re trying to do a detoxification effort and you’re not sleeping.

It’s really hard. That’s when your body kind of rest and repairs.

It’s a little bit like any mom who’s trying to clean their house and their kids are continually making a mess or binging out new toys or getting sick and you have to change their clothes. That’s why school is a great thing. You get that 6-hour window where you can actually rest, repair, heal, recuperate, clean everything up.

Your body needs that too. And oils can be really instrumental in helping you sleep.

21:23 Sleep and essential oils

Wendy Myers: And what essential oils do you recommend to support sleep?

Jodi Cohen: Sleep is interesting because it can be a number of factors that influence sleep. For example, that inability to fall asleep—you know, you’re exhausted, but your mind keeps racing and you’re worried about things—that is an issue with too much cortisol at night.

Cortisol is the stress hormone. And it counterbalances the sleep hormone which is melatonin. It’s a little bit like a titter-totter, right? If cortisol is high, it forces melatonin low. Similarly, if melatonin is up, it forces cortisol down.

And that gets back to that survival instinct. If a lion is chasing you, you really can’t take a nap. It makes sense that you want to shut down your sleep function.

But the sleep hormone is released from the part of the brain called the pineal gland. And so we have an oil that triggers the pineal gland to release melatonin naturally. It’s not melatonin. We’re not giving you melatonin. It’s a precursor. We’re instructing the part of the brain that is supposed to release melatonin to let it go.

And so what happen is you apply this Circadian Rhythm blend on the top of the head (right at the back of the head and right above the ears because it’s in the middle of the brain), the brain then releases melatonin. If cortisol and anxiety is high and melatonin goes up, it forces cortisol down. So it’s also a nice back door into helping with anxiety.

So that’s great for falling asleep.

If you wake up in the middle of the night, it’s either one of three things. It’s either that you have a blood-sugar emergency. Somehow, you didn’t eat enough fat or your blood sugar dips too low. So the adrenal glands release the emergency cortisol and adrenaline to keep you alive. And then, you’re wide awake and you can’t fall back asleep. You could go clean the kitchen, you could go get work done, you could probably go work out. You are so awake.

Wendy Myers: And I’ve been on that cortisol night train many, many times.

Jodi Cohen: Yeah, oh yeah. I think we all have.

And it’s interesting because if you think about, in the body, when the blood sugar is dumped into the system, what organ is it that cleans it up? It’s the pancreas. So, we have a blend for the pancreas.

You can either smell it—I keep it by my bedside table—you can apply it on the pancreas which is the 5th rib under the bra area or just put a drop on the pillow. That helps to support the pancreas to rebalance the blood sugar, and then you drift back off to sleep.

Another reason you wake up in the middle of the night can be the liver. That’s typically when you wake up around three in the morning and you’re groggy. That can be somebody who doesn’t drink very much and maybe goes out and drinks a couple of glasses of wine (they might wake up then). And that one would be the liver blend.

Similarly, you can smell it, you can apply it over your liver.

I actually find, for some reason, with the liver, if you know that you drank too much, you can apply it before you go to bed and avoid that problem.

And then, sometimes, it’s just hormonal wake-ups. We’re going through hormonal shifts when we’re pregnant or we’re postpartum or we’re going through menopause. And so we have a blend that helps support that as well.

Wendy Myers: Yeah, low estrogen definitely causes night-waking. And of course, the hot flushes too can wake people up. I have a lot of clients that are dealing with that.

Jodi Cohen: Yes!

24:35 Supporting the hormonal system with essential oils

Wendy Myers: So, what essential oils help to deal with the hormones and supporting hormones?

Jodi Cohen: Yeah, that’s another thing. There are a couple of pieces that play into hormones or the adrenals. For example, something known as estrogen dominance when we’re too high in estrogen and too low in progesterone, there are a couple of factors that go into that.

One is how much progesterone we have. Progesterone, the precursor is this hormone pregnenolone. And if we don’t have enough pregnenolone either because we’re not eating enough fat to make the cholesterol to make that or because we’re in stress— Pregnenolone is also the precursor to cortisol which is the stress hormone. The body will always prioritize survival and stress. So if you’re in chronic stress, say that you’re a worrier or you have anxiety, you’re burning, burning, burning through your cortisol, the body will steal actually the pregnenolone that was earmarked to make progesterone and make cortisol instead.

So now, you have a smaller ratio of progesterone, and so you’re going to be estrogen dominant even if you have a normal ratio.

So, you want to deal with your stress. You want to help support your adrenals. If you have an underlying anxiety, grief or worry or fear, you want to help support that. We have some emotional oils for that.

And then, you also want to help your detoxification organs. Your liver, your liver then processes and eliminates the estrogen, the liver and the gallbladder.

We have blends that we actually are testing. The estrogen balance blend are testing really well. It works a little bit like the supplement DIM to kind of help the body process and release excess estrogen.

Wendy Myers: Yeah, that is wonderful. I would love to see an essential oil like that. I do have detox program and so many of my clients have congested livers. If your liver is congested, it can’t metabolize and break down excess estrogen. So a lot of people become estrogen dominant. And that comes with a whole host of problems including weight gain and being a little bit chubby on the mid-section and what-not.

Jodi Cohen: Yes! And moody and grumpy and dry skin. It can trigger thyroid issues. It’s a little bit like the tipping point for a lot of problems.

Wendy Myers: Yes! And driving people to figure out “What is wrong with me?” and they finally start to get serious about their health.

That’s what happened to me. That’s exactly what drove me to improve my health. It was that low estrogen.

26:58 Getting started with essential oils

Wendy Myers: And so if someone is starting out with essential oils, what are the most important things that they should know?

Jodi Cohen: I think the most important thing is that they’re really powerful tools. I don’t like the way they’re diminished, “Oh, you can take them internally. You can use a ton!” Maybe when you build up a tolerance. But if you’re just starting out, go slowly. Do not start drinking the stuff. Smell it to start.

Even, sometimes, the smell, we forget smells have such a powerful impact on our memory because they go straight into the limbic system, the amygdala. So if you’re going to slather yourself with it and have a reaction, it’s going to be hard to undo it.

So, exactly like that, keep it a little bit below your nose. Just smell it. Don’t do anything else.

And then, they should always be diluted. Our blends come diluted, but I want you to start diluting them a little bit more. You can do a test patch just right on the inner side of your arm. If there are any allergic reactions, it’s very small and contained.

And then, wherever we tell you to apply it, I want you to take one or two drops with a tablespoon of a different oil. I really like coconut oil. You can also use almond oil or sesame oil, just whatever works for you. But topically apply it.

And so ease into it. You don’t jump into the pool. Make sure that it’s not freezing or shallow. You want to test the water with your toe first.

So, start slowly and then build from there.

And then, also, I think people throw so much time and energy into it. And that was one of the intentions behind this company. I wanted to help guide them to what they needed, so they didn’t have to buy 20 different single oils, combine them and they weren’t sure if they worked or not. So, I really try to help people figure out what their priority is.

For example, sleep is usually the priority. If you’re not sleeping, start there. It’s hard to heal if you’re not sleeping.

Then it often moves to stress. If you’re under stress, it’s very, very hard to heal.

And then it can either be inflammation from leaky gut or gut inflammation or digestion or detoxification or blood sugar.

But we’re trying to help people pinpoint their issues.

And take one thing at a time. I have two kids. They always seem to have two friends over. When five people are talking to me at the same time, I can’t hear anyone. It has to be one priority. “You go first… okay, got that. Now, you…”

I think the body is the same way. I think when we do everything at once, it can be a little overwhelming. So I really try to tell people to limit it to three blends at any given time just so as not to overwhelm.

29:35 Choosing the right essential oil

Wendy Myers: Yeah. And you have a really great thing. You have a free health assessment on your website. Tell us how that can help someone chose their essential oils, what’s best for them at that time?

Jodi Cohen: I’m very into teaching people to fish, not giving people fish. So I really want you to understand what’s going on in your body, so that you can figure out how to prioritize and heal.

It’s a series. It’s only 14 questions. It will just walk you through some questions. And at the end, it will be pretty obvious what your priority is and where you should start.

I have a lot of people who come and they say, “Everything is wrong with me. I have terrible blood sugar. I can’t detoxify. I have leaky gut. I’m stressed all the time and I can’t sleep. I just think I should buy everything.”

That’s flattering, but I don’t want them to do that. I don’t want them to buy everything because it’s a little bit like if something isn’t working and you take 17 different medicines, how do you know which one is actually helping you?

We want to make sure that we’re moving the needle. And we want to do it gradually.

And the other thing that’s interesting, even weight loss, sometimes, if you’re not sleeping, of course you’re going to be hungry, of course you’re going to crave treats (sugar) just to keep you awake and functioning.

If you actually start sleeping, then maybe you are less hungry, maybe you are able to go exercise, maybe you’ll detoxify and move that weight.

So, do one thing at a time, see how that shifts things, and then we’ll pick the next priority.

Wendy Myers: And I love that you have a Beginner’s Guide to Essential Oils on your website as well. That’s so helpful. Even for me, I started studying essential oils a little less than a year ago. You need a place to start. It can be really overwhelming. There are hundreds of essential oils.

But I love it that you do it by condition-specific, so that someone who’s just beginning, they could take the guess work out of it. They can find just the right blend for what they want to work on. It’s great!

Jodi Cohen: That was the intention.

I mean, it’s funny. I took my kids raspberry-picking. We came home with like three big things. I was like, “Oh, great! I’ll make jam.” I have jam flowing out of every area of my house. It’s in every freezer. I’m never making jam again just because I am not a do-it-yourselfer. I like to go and buy exactly what I need. And then, when that runs out, I’ll replace it.

There are people that are. And I feel like there are a lot of companies that do a great job servicing people who want to buy a lot of single oils. And if it’s not broken, I’m not going to fix it.

What I’m really trying to do is help people who, they’ve heard essential oils are good, they don’t really know where to start, they know what their issues are. I make pre-packaged blends. You don’t need to buy the $100 helichrysum. I’ve bought it for you and I’m putting it in the right amount.

And if you then are so moved by your experience and you want to learn everything and buy every single oil, go for it! You can totally graduate from me. I’ll applaud you. I really want to empower people to do that.

I’m very focused on very specific blends that I think help support the body and return us to balance. That’s really what I think it’s about. I think that when the body is in balance, it can heal.

And I think that so many of the external factors—pollutants, toxins, EMF’s, whatever you want to call it—throw us out of balance. And the more we connect with nature (either nutrient-dense food from nature or the animals, these nutrient-dense foods), it puts us back in balance.

And oils are really nice that way. They’re very concentrated. They’re not polluted. They help us get back to who we are, so we can heal.

33:15 The most pressing health issue in the world today

Wendy Myers: I have a question that I like to ask all of my guests. What do you think is the most pressing health issue in the world today?

Jodi Cohen: I think the fact that our children are no longer out-living us. I think the fact that we have so many sick children.

My kids go to camp. The line to check in if you’re not on any medicine is nothing. The line to check in if you’re on a medicine is huge. It’s around the block.

So, after check-in, I asked. I was curious. I’m like, “How many of these kids are on meds?” Eighty-five percent, eighty-five percent, and they’re under-12.

Wendy Myers: What?!

Jodi Cohen: I know! I know!

I think our children are the future. And we are overloading them with toxins, with processed foods. I’m 47. In my lifetime, I cannot believe how many things have shifted in a way that I think is—

The vaccines have exploded. EMF’s, we know, kind of exacerbate the growth of mold (and I wonder what they do to other fungi). There are all these genetically-modified foods. The soil has really been depleted.

It’s kind of this perfect storm of we’re depleting the good and layering on more of the bad.

I think if we don’t get a handle on these poor kids right now, there tends to be a tipping point with autoimmunity, Lyme. They need a good foundation, so that they can grow.

It’s like the three little pigs. If you build your house out of straw, it’s much more easy to topple than it’s out of brick.

And so I really pour all my energy into these children and doing everything I can to enhance and fortify their foundations.

Wendy Myers: Yeah! And using essential oils is one of the easiest, healthy things you can do with your kids.

My daughter loves them. She loves smelling them and sniffing them and playing with them. She helps me dilute them. And then, we put them on her.

Jodi Cohen: Oh, yeah. We make cushions.

Wendy Myers: Yeah! She loves putting them on the diffuser. We sleep together and so I’ll have a little diffuser with some sleep essential oils that put us right to sleep. It’s just a really wonderful, easy thing to do with your kids.

Jodi Cohen: And children are so intuitive. That’s my favorite thing to do. I think that the body really craves what it needs—you know like how you crave chocolate when you need magnesium or you crave a hamburger when you need iron. I think kids know. They can smell and say, “That’s my oil.” And it always seems to be right for them.

So, yeah, I think it’s really easy. I think it’s fun. And I think it’s just balancing.

It’s a little bit like the titter-totter, right? There are so much that we can’t control. So, when we can control things—be it feeding them vegetables or getting them outside in the fresh air or giving them oils—it’s those things that we can do to put them back in balance that I think really help maintain the homeostasis.

36:03 Where to find Jodi and Vibrant Blue Oils

Wendy Myers: So, tell us where the listeners can find you and learn more about Vibrant Blue Oils.

Jodi Cohen: So, my site is Vibrant Blue Oils (exactly like it sounds), VibrantBlueOils.com. We have a free guide that you can get when you go there. You are welcome to email me with any questions. We also have a link to a Facebook discussion group where you can look at other people’s questions, kind of be a passive observer or jump in and ask questions and get answers not only from me, but from our community.

Wendy Myers: Great! Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I so appreciate it. I really want to help the listeners learn more about essential oils. I’ve completely fallen in love with me. I have lost my mind. I’ve spent like hundreds and hundreds of dollars on essential oils. So I wanted to share that with everyone.

Jodi Cohen: Well, ours are not that expensive. They’re $35. And if it doesn’t work, it’s totally returnable.

That was the other thing. I feel like people spend—they guess and they spend a lot of money. I did that, and that felt awful. So I really don’t want people to feel like they’re going to waste their time or energy or money.

Wendy Myers: Yes! Well, I only spent hundreds of dollars because I bought 30 bottles.

Jodi Cohen: No, they’re great.

37:18 Blends for the lymphatic system

Jodi Cohen: Oh, and the one other oil that I wanted to talk about detoxification, the lymph oil. Our lymphatic system is something people forget about. The more you move it either through moving your body or dry brushing or saunas— There’s an oil that kind of helps the lymph flow. And that’s a really good thing.

Especially for anyone that gets headaches, a lot of the time, it’s congested lymph. So you just put some right here.

I have friends that used to get migraines that swear by it.

So, that’s another thing to consider—be it a drainage formula, some kind of exercise, dry brushing or our lymph blend.

Wendy Myers: Yeah, that’s so important. So many people have congested lymphs. We have so many toxins. We have so many chemicals and metals in our body…

Jodi Cohen: And it’s the intercellular matrix that they pull from. So it’s like every cell in your body. They’ve got a big job.

Wendy Myers: Yes, absolutely! So that’s great that you have an essential oil for that too. It’s just a wonderful complement to any kind of detoxification program to enhance it and to facilitate detox and just for general sleep and helping your health in general. I think it’s fantastic.

Jodi Cohen: Right! Thank you so much for having me.

Wendy Myers: Yes! Well, thank you so much, Jodi. And everyone, thank you so much for tuning in to the Live to 110 Podcast. You can check my website out at myersdetox.com where I teach you all about natural healing strategies, diet, lifestyle, supplementation and detox to live to 110.

You can also check out my detox program, MyersDetox.com

Thank you so much for listening. Have a healthy day!

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