Transcript #455 Cleaner Living Made Simple with Essential Oils with Samantha Lee Wright

Listen

Listen to this podcast or watch the video. CLICK HERE

Transcript

Download PDF

Click to jump to a section!

1. Find out what’s in store on this Myers Detox Podcast with Samantha Lee Wright, essential oils expert and host of The Essential Oil Revolution Podcast, who joins the show to talk about cleaner living made simple using essential oils. Samantha has so many amazing tips and tricks when it comes to using essential oils for your body and your home. She explains what types of essential oils you should use, the dos and don’ts of essential oils, how to make toxic free products and cleaners using essential oils, and some interesting ways you can incorporate essential oils into your daily life. I personally love essential oils and always like getting fresh perspectives on how to use them, so make sure to tune into this info packed episode!
2. Find out why Samantha became so passionate about essential oils and became a major spokesperson for them.
3. Learn more about the essential oil industry, and why it is very important to find quality essential oils from trusted suppliers.
4. Find out Samanthas top recommendations for people first starting out using essential oils.
5. Find out why a product with fragrance on it’s ingredient label is almost always very toxic.
6. Learn why trying to disinfect your house can actually be harmful to your health, and Samantha’s easy essential oils cleaner recipe.
7. Find out some of Samantha’s safety tips when it comes to using essential oils.
8. Find out Samantha’s go to essential oils for her home.
9. Learn about some of Samantha’s tips for the laundry room, and why it is important to get rid of toxic laundry products.
10. Read Samantha’s final tips and where you can learn more about her and her work.

Dr. Wendy Myers: Hello everyone, how are you doing? I’m Dr. Wendy Myers. Welcome to the Myers Detox Podcast, where we talk about everything related to detox in your home, your body, and your life and emotional detox. So today, we have Samantha Lee Wright on the show, and she’s going to be talking about cleaner living made stupidly simple with essential oils. I love talking about essential oils because it’s such an easy foray and to do something really healthy for your home, to make cleaning products out of natural cleaning products and to use natural fragrances and to just make your home smell amazing, help you to relax or get more energized or what have you. So many benefits.

And so Samantha, she’s been around talking about essential oils for almost a decade. Really knows her stuff. I always enjoy talking to her. She’s been on the show before. So I know you guys are listening. You want to detox your home and detox your body. So I created a quiz called heavymetalsquiz.com. It only takes two seconds to take that and figure out where you are as far as your body’s burden of toxins. And so just go take that. It’s only a couple of seconds.

And I have a new program called the Emotional Detox Program. And this really is the work that I’m most proud of. It’s something that I happened upon in my own health journey, working on emotional detox, emotional trauma, releasing negative stuck emotions because I found that I was doing everything physically for my health, like the diet and the supplements and working out, getting sun and stress production and the yoga and all messages and all these different things that we do for our health. And still, I woke up just feeling locked, gray, and not really feeling joy or peace or self-love or a lot of love and compassion for others, where I wanted to be. Because that’s why we’re doing all this stuff, right? That’s why we take all these supplements and eat well. We want to feel good. That’s it. That’s the bottom line. It’s not because you want to detox. You just want to feel better.

And so my discovery in my journey is that heavy metals and chemicals, yeah, those are a big issue, but emotional trauma, adverse childhood experiences, childhood development, trauma at the hands of our caregivers, be it abuse or neglect, has a profound impact on developing core personality issues and adaptive behaviors or maladaptive behaviors that also lead to physical health issues. The big contributing factor. Up to 65% of physical health issues are caused by emotional trauma and negative emotions. That is huge. So this is the tree you want to be barking up if you feel like you’ve tried everything and want to take that next step.

So I have a free masterclass you can take at emo-detox.com, EMO-DETOX.com. Go check that out. I got a lot of really interesting info for you. So our guest today, Samantha Lee Wright. She’s the host of the Essential Oils Revolution podcast, with over five million downloads to date. And her podcast is home to essential oil newbies, fanatics alike, and people ready to take charge of their health. She’s a wife, mother, author, speaker, and fierce advocate for living life on your own terms. And so you can check out her website at essentialoilsrevolution.com. Samantha, thanks so much for coming to the show.

Samantha Lee Wright: Yeah, thanks for having me, Wendy. Always great to chat with you.

Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah. It’s really nice having you on again. We’ve had you on certainly before talking about essential oils, and I love essential oils myself. I think they should be a part of anyone wanting to make a natural living and use it for beauty care products and perfumes. Cleaners are so versatile, they’re so healthy, and they smell so delicious. I think they would be a part of anyone living a healthy lifestyle. Can you talk a little bit about why you got into essential oils and be an advocate for them and a spokesperson for them?

Samantha Lee Wright: So it doesn’t feel like it, but I’ve been in this industry now for eight years. When I first launched my podcast, the Essential Oil Revolution, it was in December of 2015, and now over five million downloads later, I’m still talking about essential oils. I’m like, “I can’t believe it.” Sometimes people are like, “Aren’t you out of things to talk about?” I’m like, “No, there’s always something interesting happening in the essential oil world.” There’s always some new health approach that connects to essential oils, and there’s also so much misinformation and misunderstanding about essential oils too. And I think that’s really what led me to start the podcast was, first, my own curiosity about essential oils because I’d just been introduced to them, and there was a lot of hype, and there’s a lot of stories on all these magical testimonials that I was hearing, and I was like, “Gosh how legit is this, right?”

And so I really just wanted to talk to the experts in the field. I had so many questions, and I was like, “If I’m feeling this way, I’m sure many other people are.” So I started a podcast. There were a couple out there already podcasts specific to essential oils, but not many. And none of them was quite the caliber that I wanted to listen to because I’m a huge podcast dork. I listen to them all the time. So I really like high-quality shows. So I was like, “You know what, I’m just going to make it. Why not me?” And it’s been so much fun. It’s been so fascinating. I’ve learned so much.

I get to talk to the most interesting guests like you. You’ve been on my show a couple times. And it’s just a wonderful experience to be able to reach so many people around the world that write to me and say how much of a difference this show is making to them. It’s inspiring them; it’s empowering them. I call essential oil somewhat of like a gateway drug for the health and wellness world because many people might not be ready to eat all organic or cut out more meat or cut this out. We can do so many things for our health, but many of them can be overwhelming.

But for a lot of people that aren’t quite in that world yet, somehow, essential oils have bridged that gap. A lot of people think that it’s like this stepping stone into a world that helps you be more aware of the things around you and the choices that you’re making to live a healthy lifestyle.

Dr. Wendy Myers: And it’s easy to implement them, and they smell so delicious. And I just have all kinds of stuff I do. I have roller balls. I have perfumes that are made from essential oils that I love. I love Living Libations perfumes and products. And I have a diffuser, and there are all kinds of different ways that I use that. They’re amazing. So can you talk a little bit about how important it is to go organic with essential oil? Because I know there are some brands that I’ve bought that were not cheap that say they’re organic, and I smell them, I have a very sensitive sense of smell, and they just have this chemical smell to them. They just don’t smell natural. And I’m like, “What is going on here?” I can immediately know if a fragrance is synthetic or if it’s real. I don’t know how I’m able to do that. I’m sure there are a lot of women out there. Our sense of smell is 10 times more sensitive than men’s noses. So what’s going on there?

Samantha Lee Wright: Yeah, there’s a lot going on there, Wendy, a lot. I think that people don’t quite understand that the world of essential oils is this industry on its own that the FDA, the organic certifiers, and pretty much all of the regulatory agencies have never really known what to do with. They’ve never been able to know how to approach it because essential oils aren’t medicine, they aren’t food, and they aren’t really cosmetics. They don’t really fit into these neat boxes that have already been created by regulatory agencies.

And so the result has become this ad hoc Wild West arena where companies can get away with whatever they want to, honestly, because there’s such little regulation as far as if a company wants to label their essential oils as, quote-unquote, pure therapeutic grade, all-natural. So many different words they can use. There’s really no agency coming in behind them to say, “Oh, okay, you say that you’re 100% pure. Let’s test that.” Because they wouldn’t even really know what they’re testing for.

If you have a bottle that’s certified, let’s say USDA organic certified on that bottle of essential oil, that’s not actually referring to the whole process of making that oil. It’s really only referring to some of the plants that may be in that bottle, to my understanding. I don’t know exactly what that exact cutoff is. I’ve heard different words. I’ve heard it only has to be 6% organic, which may seem a little low to me. But in a nutshell, what it says on the bottle doesn’t really mean anything. And so buyers have to be really aware of who they’re buying from. And it really, at the end of the day, comes down to trusting the recommendation that someone’s given you, trusting the company’s literature that they’re putting out, or trusting your own nose, as you said.

And if you live in a fairly clean environment where you’re not bombarded with a lot of synthetic fragrances every day, then you really do quickly adapt to be able to denote those synthetic chemical fragrances that are absolutely rampant in the oil world. It’s been estimated that only about 1% to 2% of the essential oils on the market are actually authentic. Say what they are. 100% pure from plants. Not to mention the different ways that essential oils can be distilled. Even if something comes from a 100% pure organic plant doesn’t necessarily mean that when it makes its way through the distillation process, it hasn’t been adulterated in some other way that has devalued its therapeutic properties. I know, I sound like such a bummer when I say that.

Dr. Wendy Myers: I know. I mean, I know there are brands I use that I love, and I can smell them. I just know that that’s what they are; they say they are, like the Living Libations. For me, they seem like they’re the highest frequency of essential oils out there. This lady, Nadine Artemis, is just a freak when it comes to traveling the world.

Samantha Lee Wright: Oh, I love her. Yeah, she’s been on my show.

Dr. Wendy Myers: And sourcing all these small farms and just the processes, and the prices reflect that, though. It’s not cheap. But I feel like I know what I’m getting and can smell them. I love them, da, da, da. Will you talk a little bit about some basics like how to use essential oils, what to do, what not to do, and what are some of the interesting ways that you use essential oils?

Samantha Lee Wright: So for people that are just getting started, I try to make it really, really simple. I say there are three main ways you can use essential oils, topically on the skin, aromatically as in you’re smelling or breathing them in, or internally for certain oils and certain brands that are actually therapeutic grade. And some people get really squeamish about that third use, so I say, “Just don’t use them that way. It’s fine. Just stick to aromatic and topical.” And when it comes to using essential oils topically on your skin, I say just always dilute your essential oil for beginners. These are very, very, very strong substances. Just to put things in perspective, one drop of peppermint essential oil is equivalent to 26 cups of peppermint tea.

Dr. Wendy Myers: Wow.

Samantha Lee Wright: So you don’t want to just pour tons of this stuff on your skin. You want to make sure that, A, you don’t have a sensitivity to a certain oil. So just test a little small area. But to be safe, just always mix your essential oil with some sort of fatty-based carrier oil like coconut oil, jojoba oil, or almond oil. Heck, everyone’s got olive oil in the kitchen. Olive oil works fine. Some people don’t like the smell of olive oil, so they might use something more like fractionated coconut oil, which is a liquified form. So you’re always going to want to mix with those before you apply them to your skin. But instances where you’d want to do that, would be, let’s say, you’ve got some Wintergreen essential oil. It’s the very, very strong oil that is great at penetrating through the muscles and into the joint. So if you have any joint pain or muscle aches, if you’re getting a massage or something like that, that’s a really easy go-to one to mix with the carrier oil and massage into your muscles. Likewise, peppermint oil is great for that.

There’s one oil called Copaiba that I love. It’s a very high anti-inflammatory oil that’s great for joints, aches, and pains or just to calm down your whole system really. And then using essential oils aromatically in the air is so simple. It’s as simple as picking up a bottle, opening it, and smelling it. You’ve just used essential oils because you have smelled those molecules. They’ve entered through your nose, through your smell buds, up into your brain, and into your lungs, and can have many benefits. So I don’t go anywhere without a bottle of peppermint oil, especially during allergy season. And I’ll just take a whiff, and it’ll wake me up, it’ll put me up, it’ll clear my sinuses a bit and give me extra energy that way. But my favorite way to use them is probably in a diffuser. So those are those little machines that a lot of people are probably aware of that usually the bottom you fill with water and then you can just add a few drops of essential oils, press the button and that machine’s going to pump those essential oil molecules into the air and make it really easy for you to enjoy the smell and the scent or to breathe those molecules in. So a very popular oil blend is called Thieves.

Dr. Wendy Myers: I love that.

Samantha Lee Wright: It’s made up of cinnamon, clove, rosemary, eucalyptus, and lemon. And it’s such a popular one just to have to go all throughout the year, especially during transitions when there are a lot of bugs in the air, and you want to keep your immune system up. That’s a super easy one to do, and it smells delicious, so everyone loves it. You said you love it.

Dr. Wendy Myers: Oh my god, I love Thieves. I mean, it smells like Christmas, so I put that in my diffuser, and everybody loves it. It just smells so delicious. But yeah, it’s funny. I bought some Blue Lotus essential oil, which was really expensive. For five milliliters, it was almost $200. And I said, “Forget it. I’m just going to do it.” I just wanted it. It’s supposed to be an aphrodisiac. I’m like, “Oh my God, it’s just amazing. Blue Lotus. It’s so rare.” And then I got it and put it in my diffuser, and it stunk.

Samantha Lee Wright: Oh, no.

Dr. Wendy Myers: I just had this expectation that it’s going to be this amazing, sublime experience.

Samantha Lee Wright: It sounds like it should just smell like heaven, Blue Lotus.

Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah, so you might want to smell some things before you buy them. It’s hard if you’re shopping online, and I was just in this crazy essential oil buying mode. But it’s an aphrodisiac. I haven’t used it since, but I used up that oil. So talk about the difference between fragrance and essential oils because there are a lot of perfumes out there that are just synthetic fragrances. The majority of beauty products out there use fragrance, but you really want to be looking for a box that uses essential oils. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Samantha Lee Wright: Yeah, absolutely. So if you’re walking through your standard store and you’re looking at shampoos and conditioners that say lavender scent on them or have a picture of lavender, I could bet you a million dollars that that bottle has absolutely zero lavender plant in it. Nowhere has an actual lavender plant been involved in creating that product. And I think that that’s a misconception that a lot of people have because they don’t realize that really, since the 1950s, when the chemical revolution, I like to call it, was occurring, scientists quickly found out that they could very easily and very cheaply manufacture fake scent using a stockpile of chemicals.

Today usually, the word fragrance is really just a combination of any of over 3000 stock chemical ingredients that are very readily accessible and very cheap and often will include hormone disruptors and allergens to it. And there are a couple different reasons for this. A, if you were to compare scenting a product. Let’s just take shampoo as an example. To make a shampoo smell good, we all know consumers like their products to smell good. No one can deny that. To make it smell like a botanical, like a lavender, let’s say, to use essential oils or other pure botanicals that have somehow been derived into a scent would cost, I’m just guessing here, but probably 20 times more than scenting it with one of those cheap fragrant combinations of chemicals that are usually derived from some sort of petroleum product.

And a brand that is making that choice will say, “Well, gosh, we can make a lot more money if we just use these cheap chemicals. No one really knows the difference.” Most consumers don’t know the difference. And then on top of that, companies can protect their trade secrets and their brands a lot more easily if they use the word fragrance. So if you flip a bottle over of shampoo and you’re reading the ingredients on the back, you’re going to be reading standard ingredients. And then if you come across that word fragrance, then fragrance is really just code for a whole bunch of chemicals that we didn’t really feel like disclosing to you because they’re allowed to hide those ingredients under that word fragrance because they can call it a trade secret, and it’s then protected, and they don’t have to disclose what’s in there. So it’s really interesting the way all this works behind the scenes on these high levels.

But according to the American Academy of Dermatology, the fragrance is the biggest cause of cosmetic contact dermatitis. It’s up there with nickel and poison ivy, which most people know to avoid those things, but not a lot of people know to avoid the word fragrance. So it’s really interesting.

Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah, it’s amazing how many toxic compounds can be under that fragrance label and also with your laundry detergent and your different beauty products and household cleaning products and the phthalates that leave that fragrance in your hair or in your sheets. That’s another toxic compound that’s added so that fragrance will last and stay in your hair, your sheets, clothes, and whatever, because consumers like that, but there’s a price to pay with your hormones and other health issues. What about cleaning products? Can you talk a little bit about those and some easy ditch and switch options? I mean, I just think cleaning with essential oils is just a no-brainer because of how they smell and their antifungal and antibacterial properties.

Samantha Lee Wright: Yeah, I agree. It’s a no-brainer for me because just what we’ve been talking about with the cosmetic industry and these things, the cleaning industry isn’t really that much better. It’s almost worse. We live in this society where everyone wants everything to be sterile or thinks they want everything to be sterile.

Dr. Wendy Myers: That’s so crazy. It’s not going to happen.

Samantha Lee Wright: It’s never going to happen, and you don’t want it to happen. That’s actually really terrible for you. I mean, how many studies have they done that have proven that kids that grow up in cleaner, more sterile environments have way weaker immune systems, right? Kids that are born via cesarean don’t come through their mother’s birth canal, and they’re picking up all these amazingly beneficial microbiomes as they’re passing through their birth canal. Cesarean Babies are at such a disadvantage just coming into this world without that inoculation, right? We know all this through science, but as a collective consciousness, I think we haven’t quite embodied that yet because so many people are like, “Yeah, bring out the bleach. Bring out these really, really heavy-duty chemicals to just clean our counters and floors with it.” Not only are they wiping out all of these hugely beneficial bacteria. Bacteria are our friends. Most bacteria are our friends, and we couldn’t survive without bacteria.

We’ve got over two pounds of bacteria just in our gut all the time that help us live and have emotions. And so not only are these harsh chemicals really knocking out a lot of those beneficial bacteria, but they’re also leaving behind these really dangerous and toxic chemicals that we’re walking on the floors, and we’re touching with our hands and are getting into our skin. So that’s a long way of saying. I agree with you, Wendy, that essential oils are a great alternative to that. And I’d say my go-to essential oil for cleaning is lemon essential oil. It’s so powerful. It’s on the cheaper side of essential oils, too, so you can get a really good quality lemon oil, and you’re not going to break the bank, and it leaves everything so shiny, so clean, it smells amazing. Yeah, it’s so powerful.

You take one of those sticker gunks that gets stuck on the water bottle you just bought, and you’re trying to get all the gunk off, and you can’t do it. Just take some lemon oil, put it on a cotton ball and scrub, and boom, it’s gone. It’s amazing. I love it. So I do have an all-purpose DIY spray cleaner that is super easy to make. I’ve got it right here, so I’ll just read that out loud. I use 1.5 cups of hydrogen peroxide, one cup of white vinegar, and one tablespoon of unscented liquid castile soap, so a Dr. Bronner soap. And then, 20 drops of lemon essential oil, 15 drops of eucalyptus essential oil, 10 drops of rosemary essential oil, and then about four cups of water.

So you just add all those to a spray bottle and shake it up before each use because those essential oils sometimes tend to float at the top. And then if you run into a really tough spot that the cleaner’s not getting rid of, just break out the baking soda and sprinkle some on and then spray some of that on top, let it sit for a second, and then scrub away. And I don’t know. Lately, I’ve been watching a lot of Shark Tank, and I have become obsessed with Scrub Daddy, which I’m sure any Shark Tank fans will know of. But I’ll tell you, there’s no stain or dirty mess too tough for that combination of DIY purpose cleaner, baking soda, and the Scrub Daddy that can’t get rid of. So you’re all set.

Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah. I mean, and that’s so easy to make. It’s inexpensive. That will last you forever, and you’re not dealing with all these hormone-disrupting chemicals. And it’s funny. I was married to someone that was a germaphobe, and here I am, a chemical probe, and he wanted to blast everything with chemicals and bleach, and I was like, “No!” Obviously, we got divorced, and he wanted to use this Gain laundry detergent. It would smell the whole house. Then I’m like, “No, the washer is contaminated now.” I had this crazy synthetic fragrance that was really strong. It doesn’t make any sense to me why people have this delusion, given the fact that you’re covered in bacteria, your mouth has bacteria, your nose has bacteria, everything has bacteria, good and bad. You’re just not going to be able to sterilize your environment. I want to say germs and bacteria don’t make you sick. I mean, people worry about viruses and things like that, but your body is designed to deal with bacteria. It is not designed to deal with all these chemicals and synthetic fragrances.

Samantha Lee Wright: And the more good bacteria you have, the more protected you are from those dangerous viruses and bacteria.

Dr. Wendy Myers: Absolutely. And so, are there any safety tips you recommend for people who need to understand essential oils?

Samantha Lee Wright: Yeah, so safety tips. I keep it really simple. Don’t put essential oils in your eyes or your ear canal. Don’t go out in the sun after you’ve applied any citrus oils. So I always like to tell the story of a margarita burn. If you’ve never heard of a margarita burn, people go out on pontoon boats, make a bunch of fresh squeezed margarita, and get all that lime. What’s on their hands is actually lime essential oil because lime essential oil comes from the rind. Most citrus oils come from the rind of the plant. And they’ve got all these essential oils on their hands, and then get severe burns on their hands because they’ve been out in the sun with those oils. So be really careful.

A mild version of that. I had a friend once that put the essential oil on their skin. It was a blend, but it was partly citrus oil. And then, at the end of the day, she just had this big red spot on her skin. So nothing dangerous, but that is something to be aware of. And then beyond that, I just tell people to go low and go slow. You want to start with one drop once or twice a day, see how you’re doing, and make sure you do not have any crazy rare reactions. They are very rare. And you never need to use more than a couple drops of essential oils anyway.

So while they’re mostly pretty benign, it’s pretty hard to hurt yourself with essential oils, even if you misuse them. I just tell people, let’s just stay safe. Keep it low, and keep it slow. And then, if you’re using around pets, cats especially, you want to do some extra research. I’m not going to get into all that right now. We have a couple episodes on my podcast about pets and essential oils because there are some extra safety things to consider there. And the same with pregnant babies, or if you’re on any pharmaceutical medications, you just need to take your time and do just a little bit of extra research. I’m not going to go into all those details now, but just know that if you fit into any of those categories, don’t dive, don’t do a cannonball into the pool of essential oils. You want to slow down and do just a little extra research. And again, on my podcast, we cover all of these subjects very much in-depth for those different categories.

Dr. Wendy Myers: Great. Yeah, I mean, they are really, really powerful. Once you start researching it and getting into it, you realize how many uses there are and how powerful they really are. And they’re very, very strong. When you can get a bottle of essential oil, it just lasts forever. They can be expensive, but they really do last you forever because they are so strong.

Samantha Lee Wright: Yeah, exactly. They’re a wise investment as far as cost-benefit analysis goes. You can get a lot of bang for your buck with essential oils, especially when replacing some of the products you’re buying. Not only are you replacing them with healthier DIY alternatives, but you’re also saving a lot of money doing that as well.

Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah. And so, what are some of your favorite go-to essential oils that you use daily around your house?

Samantha Lee Wright: Yeah, I love Frankincense. I think Frankincense, I mean, will always be my favorite oil because, to me, it’s my immediate grounding oil. It helps me slow down. And I think a lot of people just need that. They need just some tether, some reminder to slow down. So I have a bottle on my desk. I’ll put a drop on my wrist. Frankincense is one of those oils that is very, very gentle. And so, I know my skin type well enough to know that I don’t really need to dilute Frankincense before I use it on my skin. So I’ll put a drop right on my wrist and just breathe it in while I’m at my desk, and it helps my whole body calm down. It helped me a lot, especially when I was in my postpartum after my second child.

It was like a stop button for spiraling for me, and I could very easily spiral into anxiety or depression, especially during that phase. And it was just this stop, pause, breath, and now go do something good for yourself. So that’s, I think, always going to be my favorite oil. Towards the end of the night, when my kids are trying to wind down, we’re trying to get them ready for bed; there are a couple blends I love. There’s one called Peace & Calming that I’ll put in the diffuser all the time, or maybe I’ll just concoct my own blend. I’ll throw some lavender in and balance it out with citrus oil. I love Bergamot essential oil.

Dr. Wendy Myers: I love Bergamot. Oh my gosh.

Samantha Lee Wright: Beautiful citrus smell. And then, as I said, I’m constantly using lemon for cleaning, and Thieves I use a lot for cleaning. So there’s actually a Thieves household cleaner concentrate that I’ll buy for most of my cleaning that’s super easy to use, and it’s got that Thieves smell, and it’s a very easy go-to blend for me. And then I’m trying to think of some other. The bottles are everywhere, and the uses are everywhere, so trying to think through my day and how I use them. Orange essential oil is great for teeth brightening. So you can just add a drop straight to your toothpaste and brush your teeth with it that way, and try that for 20 days, take a before and after pic, and send it to Wendy so she can be like, “Wendy, my teeth are whiter. Thanks to Orange essential oil.”

Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah, I mean, I use a product by Living Libations. It’s called Poetic Pits. The smell makes me crazy, and I want to tell you what’s in it. It has sandalwood essential oils, ylang-ylang, lavender, camomile, and balsam Amyris. And it is just the most divine scent. You could use it as perfume. I put it under my arms like deodorant; of course, it’s antibacterial. It kills all the bacteria that give you body odor and things like that. But that’s one of my favorites. It’s called Poetic Pits. It’s one of the things I use all the time.

Samantha Lee Wright: That’s great.

Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah, everything Living Libations, I go cuckoo for it. I love it. So can you talk about anything else as far as a good place for people to start cleaning up the toxic load in their homes and using essential oils instead? Or did we cover that with the cleaner recipe?

Samantha Lee Wright: Yeah, I’ll give one more tip for that. I say a really great place to start is the laundry room, and it’s also one of the more challenging ones. It’s really hard to make a good DIY laundry detergent without putting in a lot of time and experimentation. So that one’s tricky because also the laundry room can be one of the more heavily chemically laden ones. So I suggest just finding yourself a good quality laundry detergent. There’s a company called My Green Fills. No, they’re not called that anymore. They changed their name.

Dr. Wendy Myers: They changed it to Trust something.

Samantha Lee Wright: Trust.

Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah. It used to be My Green Fills. I think it’s Trust now.

Samantha Lee Wright: Yeah. Anyway, I love them, and I think they’re really effective laundry detergents. But then, as far as the dryer goes, I know many people rely on their dryer sheets to give that smell and to get that fluffiness. I think they think that those dryer sheets are added in.

Dr. Wendy Myers: Oh, it’s called Truly Free.

Samantha Lee Wright: Truly Free.

Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah, trulyfreehome.com. That’s the new name. Yeah, I like that. It’s a little bit better.

Samantha Lee Wright: You like what, Truly Free?

Dr. Wendy Myers: It’s a better name than My Green Fills, which is like, “What is that?”

Samantha Lee Wright: Yeah. Well, I think the name My Green Fills came from because you would order, your first kit would come with the jug, and then after that, they would send you the concentrates in the mail, and you just mix it yourself at home with water. And they still do that, but they’ve changed the name. Yeah. But I really like using wool dryer balls in the laundry room instead of, What’s the word?

Dr. Wendy Myers: Dryer sheets.

Samantha Lee Wright: Dryer sheets.

Dr. Wendy Myers: Those are the most toxic things in your home, the dryer sheets. FYI, those are the most toxic things in your home, aside from maybe oven cleaner. But yeah, they’re really nasty. A lot of chemicals, 100 chemicals or more, in those suckers.

Samantha Lee Wright: Yeah, there’s a lot. And so wool dryer balls will punch your clothes as they’re drying, so it helps separate and keep things a little soft. And then you can add whatever essential oils you want to the dryer balls, except for ones that are blue. You wouldn’t want to put a blue tansy oil that has this very distinct blue chemical on it. You don’t want to risk getting that on your clothes. But I like to use lemon, orange, and citrus oils. I keep it to the cheaper side for my dryer balls because I don’t want to be using a $200 bottle of rose oil for my dryer because it takes a pretty significant amount of essential oil in the dryer to really affect the smell. And so I think I also like to give people the expectation that nothing’s ever going to smell like your dryer sheets, but the switch is worth it, I promise, to have that cleaner experience over your clothes.

Dr. Wendy Myers: I just don’t understand the dryer sheets where you have your towels, and they put this coating of oil on them. The towel doesn’t dry you because it has such a huge coating of oil on it. I’m like, “Why do people do this?” I don’t understand it. I like my towels dry as a bone, so they actually dry me.

Samantha Lee Wright: Absorb your water.

Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah. Well, Samantha, thanks so much for coming to the show. Is there anything else that we maybe didn’t talk about that you wanted to mention or talk about where people can find you and your work and your podcast?

Samantha Lee Wright: Yeah, I feel like we got pretty good coverage. I guess I’ll just end with it’s easy to get overwhelmed, and no one’s asking you to be perfect. Just take small baby steps, and we’re not telling you to do anything. We’re just giving you permission to prioritize your health; I sound a little soapbox, but over putting money into those big companies and banks, they really don’t care about your health. So yeah, we’re just giving you permission to prioritize your health by being more observant about the things you’re using on your skin, in your home, and the things you’re allowing into your home. You’re the gatekeeper, and it’s a big responsibility, but you can use that as an empowering title for yourself to say, “Okay, I am the gatekeeper to my home, and I’m going to make these conscious choices to bring things into my home that are good for me,” and just take it one step at a time.

And for people that want to get started with essential oils and just want a little bit more of a getting started guide, a really good place to start is freeoilcourse.com. That’s a really simple three-part video series that I created that walks people through all the safety, all the beginnings, and the top 10 essential oils that can be an easy place to get started with. So that’s freeoilcourse.com.

Dr. Wendy Myers: Oh, that’s awesome. That’s great. That’s perfect for people to get started or even if you know a little bit about them to learn a little bit more.

Samantha Lee Wright: Yeah.

Dr. Wendy Myers: Because that’s what I did. I just started with maybe five or 10 essential oils and just went cuckoo from there. It just spiraled out of control from there. That is the beginning of the end.

Samantha Lee Wright: And then I’ll just plug my podcast real quick too because when Wendy just came on, she’d always drop such great knowledge there. But we’ve got over 350 episodes, I think, now. So lots to learn for people that want to geek out more. It’s called the Essential Oil Revolution. So you can just search for essential oils in your podcast app. We’re usually the first one that comes up.

Dr. Wendy Myers: Fantastic. Well, Samantha, thanks so much for coming to the show. And everyone, thank you so much for listening to the Myers Detox podcast, and it’s just so awesome every week. I really appreciate you guys tuning in and soaking up all this knowledge, and I get so much great feedback from you guys. And it really makes me want to forge ahead and keep going and help to change your life, even if you just get one little morsel of information that helps you uplevel your health. So thanks for tuning in, and I’ll talk to you guys very soon next week.