Why essential oil education and safety is so important

If you’ve been online for any length of time in the aromatherapy community then you know as well as I do how much bad advice is floating around in the essential oil world. But why is it so imperative that we have safety guidelines and education regarding essential oils? After all, there is a lot of bad advice floating around the internet that isn’t seemingly a big deal, right? Is a meme online telling someone to use 70+ drops in a roller bottle actually that bad? In short, yes. Essential oil safety is crucial if we want to use them therapeutically and actually have them work for us. It’s important to know what you are doing and how to use essential oils so that you stay safe and they stay affective. Let’s go over some popular advice online that is commonly recommended with no care or thoughts on safety.

Ingestion/internal use: Ingestion is one of those aromatherapy things that should never be done without the help of a trained professional. So no, your friend who sells them is not qualified, I am not even qualified as a certified aromatherapist to encourage ingestion. I would need a lot more training and understanding of the human body to advise ingestion or work with clients using ingestion. My advice is to just not, because 99.9% of the time topical use or aromatic use will get you the results that you want anyways. But why is casual ingestion such a dangerous suggestion? Well for starters, a lot of the advice that is recommended for ingestion is to add the oils to your water. While they are not technically oils in the traditional sense, they still do not mix with water. They are extremely potent and you are not properly mixing them to avoid reactions or even burns when adding them to drinking water. Some suggestions say to drop the oils straight into your mouth, which can be irritating not only to your mouth but your entire digest tract. Essential oils are extremely potent as well, and can cause many problems to your intestines. Like your liver for example, too many essential oils can cause liver failure. It’s a lot for the liver to process. You can ruin your gut flora, disrupt the healthy bacteria in your body, have severe allergic reactions, burn your insides, have total organ failure or even die. Onto of that there are no benefits to daily causal ingestion. Essential oils hold no nutritional value, they do not contain vitamins and there isn’t any extra benefit of consuming them in favor of the actual plant/herb anyways. Add lemon to your water, not lemon essential oil. And to top that off, many essential oils can be toxic and should never be ingested. Eucalyptus in all forms/varieties should never be ingested. Many essential oils have contradictions; if you are on medication or pregnant there are several oils that need to be avoided. Yet I have seen people recommend ingesting oils despite these things.

I don’t say these things to be a party pooper, be rude or try to shame anyone. I truly don’t, but if you knew what I knew about ingestion and had seen some of the worst results of doing so then you very well might be alongside me telling people to stop. I have seen severe reactions, parents giving their children essential oils to ingest an even someone lose a pregnancy after continuing to ingest essential oils. Is there always a correlation to reactions and ingesting? No, but is that a risk worth taking with something so potent. Because essential oils we buy are not the same as the food grade ones approved for flavor. I have seen many people say that they are the same so we can ingest them, and it’s simply not true. Food grade oils go through so much more and are more heavily diluted and dispersed that what most people do at home. I promise you, 1 drop of peppermint essential oil is so much more potent than the peppermint flavoring in your candy you are buying. Safety and guidelines exist with this kind of thing to keep people from having sever reactions or dying.

Using essential oils neat: Many essential oils have topical maxes, could cause allergic reactions or even sensitization (which is where you can become sensitized to an oil and develop a lifelong allergy to not only the oil but also the herb or even fragrances containing minute bits of the herb or oil) and it can very well cause extreme problems down the road. Always dilute your essential oils, and always follow guidelines for specific essential oils. If you do not know, ask someone. I would rather answer seemingly silly or simple questions all day long than have someone develop a lifelong problem because they used an essential oil neat.

Using essential oils in delicate areas: Your nose, inside your ear, inside your vagina, in your urinary tract, in or around your eyes etc. These are extremely sensitive areas and yes I have seen recommendations to use essential oils in all these areas. Inhale essential oils, don’t put them in your nose. Apply oils around the ear, not in them. Pro-tip, Mullen Garlic ear oil is more effective than essential oils in the ear anyways. don’t put essential oils in your vagina unless you are working with a trained professional, chances are you didn’t dilute properly or even have the right dilution or even the right oils. If you want to fix UTI issues or Yeast issues in a more natural way use an herbal cream instead. NEVER apply essential oils in or around the eyes, yes this means definitely do not use them for an eyelash serum. You will cause eye irritation and the castor oil commonly recommended to use for these recipes will be fine enough on it’s own anyways. Again, very serious issues can occur when using oils willy nilly like this. You can burn sensitive areas, cause irritations. Allergic reactions can occur, blindness, hearing loss, destruction of mucus membranes or off balancing healthy bacteria which is key to keeping a lot of our body healthy and functioning.

So you see, safety is incredibly important when it comes to essential oils. It can seem a bit daunting, and with all the advice online it can be super hard to know that is good advice. So here are some tips, follow a trusted aromatherapist. What makes a trusted aromatherapist? Here is what I look for before taking someones advice. Are they certified? They should be pretty open about if they are, where they went to school for aromatherapy, how long it took etc. If not, red flag. Do they sell essential oils? I’m sorry but if they are selling for a company that’s a red flag for me, certification or not. Especially if a lot of their advice aligns with what the company says and not what they were taught. That’s not to say every aromatherapist selling oils is bad, because I know some awesome ones who sell. Just that if their focus is more on the company than giving out safe advice, red flag. Some other ways to get great advice is to check out trust aromatherapists like Robert Tisserand and Lea Jacobson. Both who have an online presence/websites and offer a lot of free advice and even courses. Check out their books as well (I have them compiled into a handy list right here) and learn even more about essential oil safety. It doesn’t need to cost a lot or even be difficult. Amongst some questionable advice there are many out there who love to share safety like I do, and will help guide you in the correct usage of essential oils. It’s important to stay safe using essential oils, so that they work properly and so that we don’t have bad reactions. If you are taking the time to use essential oils in your life, then take the time to know how to be safe. You wouldn’t drive a car without knowing how to work the vehicle. Don’t use an essential oil without understanding basic safety guidelines.