The Root of the Matter

Essential Oils: Understanding their Role in Health and Healing

• Dr. Rachaele Carver, D.M.D. Board-Certified, Biologic, Naturopathic Dentist • Season 3 • Episode 10

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What if your medicine cabinet could be condensed into a collection of tiny glass bottles? The world of essential oils offers powerful therapeutic options, but navigating their proper use requires guidance from true experts.

In this illuminating conversation, aromatherapy specialists Robert and Hana Tisserand from the Tisserand Institute take us beyond the aromatic experience into the science of these potent plant extracts. They explain why these highly concentrated substances deserve respect – imagine capturing only the volatile compounds from plant steam, resulting in substances so powerful they can dissolve membranes (both bacterial and human).

We explore practical applications most people never consider. That cooling sensation from peppermint? It's activating specialized receptors without actually changing temperature. The remarkable ability of lavender oil to heal burns? One of the rare cases where undiluted application is beneficial. The surprising fact that essential oils at low concentrations can inhibit bacterial communication without wholesale killing? A perfect alignment with biological medicine's philosophy of fostering balance rather than scorched-earth approaches.

The experts share specific recommendations for common ailments – tea tree gargling for sore throats, rosemary-infused cotton for ear infections, and proper diffusion techniques for respiratory support. They emphasize quality considerations and transparency from companies, warning that not all essential oils are created equal. Look for botanical names, country of origin, distillation methods, and GC/MS testing to ensure you're getting what you pay for.

Whether you're new to essential oils or already incorporating them into your wellness routine, this episode offers crucial safety guidelines and practical wisdom. Remember their parting advice: with essential oils, less is more – these powerful plant medicines require knowledge and respect to harness their full potential without creating unintended consequences.

Ready to expand your natural medicine toolkit? Visit the Tisserand Institute website for extensive resources on essential oil safety and applications.

Find out more here: 

https://tisserandinstitute.org/

To contact Dr. Carver directly, email her at drcarver@carverfamilydentistry.com

Want to talk with someone at Dr. Carver's office?  Call her practice: 413-663-7372

Reverse Gum Disease In 6 Weeks! With Dr. Rachaele Carver Online Course!

Learn more about here: https://reversegumdiseaseinsixweeks.info/optinpage



Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational purposes only. Information discussed is not intended for diagnosis, curing, or prevention of any disease and is not intended to replace advice given by a licensed healthcare practitioner. Before using any products mentioned or attempting methods discussed, please speak with a licensed healthcare provider. This podcast disclaims responsibility from any possible adverse reactions associated with products or methods discussed. Opinions from guests are their own, and this podcast does not condone or endorse opinions made by guests. We do not provide guarantees about the guests' qualifications or credibility. This podcast and its guests may have direct or indirect financial interests associated with products mentioned.

Dr. Carver :

Hello everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Root of the Matter. I am your host, dr Rachel Carver. Today we are fortunate to have Robert Tisran and, I'm sorry, your name also, hannah. Yes, thank you, I wanted to make sure. I said that they work with an institute educating practitioners about essential oils, so I think this is a really important topic. Essential oils are something that's fairly accessible to the wide majority of people, but I think we need to really learn how to use them properly, and we'll dive into a little bit about oral health maybe. What are the best oils to use, how to use them properly, how not to abuse them. So thank you again for both coming. And, anika, tell me, how did you get into essential oils in the first place?

Hana Tisserand:

Thank you for having us, and I think we have different stories, so I'll let Robert start, because his is longer.

Robert Tisserand:

Yeah, so long ago, I barely remember. Sorry, that was meant to be a joke, but I was introduced to essential oils when I was about 14, 15 years old because my mother got into it and I was living at home at the time and I took a casual interest. And then one day she went to Paris to hear a talk on aromatherapy and essential oils from a French doctor and she came back with a signed copy of his book. And when I read the book I realized that this isn't just about beauty, it's medicinal too. And then I got interested and that was my introduction.

Hana Tisserand:

Briefly, my introduction briefly. For me it was a sort of a casual interest, also before I met Robert. I come from the Czech Republic and Central Europe generally has a very, I would say, permeable relationship between herbal medicine and conventional medicine. So even my medical background family my grandma was a nurse, my mom is a pediatrician there's always been a herbal tea as well as. So that that was always the mindset.

Hana Tisserand:

But I got full on interested when I met Robert, who came to give a seminar on essential safety in Prague and I was his interpreter back then and I kind of similarly, listening to his take and his very evidence-based focus, got into okay. So this is really, there's really something here and even though that was focused on safety, it was was okay. So you can approach them in a very, I guess, evidence based is the right way to put it. So it's not just a feel good wellness situation where you diffuse essentials, but there's a scientific baseline and that was 11 years ago and since then essentials have been as much a part of my life as they are of Robert's.

Dr. Carver :

What do you think is the most common usage of essential oils?

Hana Tisserand:

That's a good question.

Robert Tisserand:

I was reading a couple of days ago I was reading a report from Bulgaria, a survey, a very good survey, and one of the questions was about how you use essential oils, and I was surprised to see that most consumers in Bulgaria use essential oils for skincare. That's not so common, I think, in the English-speaking world, but it's still a thing for sure. And I don't know what's the most common use, but common uses include diffusing and ingesting.

Hana Tisserand:

And interesting, depending on what your background of aromatherapy training is, and maybe bath products that type of thing. I think there's a difference between intentionally users and unintentionally users uses and unintentionally uses. So I think with intentional, like people actively seeking to use essential oils, I would agree that a lot of it would be diffusing for whatever, whether you just want to make your home smell good with something more natural or it's for a purpose. But unintentionally essentials are, I would actually say, dental care and oral health would probably be one of the highest not so clear to everyone users, because peppermint is in virtually everything from mouthwashes and if not peppermint then menthol, which is a major constituent of peppermint essential oil. So I think that would be people not necessarily thinking about using essential oils in the area. But I'd say that's a giant area where essential oils are being used.

Dr. Carver :

I think people might think of peppermint more as like an herb or something, not necessarily the oil, and obviously it has a nice, pleasant smell and it makes you feel minty, fresh. What? What are the benefits of using something like peppermint oil in oral care? It's more than just the smell, right. What. What is it? Could it actually be doing in, say, a toothpaste?

Robert Tisserand:

oh, in a toothpaste. There's not a heck of a lot of peppermint in your toothpaste compared to a mouthwash, for example. But the benefits of menthol? Menthol interacts with TRP-M8 channel, which sensitizes cold. So when we interact with menthol or peppermint oil it feels cold. There's no temperature change anywhere, but it's the sensation of cold. So our body reacts to that as if it was ice or some other source of coldness and the response, of course, in the body is to create warmth. Perhaps going off topic a bit, but that's why menthol is so popular for liniments, for muscle pain, because it's it's heat and cold kind of at the same time is because it's not really cold, but it feels cold, which is soothing and refreshing.

Robert Tisserand:

Menthol and peppermint. So peppermint oil is about 40% menthol.

Dr. Carver :

Menthol is also very good analgesic Excellent, and I know there's some thought. I use a common toothpaste called Vervitin and for a year they have a citrus flavor because one of the problems with peppermint and it depends on the dosage, obviously the strength, the source of the peppermint oil but it can be very killing. From what I understand, it can be antibacterial. So in Revitin they've been very careful about using peppermint or menthol, whatever the active ingredients, because what we always talk about in biologic medicine is to get away too much from the killing and think more about how do we foster that healthy environment. So having too much peppermint can be too killing, where the idea behind the Revitin is to provide the vitamins, the minerals, the prebiotics in order to support the so-called good bacteria. Can you speak a little bit about the antibacterial component?

Hana Tisserand:

It is antibacterial. I think pretty much every essential oil is antibacterial to a degree, and it's always important to compare them to each other. Another common ingredient in oral health is eugenol or clove oil, and that's the killer.

Robert Tisserand:

That's the one that's going to basically eliminate.

Dr. Carver :

Yes, very antibacterial, very analgesic and very anti-inflammatory, which is why it's so good in dentistry. Yes, we use that often when we we open a tooth and the decay is very deep. It's near the nerve, so we have a lot of cracks. Where we can? It smells great too right where we can? That? Usually something we tell you know patients go down to the natural food store, get some clove oil because that will help. Now, that's something. The other thing we have to be careful with with essential oils is a lot of times we want to have a carrier oil right, because if we sometimes certain oils, if we just one ingest that or even put it topically, it can burn. I made this mistake with my daughter one time. One of my friends said I think she had an earache and I can't remember what essential it was, but she said rub it behind the ear. I didn't hear what she said and I put it directly in her ear and the poor kid was like screaming bloody murder. Why does it have that effect if you don't fix it with an oil?

Hana Tisserand:

The essential oil itself Can.

Robert Tisserand:

I.

Hana Tisserand:

Oh, yeah, sure Go ahead, I'm jumping in.

Robert Tisserand:

I mentioned TRPM8 channels, and these transient receptor potential channels do figure here as well, because most essential oils interact with some of these channels and they sense temperature changes but also irritation. And so if we have too concentrated, if the essential oil is too concentrated, these channels go wild, saying oh, irritation, irritation, not good. Saying oh, irritation, irritation, not good, that's one way of looking at it at least. Another way of looking at it is it's just too much for the skin to handle.

Hana Tisserand:

Undiluted essential oil on the skin will evaporate the molecules, will disturb the barrier function of your skin and basically, your skin will react to this concentrated substance.

Robert Tisserand:

Yeah, it does disturb barrier function.

Hana Tisserand:

Yeah, because their essential oils have the unique they're lipophilic and they will dissolve, dissolve membranes and that's. They will do that to your skin cells as well as to the bacterial cells. And the reason they're concentrated which is what I wanted to point out is because the they are natural, but we concentrate them. We take plant material and we distill it and whatever evaporates. So imagine you having we talked about peppermint tea, right? So you have a peppermint tea. Imagine that you capture that steam and from that steam you isolate only the volatile, only the sun molecule. So it's super concentrated from that plant and we're not meant to interact with it at that concentration.

Hana Tisserand:

The only time you interact with a concentrated essential oil on your skin is when you're peeling a citrus fruit. Because whenever, if you're peeling a citrus fruit, the liquid that you get on your hands, that's the essential oil, and you know that that's not. You need to wash your hands immediately as well. It's not really great. So we concentrate them and that's why they're so potent and that's why they need to wash your hands immediately as well. It's not really great, so we concentrate them and that's why they're so potent and that's why they need to be diluted, because the body can't handle it.

Robert Tisserand:

Hannah mentioned interacting with membranes, and it's an interesting fact that the most potently antibacterial essential oils work because they mostly dissolve membranes and that's how they kill bacteria. There are other mechanisms too, but that's the main one. But they'll do the same to your skin cells.

Dr. Carver :

Yes, yeah, unfortunately, I burned my daughter's ear skin cell. I didn't follow the directions properly, unfortunately. This is why I always experiment with my friends and family first, and why my children. Maybe why they're so resistant to all my methods sometimes, but that it's, and so that's really important how to share, like a little bit goes a long way. So you don't. Yeah, what do you think are the common or or best carrier or oils?

Robert Tisserand:

can I pick up on what you just said?

Robert Tisserand:

yeah, and then we'll talk about carrier oils. Sometimes it's useful to use essential oils at concentrations below the threshold where they will kill bacteria and, depending on the oil and the bacteria that we're talking about, we can inhibit quorum sensing, and what that means is you stop the bacteria from becoming virulent, from multiplying rapidly. This is a process that happens. It's called quorum sensing. So when there's a collective decision between the bacteria, okay, we're going into attack mode. You can prevent that happening with many bacteria. Okay, we're going into attack mode. You can prevent that happening with many bacteria with a few essential oils without killing the bacteria the below threshold. There is some logic in using low dilutions.

Dr. Carver :

Absolutely, because, like I was just saying, the goal isn't always just kill the bad right. We have to understand like why are they overgrowing in the first place? If you can halt that that progression, decrease the virulence right? We all have so-called bad bugs all throughout our body and the goal shouldn't always be killing them, it's to be keeping them in balance. So again, where, where, and that's why really understanding how essential oils work, I think, is important. It's very easy to go to the store and just buy essential oil and it says I'll use it for this. But again, just that's why I wanted my audience to understand a little bit more about the nuances of essential oils, so that we can use them appropriately, not underused, not overused, so that we can get the best the advantage of these natural substances.

Hana Tisserand:

Yes, that's our whole. That's all we do. We're trying to understand how they work and to get to the carrier oils. That will always depend on what you're trying to do. So if we're just diluting the essentials and we're just looking for a neutral medium to have them in that doesn't have any scent, doesn't have any extra properties, then very popular carrier oil is fractionated coconut oil, or sometimes you can get that as MCT medium chain triglycerides. It's virtually the same thing.

Robert Tisserand:

It's a little less greasy than it's still greasy, but it's less greasy than most of it, yeah.

Hana Tisserand:

It doesn't have that greasiness to it. It has a very long shelf life, so it doesn't go bad so quickly. It does, but it takes years. Many years and it doesn't have an extra scent. So it's a nice neutral one that you can, and especially if we're talking about your mouth. It doesn't have a taste either, because the coconutiness of it is taken away.

Robert Tisserand:

It has a slight taste.

Hana Tisserand:

Okay, is it a taste or a texture?

Robert Tisserand:

Because I was instructed by my naturopathic doctor to ingest some MCT oil and to try putting it in my coffee. Now that was really bad advice. It has a taste.

Hana Tisserand:

But it's as neutral as they come. So that's a very your baseline base to use.

Robert Tisserand:

If you want to add some benefits, then you can look at oils that have extra Like olive oil and its polyphenols, which are fabulous for so many reasons, but basically antioxidant are fabulous for so many reasons, but basically antioxidant. There's some really interesting oils, like black seed oil. Listeners may be familiar with this.

Hana Tisserand:

In a capsule form it's taken for health reasons, but it's very good for skin issues as well. Yeah, and if we're talking about, if we went to talk about skin care, and now you have a whole area of using different vegetable oils. Or you have hemp seed oil, which is fabulous, anti-inflammatory as well, but it has a very distinct smell.

Robert Tisserand:

You've got all different… If it's not deodorized, yeah.

Hana Tisserand:

Well, if it's deodorized, then you're losing some of the value as well. Sunflower wheat germ there's a whole palette of vegetable oils from different sources that come with different extra benefits, but that's more for I would say that's more for skin care and skin health and I know one thing we talked about on the show before is we have to be careful with seed oils because they can oxidize so quickly and then they become a non-health item.

Dr. Carver :

When they become oxidized like that, they can create more problems. So are you wanting to look for something that says like cold-pressed, or is there a quality of?

Robert Tisserand:

No, I've never understood the aversion to what's called seed oils. Can you explain that to me, because it doesn't make sense to me.

Dr. Carver :

So a lot of times we think of these omega-6 oils, which predominantly most seed oils are omega-6. Some have the O9, some have the three. But when they become because that's what we see in very highly processed foods and the reason why we put them in those foods is because they create shelf stability right. So a processed granola bark and sit on the shelf for five years and still have the same quality. But the problem is when things are staying on the shelf, if they're exposed to light or they're exposed to heat, they oxidize and it's that oxidized fat when that, when it gets into our body, that can create all sorts of free radicals and things like that, but are people using oxidized seed oils?

Dr. Carver :

I think they naturally become oxidized. Like, say, if you get a sunflower oil, it's in a clear plastic bottle sitting on the shelf with all that artificial light coming on it all the time, so it's already oxidized before you even push In of itself the seed oil. I don't think is bad, right? Those again, those are so-called essential oil. But in the processing of them, right, if they're heated too high or again there's too much light exposed to them, they become oxidized. And then therefore the oxidized fat we know that too, like when we're talking about heart disease, right, the LDL and HDL doesn't really matter, it's the oxidized LDL that really is a risk factor for heart disease.

Robert Tisserand:

A couple of things I would say. One is yeah, they shouldn't be in clear bottles. Very good point. Wine bottles are usually colored to prevent wine from oxidizing from the light sources. And essential oils oxidize too, and we need to be aware of that and prevent that from happening as much as we can. But the other thing is, if you use an oil that isn't refined at all, but just the raw fatty oil, most of them contain very good antioxidants, like the polyphenols I mentioned earlier. It's strange to me that in the cosmetics industry they always look for deodorized and decolorized fatty oils, which means all the good stuff's been taken out.

Dr. Carver :

Yeah, and that's the problem with processing of foods, right, it's the difference between eating an apple that has all the fiber in it and apple juice, right, because the juice you've taken away all that fiber, so now the sugar content is much higher, even though they come from the same thing. So anytime we're processing and that's why the whole whole foods diet is the key because when you eat a whole fruit or a whole food, it has all the different ingredients that help your body, you know, recognize it and process it properly.

Hana Tisserand:

Yeah, you're not taking it apart and putting it back in. Process it properly. Yeah, you're not taking it apart and putting it back in. To get back to the recommendations for people, look for fresh oils and if you have a smaller, if you have a, and if you're lucky enough to live in a place that grows olives and you can have a local farm or a local source, not just for olives but for pretty much any oil, then that's you see the chain.

Hana Tisserand:

I think that's true of anything, of essential oils and of fatty oils. The more you can see through the supply chain, the better, because then you have more transparency. This isn't always easy for the end consumer to do, even for essential oils, because a company will claim we own these lavender farms in this state, but as an insider of the business, you know that that lavender farm is not producing nearly enough quantity of essential oil for them to supply to everything that the company needs essential oil for them to supply to everything that the company needs. So you have to go a little bit beyond. But if you can find somebody who's very transparent with their chain of production, chain of custody, like, okay, so this is our chain of custody.

Hana Tisserand:

If you can trace the processing that's happening. That's always good, so transparency in the brands?

Dr. Carver :

for sure, yeah, yeah, absolutely is there. Think about this oxidation. Is that one of the reasons most of the time, you can only buy essential oils in these tiny little bottles? Is that? Why is that?

Robert Tisserand:

why is that? Because, hey, they're pricey and and b, you don't need very much yeah, it's true, like a couple of drops here if you, if you bought larger bottles, they would probably oxidize before you'd use them that's what I'm thinking.

Dr. Carver :

And there you, yeah, so you want to look for a dark colored, the small ones, with good, good transparency when you look at the that, that company. So maybe could you talk about, let let's say, some common ailments. Let's say, if you had a sore throat, maybe Is there a specific one or a combination that you think is really good. When you're starting to, let's say, you want to try to, you feel like you're getting the cold or the flu, is there some kind of essential oil blend that you could use to try to knock it out?

Robert Tisserand:

Tea tree oil as a gargle works well, and it helps tighten up your throat a little bit as well, as well as being anti-inflammatory, anti-microbial.

Dr. Carver :

So you'd mix a couple of drops in with some coconut oil and gargle it that way or put it in water.

Robert Tisserand:

It needs to be in water. It's not ideal that you have. You only need one drop. It's not ideal that you have a drop floating around on the surface of the water and you put it in your mouth. But if you're gargling, you're going to pretty much mix it up anyway.

Dr. Carver :

But if you're gargling, you're going to pretty much mix it up anyway, because dissolving essential oil in water as a consumer is no easy way, and now we use a lot of tea tree oil in a lot of dental products too because of that antibacterial effect there. Are there any oils that are more, because the other thing we see a lot in dentistry is fungus? Are there specific oils that are more bacteria related? Or is that this like a substance that's antimicrobial, that can do all sorts of microbes?

Robert Tisserand:

The sort of heavy hitters in the antibacterial world are clove, cinnamon bark, cinnamon leaf, thyme.

Dr. Carver :

That's pretty much it.

Robert Tisserand:

That's pretty much it. Oh yeah, oregano, thank you. Closely followed then by lemongrass and tea tree. They tend to be antifungal as well. Specifically, those that are specifically antifungal would be citronella or palorosa, which are high in citronella, and geraniol, which are very good antifungals.

Dr. Carver :

How about somebody who has a lot of sinus, like chronic sinusitis? Would a certain blend be good for diffusing that?

Hana Tisserand:

For that I would go with steam inhalation. So you have a bowl of hop water and you put a couple of drops is enough, and then you bend over it and you inhale that steam. That's really good to get into your sinuses. You don't want the heavy hitters there, because it's very intense.

Hana Tisserand:

So you can go with tea tree is good. Again, tea tree eucalyptus would be great. Eucalyptus pepper can be a little strong if you get the mantle in there, so eucalyptus. You can even go with lavender um, which is a gentle option, especially if you're dealing with a younger child with congested nose. You want to go gentlish and it's still a pretty good option.

Robert Tisserand:

So with a steam inhalation, the water must not be boiling, that's just too much and the oils will just go poof. My advice is just too hot to put your hand in.

Dr. Carver :

What about? Could you put them in a nebulizer?

Hana Tisserand:

a drop in a nebulizer Do you mean like nebulizer as a mask?

Dr. Carver :

nebulizer, yeah, instead of putting your head over in a bowl of steam. Could you just do a nebulizer?

Robert Tisserand:

You can do yeah.

Hana Tisserand:

You again have to deal with the issue of dissolving them in water, so you might need to make sure that you don't just get the full drop. In that case you can probably go with a hydrosol. So hydrosol is when we're distilling essential oils. You run the steam through the plant material and then the steam goes through the apparatus and gets condensed and the part that floats on top that's not water-soluble, that's the essential oil, but you still have the water part, which is called hydrosol, sometimes floral water, sometimes hydrolat. You can get it as rose water very often and essential companies sell different hydrolats. So for nebulizer I would probably go with that, and if you can get a eucalyptus hydrolat, that would be great. Lavender probably as well. That would be easier for that, so that you don't have to deal with. Is it diluted? Do I have a droplet of essential somewhere in the machine that I then need to clean?

Robert Tisserand:

So these are not widely sold to consumers, but they're there. If you go looking for them, they're definitely there, and there are almost as many hydrosols as there are essential oils because, as Hannah said, you get both when you do a distillation.

Dr. Carver :

I know Rosewater. I think I have a bottle of that in my medicine cabinet that are used for cleaning off the skin and stuff like that.

Hana Tisserand:

Yeah, that's my favorite temner. It has been for years. I use it as a temner and you can drink it as well. It's used in some cuisines as well, and essential oils and hydrolytes are just like there. I love them. They can do that for so many things.

Dr. Carver :

Are there certain essential oils that you should not ingest?

Robert Tisserand:

Not specifically. No, not specifically. Except, yeah, there are a couple you shouldn't ingest because they might kill you. So there's a couple of very toxic essential oils mustard and horseradish, I think. Both essential oils contain allyl isothiocyanate in high concentrations. This is the same thing we get in cabbage and broccoli and these brassicas. Anyhow, in very, very small amounts it's fine, it's just a little spiciness. But there's a third one called worm seed oil. Now, worm seed oil was used it's so-called because it will kill worms in your gut and they used to give it to kids with worms and the advice was one drop per year of age. That killed about 50% of the kids they gave it to.

Dr. Carver :

So after a few years they realized actually this wasn't a good idea.

Robert Tisserand:

So yeah, now these essential oils. You won't find them, you might if you tried really hard. They're not commonly sold, for obvious reasons.

Dr. Carver :

So is that similar to? I know a lot of anti-parasitic products have wormwood in it. I don't know if that's related to that wormwood or artemisia.

Robert Tisserand:

I'm not sure if that's the answer. Well, there is to that. Wormwood are artemisia and not sure fencing. Well there is, yeah, there are various wormwood essential oils that are moderately toxic, because most of them contain something called fujone, and fujone will give you seizures if you have too much of it. So bad things can happen. But you're pretty much protected by most sellers who won't sell you anything very toxic, or if they do sell something mildly dangerous, they'll let you know why it's dangerous.

Dr. Carver :

And don't be like me. Make sure you double check the instructions before adding it for some kind of ailment.

Hana Tisserand:

Just to follow up on that it's always about the dose. It's always about how much you know any anything can kill you in high enough dose and so let's keep going with some other ailments.

Dr. Carver :

let's say you have a baby with maybe a baby who gets chronic ear infections and they just keep going and getting antibiotics and we know there could be certainly an airway issue there that could be the source of it. But is there a certain essential oil that you might dilute and help with earaches?

Robert Tisserand:

I would use rosemary oil 50-50 with a fatty oil and dip some cotton wall and put it in the air so it doesn't go inside all the way, of course, and you don't need very much less than a drop, probably for a baby.

Dr. Carver :

I've seen that work pretty well and how often would you have to do that? Or do you just keep the cotton ball there for 30 minutes?

Robert Tisserand:

No, leave it in. Leave it in and maybe change it two or three times a day if it's still needed.

Dr. Carver :

That's great and I think as a mom, we're always looking for those healthier options. We don't want to be giving our kids so many drugs and antibiotics when they're young, because now we're learning how all of those things can have a major impact on our immune system. It doesn't really get solidified until we're three. So if we keep pummeling the immune system whether it's antibiotics or vaccines or even Tylenol, right, that can have a major impact on a kid's overall immune system as they're growing up. So it's nice to know about these really natural products that don't have those long-term consequences.

Hana Tisserand:

And it's also good to have and that's my look on that is that you can escalate, you can always go to okay, so if we need, to start low go slow.

Hana Tisserand:

And it's like okay, I've been trying this for a couple of days earache. I had it as an adult. No wonder kids are so fussy. It's one of the worst pains that you can have. Adult. No wonder kids are so fussy. It's one of the worst pains that you can have. So if after a day or two days of trying this, nothing is helping, then maybe you escalate to the antibiotics or to whatever you need Exactly.

Dr. Carver :

Yeah, I had my daughter. We went on a cruise. One time she was getting a cold, we went on an airplane. I think that just pushed the stuff down in and I had my essential oils and I had my homeopathics and my red light and everything and it just she was just in agony. So yeah, she had to get the antibiotic eardrop. But yeah, I tried all that first and but it just wasn't cutting it for her so sometimes, sometimes we, we just have to do that.

Hana Tisserand:

But yeah, I love the fact that we have all these different steps when you can go okay, I'm feeling something is coming on, so I'm gonna gargle tea tree oil and that's the best.

Dr. Carver :

When you're, like they said, if you want to knit things in the bud, right the moment you have that very first symptom. That's when you hit it hard with the nutrients, the oils, all that kind of good stuff. What about, let's say, if you have a cut and maybe you don't want to use Neosporin, right, Is there something that helps heal the skin, or are essential oils too hot for that?

Hana Tisserand:

You need. When you have a cut, you're dealing with the healing, but you're also. Neosporin is there to prevent infection. To prevent infection, you can go again.

Hana Tisserand:

Tea tree oil is a golden standard. There needs to be fresh. I think that's when we talked about oxidation tea tree oil. You just need to make sure that it's fresh. Don't put it directly in the wound, but like around it. Um, and watch out. If you're putting band-aid on it, it's's going to dissolve the glue. The essential oil is going to dissolve the glue, so it's not going to stick. Yes, yeah, so you may want to use one of those. I think they're called vet bandages, the ones that are self-adhesive to itself.

Hana Tisserand:

If you're putting essential oil on a wound, lavender is great for then the recovery of the skin and the repair of the skin, and lavender is absolutely amazing for burns. I think if you ask our aromatherapist friends, including myself, we will all have a bottle of lavender in the kitchen. Or you touch a pan, you're pulling something out of the oven. You're not careful, you or you get a little burn lavender oil, in this case undiluted on that burn and that's. That's absolutely. That's one exception to the rule of not using undiluted essential oils. If you burn yourself, undiluted lavender on that particular spot on your skin that you burned my mother always wants me to call her in that sulfur sulfidine.

Dr. Carver :

She cooks all the time. It's constantly burning herself, so that's good to know. She has a little bottle of lavender right there, she doesn't need a prescription.

Hana Tisserand:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That's absolutely, incredibly, almost magic. I've seen blisters heal super quick with lavender Wow.

Dr. Carver :

Yeah, that's, very exciting.

Robert Tisserand:

I used to work for a company in the UK and we created an antiseptic ointment in a little pot and I don't actually remember what we called it, but it had a large red cross on it and after a few months we got a notification from the Red Cross that I'm sorry, you can't do this.

Hana Tisserand:

So we had to change the package. Yeah, what was in it, do you remember?

Robert Tisserand:

I think it was C3, eucalyptus and Lavender.

Hana Tisserand:

Okay, yeah, that.

Dr. Carver :

Yeah, that's great because I'm always I use a lot of like ozone in my practice, so I like the ozonated olive oil, but that's not always readily available. Getting the essential is having a little mix of that. Yeah, it's again nice to have these kinds of things in your medicine cabinet in case and they're small enough, easy enough to travel with too, like I always take some essential oils and homeopathics when I travel. Never know, and sometimes those aren't, unless you're near a whole food or something you might not be able to find high-quality brands.

Hana Tisserand:

Absolutely yeah, and travel with them as well.

Robert Tisserand:

Yeah, we've mentioned diffusing a couple of times, and I'd like to say that there are obviously different mechanisms for diffusion, and so we kind of classify it by active and passive. So active diffusion is when there's like a little machine running and pushing fragments into the air. Passive diffusion would be, for example, you reed thingies, what do you call them? Reed diffusers, reed diffusers. So there's no active pushing of the fragrance, it's just there gradually releasing its fragrance. Of course there are other examples With very low-level diffusion. There are no issues. But if the smell is getting a little strong, you don't want to diffuse for a long period of time per day Because it can affect your health adversely over a long period of time.

Hana Tisserand:

Not to mention it doesn't have the effect anymore because you get habituated to the scent.

Robert Tisserand:

If you're looking for a psychological effect.

Hana Tisserand:

Yeah, and if you're diffusing in the air, that's usually what you're mostly getting. You're getting the psychological effect in there, you're not.

Robert Tisserand:

People use diffusion for respiratory infections, but, although I don't think it's the ideal method for that, of course you can do it and it helps. But to get a bit more intensive effect you could use a personal inhaler, a thing you put into your nose, or a chest rub. I think that's actually a better route than diffusion, although you can do both.

Dr. Carver :

That's very interesting and recently I followed this blog that talks a lot about looks for kind of toxic things in common products and she talks at. One of the previous posts was about essential oils and phthalates. I don't know if you guys are familiar in all this, how you know so many products. I have teenage daughters now and I keep trying to teach them like look out for the word fragrance right or perfume. We also see that because there are a lot of phthalates.

Dr. Carver :

We can mess with our hormones and, um, we find those in essential oils too. They're everywhere. Right, we can't we can't avoid all toxic things, yeah, but are there certain and maybe this comes down to like transparency and the way that it's distilled or whatever you would think a natural? If you're getting your lavender oil from lavender, you would think there maybe wouldn't be phthalates, but I don't know, maybe because they're in the atmosphere now that it's like I don't think organic exists anymore because there are too many toxins in the air. That it's like I don't think organic exists anymore because there are too many toxins in the air.

Robert Tisserand:

I've spent many, many years looking at analyses of essential oils, GCMS analyses, which go down to 0.01%. They don't go further than that. So you won't see, for example, heavy metals, but you'll see phthalates. They will come up on the GC. We very rarely encounter them in essential oils. There are two reasons they might be there. One is gross adulteration. So you might see 10%, 15%, even more of a phthalate in an essential oil. That's adulteration. Somebody's intentionally put it in there for profit reasons. That doesn't happen much in the ethical aromatherapy world, but it happens sometimes.

Dr. Carver :

How would you know? You might not know right. You have to be careful.

Robert Tisserand:

No, you might not know. You might not know. The other reason you would find phthalates is because phthalates are in plastics. They are plasticizers and if, during the processing, any plastic comes in contact with the essential oil, it may leach some phthalates out of a plastic. It depends on the plastic, it depends on the nature of the interaction, and typically that will be around 1% of the essential oil, not 10% or 20% and maybe less. There aren't any particular essential oils where this will happen, except maybe for expressed citrus oils, so not distilled, but expressed citrus oils, because plastic tubing is often used in the process. The Italians have been very aware of this for some years and they've taken steps to reduce phthalates and also heavy metals in their expressed citrus oils, and so it's not much of an issue now, but it was in the past. So, yeah, those are reasons why you'd possibly find pallets.

Dr. Carver :

Okay, that's good to know. We've talked about on this podcast before the way we get plastics into our foods or anything acidic or fatty which oils are by nature liposilic and fatty can leach that. So you never want to buy, ideally, oils in plastic containers. It has to come in glass. But sometimes you'll see products that have a mixture of stuff essential oils with other fats and stuff and it's in a plastic bottle.

Robert Tisserand:

The oils are diluted in a product and then it's put in plastic. It would be nice to know whether any leaching happens.

Dr. Carver :

So this blog I'm talking about Momovation. She usually has people send her products. So she did one on essential oils, maybe a month or two ago, and of the ones that she sent she ranks them from worst to best of the amount of certain things that are in there. She just did one on castor oil. It wasmayed one of my favorite castor oils. She found phthalates and then I'm like, ah, again, it's like hard to get away from this stuff. But it's interesting to know, like you said, the processing. I didn't think about that. When it's when they're they're making it, is it passing through plastic? That's how get in there. So I think that's where I guess I guess comes down to again transparency of the company. You want to use asking those questions and if the company isn't going to be forthcoming about that, then maybe you want to look for a different company.

Robert Tisserand:

There are many companies that publish a full GCMS report for each essential oil on their website. However, in most cases, if they see something nasty, they won't say it's there, they'll take it out of the report.

Hana Tisserand:

That's a very cynical way, it's true.

Dr. Carver :

It's cynical but maybe realistic, I know.

Hana Tisserand:

Yeah. But if you're looking for and that's always a question it's like, okay, so how do I know that my essentials are high quality? Can you recommend a brand? We don't want people to feel like, okay, this brand is always great because it depends on the different oils that you're looking for, like somebody will have a great selection of rose oil, somebody will have a great selection of different oils, Somebody is closer to you, so not everybody will have everything that you want, but there are certain things to look for.

Hana Tisserand:

And if they publish the GC analysis, even though as a consumer you might not always know how to interpret it, the fact that they are willing to make that extra step is a good sign. Having a full botanical name that's the sort of Latin binomial, like Lavenderus, lavandula and Gastifolia. So having those names for each of their essential oils so you can identify exactly what plant that came from, uh, is a must. If the company is not doing that, I wouldn't trust their essential oils. Telling you how the essential oil was obtained, whether it was distillation or in case of citrus's expression, that's a good sign if they tell you what country the essential oil comes from. So the more information they divulge about the essential oil, the better.

Robert Tisserand:

That should also tell you what part of the plant was used. So I often see cinnamon oil. Well, is it from the bark or the leaf? Because they're completely different. You can't just say cinnamon oil, Orange oil. Another example Is it bitter orange or sweet orange? Because bitter orange is phototoxic, sweet orange is not. That's also important in many cases.

Hana Tisserand:

So the more information they give you, the more you can trust that they're doing their due diligence, and if you can ask them questions and if they come back to you with answers, that's always a good sign.

Dr. Carver :

That's great. You've obviously written a very large textbook also on all the ins and outs of essential oils. Is there a website or another place that people can look to get a little bit more information to help discern what might be the best product for certain different things?

Hana Tisserand:

Our website is reninstituteorg. That's where you find all of our information. Instituteorg that's where you find all of our information. I would definitely direct people to our safety section, which is a sort of high level overview of all the precautions that you can take to make sure that essentials do not burn your skin and that you use them to your benefit and don't overuse them. So if you look for safety, we've got guidelines. We also have what to do if something has happened. If you've done something something okay've got guidelines. We also have what to do if something has happened. If you've done something something, what are the first eight? So our safety section is very useful. And then on our blog we give a lot of information, both in terms of how to look for a reputable company and we do a sort of very detailed dives into if you want to know everything about essential oils and mosquitoes, for example, or how to put essential oils in skincare.

Robert Tisserand:

Many of our blogs are more like academic articles than blogs.

Hana Tisserand:

We like to follow rabbit holes. If you want to go even deeper, then we have online classes that people can take, from quick single lessons as introductory to more involved certification courses, if you decide. Okay, I really want to know all about essential oils oh, that's fabulous.

Dr. Carver :

I know, yeah, all of us can go down certain rabbit holes and we resonate with certain things, so it's really nice to have all those different avenues and we all learn differently, right? Some of us like to read, some of us want to something, some of us want that one-on-one. So that's wonderful that you have all those different options that can appeal to the mass amount of people. Thank you, this has been really interesting and exciting and definitely learned a lot. So I'm excited to dive onto that website and have those resources for myself, for my patients, dive onto that website and have those resources for myself, for my patients. So, thank you so much for meeting with me this afternoon and, like I said, we'll direct everybody to yours. Is there any other last little pieces of information or advice you'd like to leave the audience with?

Robert Tisserand:

Less is more.

Dr. Carver :

I think that's very apropos, and I think sometimes we always think the opposite. Right, if a little bit is good, then more must be better. But that is definitely not the case with essential oils, and now again, that's why we talked about them coming in smaller bottles, so we don't need a lot.

Robert Tisserand:

And I'll just add one thing that many essential oils are antioxidant where they can oxidize, but they're also antioxidant before they've oxidized. But if you use too much of an antioxidant oil it becomes pro-oxidant.

Dr. Carver :

Weird huh I think that's how vitamin C works, too right? When you have super, super high doses of vitamin C, it becomes an oxidant. When you have lesser levels of vitamin C, it's an antioxidant. So, like we talked about at the very beginning, right, it's all about the dosage. So that makes a difference. With even these seemingly benign things. They can really change depending on how much we're using.

Hana Tisserand:

Thank you so much for having us.

Dr. Carver :

Thank you, guys. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day and to the audience, I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please join me for the next one and I hope you all have a wonderful day. Hello, I'm Dr Rachel Carver, a board-certified naturopathic biologic dentist and a certified health coach. Did you know that over 80% of the US population has some form of gum disease? Many of us don't even know that we have this source of chronic infection and inflammation in our mouth that's been linked to serious consequences like heart disease, diabetes, stroke, dementia, colon cancer, kidney disease, even pregnancy complications. Would you like to learn how to reverse and prevent these chronic, debilitating conditions without spending a lot of time and money at the dentist? Join me for my six-week course where I will teach you the root cause of disease. You'll learn how to be your own best doctor. Are you ready to get started? Let's go.