So, you may have heard about essential oils from a friend, or heard about someone trying them. At the moment, it’s kind of the “in” thing to do, along with buying trendy, healthy food from Whole Foods or Fresh Thyme or Trader Joe’s. At some point, you will probably try some, just to see what all the hype is about.

This more or less is me. Just to let you know where I’m coming from, I am a big skeptic when it comes to these things. I am a firm believer in modern medicine and science. I think medications made by pharmaceutical companies work because they have researched the exact component or chemical needed to be efficacious for some disease process or the other, and have found a way to replicate or isolate this component, so that you are getting precisely the effect you are going for.

There are pros and cons to everything in life.

I recently attended a seminar on essential oils, willing to hear their side of the argument and find out for myself what it’s all about. I’ll tell you right now, I suck at direct sales and am a much better consumer than salesperson, so I’m not here to pitch you a line or make you buy anything from me. I *am* here to try out this line of products and give you my brutally honest opinion. Like anything else, if it’s a quality product, its got nothing to fear from a little scrutiny, right?

Here are some pros, coming from someone who has made selling doTERRA their full-time job:

• It’s natural, not synthetically made.
• Components are not removed from the essential oil, so that if the oil from a plant has 20 different compounds within it which are good for treating 20 different ailments, you are getting all 20.
• It’s a lot cheaper per dose than pharmaceutical drugs.
• Essential oils do not have the same long scary list of side effects as do pharmaceutical medications.
• You can treat a lot of common problems at home without a prescription.
• Because they are natural, you can feel confident about what you are putting in your body.

I’m sure there were a lot more benefits that I’m not remembering at the moment.  What I was left with was a few questions….

• Since I’m getting “all 20 compounds” in an essential oil, is it possible that I’m over medicating, or getting chemicals that I don’t need, or to which I could react, when I’m seeking to treat just one particular ailment.  E.g.  If I want to treat acne and the plant is also known for raising blood pressure (completely hypothetical, I don’t know that anything like this exists, but it could), could I inadvertently raise my blood pressure while taking the essential oil treatment?  This would be an unintended side effect.
• DOES IT WORK OR JUST SMELL GOOD?  This is probably the biggest question.  After all, there’s no sense in buying into (literally and figuratively) a product which doesn’t do what you think it will do.

All this being the case, I am going to be writing articles on my findings and publishing them here.  I’m hoping that the essential oils will win out over my skepticism.  I really do.  I am intrigued by the idea of being able to take care of things on my own without resorting to a whole medicine cabinet of prescription drugs.

Since I post a lot of different things on my blog, I’ll be tagging these posts with “doTERRA” and “essential oils,” so feel free to search/filter by these tags.  🙂 Join me on the journey! And feel free to ask me any questions along the way! I will try to find an answer for you.