The advice and informational content does not necessarily represent the views of mother's market and kitchen mother's recommends consulting your health professional for your personal medical condition.

Hello, I'm Kimberly King and welcome to the mother's market radio show, a show dedicated to the Truth, Beauty and Goodness of the human condition. On today's show, this spring is in the air, so what better time to learn how aromatherapy can help our mood relieve stress and give us energy.

Plus later will tell you what's going on around town and what's new at mother's market, but first, Terra Johnson is the national educator for a various... By paramara, the only 100% organic exocet-certified essential oil company in the country.

Dara has brought ease and clarity to teaching scientific aroma therapy and has been educating practitioners, staff members of health food stores and consumers for more than 10 years, and we welcome her to the mother's market radio show. How are you, Terri? I'm doing great. So glad to be here. Thank you. It's nice to have you... Why don't you fill our audience in in a little bit of your mission and work before we get to the show's topic.

So my mission and work is to bring medical aroma therapy to the public, we've been kind of Ascari essential oils in aromatherapy around the... And we bring that scientific version of aroma therapy to the public, and in America, it's been used in so many different ways that people think that toxic candles or lotions or potions or cleaners or aroma therapy, and that can be a version, but we're all about using the science of what those plants can do for the body, so it's my passion to bring that information to help people see it as an easy thing for them to do in the world and in our lives, in our daily lives. And be able to use it on a daily basis. So that's my passion.

Excellent to make a difference as well.

Well, today we're talking about aromatherapy, and so what is scientific aroma therapy?

So scientific aromatherapy has many faces, but what it mostly is, is that we grow the plants in an organic way where we can grow them, harvest them, distill them organically, and extract the immune system from the plant, so when we do that, the plant grows immuno, protective chemicals that we can use for our own immune systems, so using scientific aromatherapy is really that science and practice of using the immune system of the plant for our own pro own immune system.

And what does coterie certification? Why does that make such a difference?

This is something that you'll start to see more often in America, eco-SERT is the highest organic standard in the world, and Eco-SERT means 100% organic, and in America, we haven't always had that definition, so Eco-SERT is in almost 100 countries, and we grow only with organic methods, so all the way from... We can trace it all the way back to the seed, so every single product that is produced through the Eco-cert certification is traceable all the way back to the seed, and so every single part of the process is traceable, our organic essential oils, being eco-certified has a little lot number on the bottom, which traces it all the way back to the seed, so... Pretty incredible, so highest organic standard in the world, they test every single constituent that's present in the bottle, so that happens with supplements and enzymes and other herbs as well, but with essential oils, it's not popular or common in America, and so every single constituent is proven every varietal is proven in the region, everything about it, so it's a really stringent practice and the most respected around the world, and so that kind of goes right into my next question, so why does traceability and sourcing makes such a difference?

So, traceability in sourcing is important because 98%, almost 99% of the essential oils that are produced in the world are sold through brokers, and this is where adulteration occurs, this is where they pass through many hands, and so there can be synthetics added, there can be adulteration added of different plants that are even listed on the bottle, so traceability is important also because when you use essential oils in the scientific method, you're using them for their medicinal properties that are present in the plants, like if a practitioner in France gave a prescription of Heli Cris, which is a beautiful yellow flowering plant in Corsica, if they give the prescription for elicits, it would be for pain, it could be for disease and regeneration of the tissue, it could be for helping balance out the inflammation in the body. And if you had an adulteration of a synthetic elicits or a different plant in the bottle, then what's listed it would not have the same effects and could even have adverse effects in the body, so we're using that pure plant matter for its medicinal properties. And if we don't have them truly present and organically certified, then who knows what's in the bottle, literally 99%, almost so 98% of what's produced in the world is not traceable, and so you have to know all the way back to the seed, which plants being used which constituents are present, which ones are we going to use for that disease or fungus or bacteria? We need to know that.

Wow, that's a... That's interesting.

What is an essential oil? And why does the plant create...

I love this question. So many times I sit with practitioners or staff members of health food stores, and I asked this question, and some of them have been aroma therapist for 20-30 years, and they look up at me and they have no idea.

So I'm thinking, Okay, you've been using the plants for your practice, but you have no idea what it is, what happens when you grow the plant organically, that the essential oil is, it could be in the stems, the leaves, the blossoms, the roots, the seeds, and the essential oil is the volatile oils, so essential to the plant, not essential to our bodies, so the essential oil is the volatile oil that evaporates from the plant, it's lipophilic, so it's fat-soluble, and it could be in any parts or all parts of the plant, and it's the immune system of the plant. So this is what wards off pests and bacteria and viruses, and This is how plants speak to each other, This is how plants attract pollinators, so if we grow them organically, then we can borrow that immune system for our own... In the scientific method, but it's important to notice that because this is why they don't need to be sprayed with pesticides and obesity because the plants can do this for themselves, it's also important not to spray them because you can damage the immuno protective chemicals that are present in the plant, this is the immune system of the plant, so that's what an essential oil is, it's a volatile compound within the plant that protects the plant well, and probably the strongest area of that plan is a T, usually the delivery system in the stems and the roots and the grasses and the seeds, but also in the flowering parts of the plant are the leaves, they can have essential oils within them too, but different in every plant, and sometimes many parts of the plant can be distilled separately to get different immuno-protective chemicals.

So, so many interesting things about it really, and who knew this with the Roma therapies, you were talking about, the scientific part of it, which... This is why you're educating all of us, now that we know the why that the plant creates these essential oils, what are the top five oils?

So it changes for me all the time, because I have my favorites and I have the ones that the public are really attracted to, but I would say that the top five in the company that I worked for, we would say the top five are lemon peppermint lavender eucalyptus and Tea Tree.

I would say those were probably the most sold, sometimes we'll see frankincense sneak in there and really has surpassed some of the other staples that we use, and then in French medical aromatherapy I would include in Nile, which is in the teacher family, it's in the Melaleuca family. And also helium, which is my favorite plant, which I mentioned earlier, and what is that like I'm never gonna... Pelorus is a very earthy aroma is... It's a yellow plant that's in the sunflower family, it's grown in the South of France and Corsica, we also have another region that we grow in, but that's the one that people really covet is in Corsica.

It's a very earthy aroma, it's not one of those ones that people use for creating that beautiful environment, like in spas or in their diffuser or in their perfumes, but it has so many immuno protective chemicals within it that are anti-inflammatory, so it helps to modulate the inflammation factor in the body, and it's my favorite because it's a 100 times more into inflammatory than Arnica.

So it is to the essential oil world, what Arnica is to the Erb world, and that's why that's becoming probably the top one in our line, but also one of my favorites and so... Yeah, so you mentioned your top of the best sellers as well as your favorite kind of what you are in the essay, so back to that. So lavender, of course, would be one of the most popular and one of the fun things that people don't realize about lavender is that in the French medical aromatherapy and scientific aromatherapy world, we oftentimes use lavender as a carrier oil, so because essential hills are volatile and they go into fat. When you put essential oils into a virgin plant oil like argon or carrot seed or olive oil, when you put it into a fat oil, it sits in the fat, which is a great place because it will multiply, but it will sit on top of the skin many times so the absorption is only 10 or 20%, and that's a generalization, but very little when you apply essential oils directly to the skin, 60% absorbs into the body, so lavender is in its natural organic state, lavender has immuno protective chemicals that are anti-inflammatory, anti-fungal anti-bacterial.

So headaches, two things we call lavender, really the van then some of all essential oils, and most people recognize lavender for sleep and calming the nervous system, but it also is the best thing to heal a burn, a cut a scrape, diaper rash, cradle cap, acne rashes. So many things can be helped with lavender because of its Munro, CT Ive chemicals that are present, so lavender would be the top, I would say. And we have four different lavender in our line. We have one that is bio-dynamically farmed, and it's called lavender reserve, it's beautiful, and it is one of the gentiles of all the lavender is grown, and then tea tree, of course, everybody knows tea tree. It is one of the most adulterated and synthetically made essential oils, and so it's in a lot of toothpaste and cough drops and skin care, if you use the organic version of it, it has so many antifungal properties, so great for acne and eczema, and it's not the most popular aroma, but it certainly has an antiseptic quality and you can smell it right when you try it.

So those immuno protective chemicals are actually the aromas that you smell, so every time you smell Rose Mary or teacher or teacher or lavender, and you have that distinct aroma, those are the immuno protective chemicals, so they have to be present to be doing their job.

I was gonna say something about like with peppermint or something that tea tree probably trumpets and peppermint is equally as popular in the fun thing about peppermint is that it brings blood flow, so if you apply it to the body... Neat. So no dilution, no carrier. And you just apply it to the body. The ones that are safe, so our company is safe, but not all are safe to do that, because we're testing every constituent we were growing organically. But when you use peppermint on the body, it cools the body, so in California, on a day like today, I carry my peppermint with me and it'll help to cool the body down, it brings that superficial blood flow, but it also acts as a diaper tic, so it makes you cool down, it makes you sweat out and open the pores, and so Peppermint is widely used for things like that, but because of the blood flow, it will help with headaches and pains or things like that. Yeah, it has all these wonderful uses... Yes, it does. Well, I think this is fascinating, and again, I love that there's so much science behind this, you're educating us all on this, we have to take a quick break, so stay with us, but more with our interview with our national educator Tara Johnson. When we come back, stay with us.

And welcome back to the mother's market radio show. And we wanna remind you that if you've missed any portion of today's show, you can find us on iTunes by searching mother's market, or download the show from our website, mother's market dot com, click the link for radio and listen to the past shows. Plus download our Healthy Recipes and money savings coupons, all available at mother's market dot com.

And now vector interview with national educator Tara Johnson, and we're talking about aroma therapy and the science behind it, and why? And how are they used?

Such a good question.

When essential oils are applied to the skin, which is one of the main uses of medical aromatherapy and scientific aroma therapy, 60% of the essential oil absorbs into the blood stream and tissue, and it has to travel through the body and through the capillaries and be expelled through the liver and kidneys, anywhere from 10 to 24 hours, so applying it topically, meat without any carriers, without any other adulterers or other ingredients, so to speak, it will enter the body immediately, only certain oils are safe to apply meat to the skin, but we want that full absorption for many of them, because of what they do in the body.

Now, every single plant will have different uses, different reasons why you would use it topically, but for instance, lavender used topically would be great for something like a bug bite, and once you applied it to the skin, need 60% absorbs into the bloodstream and tissue, and so on... If you put lavender into an ultrasonic diffuser, which is the big topic these days, buying those fun diffusers that show the cool mist that out, and it needs to be a cool, cool misuse, but it ultra-sonically breaks up those particles and puts them into the air and then they also enter the lung, so it's the fastest way to get essential oils into the bloodstream is through the lungs, through breathing them in, so that's why these diffusers are so popular.

So one of the things that I just wanna say in regards to that is that many people will buy synthetics or adulterated essential oils and put them into diffusers, and what happens is they're getting immediate absorption into the lung tissue and into the bloodstream from those synthetics.

So sometimes we think it's very benign to put an aroma into the air and breathe it in, but this is how it enters the body very quickly, so I don't know if you've heard in the past, but there's been lots of issues with people using synthetics in ultrasonic diffusers because it can damage lung tissue if it's synthetic, but the real plant, the total plant, the organic plant can have many benefits like lavender will bring blood flow, peppermint and small amounts, and your diffuser can be helpful for opening the lungs, Eucalyptus radiata, which is one of my favorites is gentle and opens up the lungs, so the ways that they enter the body is applying it to the skin and 60% will absorb into the skin, the rest will just evaporate and dissipate, then we talk about ultra sonically diffusing it into the air. So it cleans the air, clean or lungs enters the lungs, and then you can also take them internally, food has a lot of essential oils in it, the biggest secret and food manufacturing is that essential oils are used for flavoring agents, for toothpaste, coffer-up sodas, packaged foods canned foods, bottled food. So there can be essential oils in many different foods, now, I don't tend to call them a central hills, 'cause sometimes they're adulterated, they're synthetic, there are other things other than what we have in our line, they're not totally organic, but it is a very popular use of essential oils, like Dr. Pepper has several essential oils in its sodas, so this is what makes it signature flavor and taste and sent many sodas, that's what they use.

So you can take them internally by eating them in that way, so flavoring food with them, and then one other way is therapeutically, so making tinctures and honey and medicinal syrups.

So our parent company, preterm, we encapsulate Mandarin for anxiety in a little bit of grape seed oil.

We make all sorts of cough ERPS and coffers with the central... So initially, many drops and cough SARS used essential oils for the properties that they have, but we've now found ways to make them synthetically, so most companies are sourcing synthetic options to put into those cuff drops, cost rips supplementation. But essential oils can be encapsulated for many things, a lot of people recognize a Regina as an anti-viral, and you find in many health food stores, they'll be encapsulated, they'll be in tinctures and honey and olive oil, it would be the active constituent in Regina essential oil that would be used as an anti-viral, so you could do that yourself, you could make a little honey and it does take some guidance, so I don't suggest everyone does that on their own, I want you to get some guidance... We have some on our website too, but you really do need some guidance to be able to use it internally therapeutically, but that is one of the other ways that it's used, encapsulated and used in honey and tinctures and things, so those are the ways that it enters the body, most people would choose to use them for their antibacterial properties, so every single essential oil that's grown organically has antibacterial properties, so in cleaners and things like that, so it's very popular to get rid of your toxic cleaners and just use the central... So it's a great introduction for a lot of people to use lemon or great fruit or orange or teacher, or lavender or peppermint as a cleaner, and just put it in some distilled water and spray the room with its... Well, just listening to what... How toxic the... What we're breathing in and how we just don't realize it until you start mentioning everything, and I'm just even thinking back to, as you say, a disuse, but back to what we do with our kids, and I hire... Just that simple, but from when my kids were younger, I exactly, gosh, that's a baby.

So what am I doing? What are we doing and what we're just putting these things in a cleaning agents to... Exactly, just we have to be more thoughtful about that.

And I so thank you for teaching us about how we can clean that up for ourselves and for the environment as well.

Definitely, what are some of the other popular oils and uses.

So what's really fun about our company, because we are a scientific aromatherapy company, we have blends that are scientifically blended, so the plants work better together than they do separately, so you could put helices on back pain and you would get a great result, but holism with peppermint will drive it in and make it even more potent because you're getting the medicinal constituents from two plants and they work synergistically better together and in the body better than just using them alone. So we have several, what we call wellness blends, and so we're known for that, so we're using the French medical practice of blending the oils together. Our founder, Melissa Farris, who started the company, she is a French medical aroma therapist, so we have ones called just plain Relief, which has helices peppermint lavender and clothes, you just roll it right on the body, it's already blended safely for everyone to just use on the body. We have one called mental clarity, it is the most popular. We call it our gateway drug because it's peppermint, rosemary peppermint.

Let's say peppermint, rosemary basil, lemon, great fruit lavender. And this one you can apply right to the body as well, and this is it CASA diaphragmatic, like we talked about, the peppermint, but Rosemary also brings blood blood flow, and remember Shakespeare said Rosemary for remembrance, so it's really great for focus and energy, and bringing blood flow to the brain, it does break the blood-brain barrier when you breathe in essential oils, so you do have to remember that and use the ones that are safe for that, Rosemary and pepper men are great for that. And basal basal is said to help us stop that ruminate thinking, that OCD thinking, so the mental clarity has basal in it for that reason, and then some of our other popular ones, we have one called Immunity boost, and just like what an essential oil. Does it boost the immune system? So this one is safe to use with babies, you just mentioned, thinking about that safety, immunity Boost is a gentle blend of lavender Tea Tree and Eucalyptus radiata at anti-viral in its properties, its anti-inflammatory antibacterial. So that's what the plant does naturally, that's what we can use it for in the diffuser or on our bodies, so we're known for that, we're known for these wellness blends that have specific names that help us use them specifically for whatever fails us. And that's what I love about our company, is that we can help make it easy and convenient for families and for people to find the entrails that are best for them, they get so confused when they look at the hundreds of plants that are offered, and we try to make it easy for them, well, I appreciate you explaining all of this and how often do you need to use these before getting a benefit to see that... That's a great question. So when you use peppermint for a headache, most people experience help from that headache within moments... Wow, a lot of times I'll use that mental clarity blend and I'll demonstrate it at different health food stores, and someone will walk up to the table that I'm demonstrating it, I'll give them a little treatment, you actually breathe it in out of your hands and you apply it to the body, so on the back of the neck and the head, usually within about two minutes, they walk back and say, Oh my goodness, I had a migraine, which I don't know why someone with a migraine is trying anything new in that moment, but I'm grateful that they've made their way to me and they usually will find relief and because it's bringing blood flow in and it is a base and bronchial DI later, it can be helpful for things like that, so there can be immediate relief, the just plain relief. When you roll it on the body, that one gives immediate relief for most people when you're looking at something like the Immunity boost and diffusing that and applying that to the body, that will be over time a great addition to your lifestyle so that you can... What happens with essential oils when they enter the body is that they continue to build your immune system, so even if you're using it for skin care or cleaning or diffusing or pain, or... We have one called Rose regenerative facial oil, which I use for regenerating the skin when you're using a central is even for these sometimes topical reasons, you are adding to your immune system, you are helping to modulate your immune system with essential as they go after those invaders in the body, but they don't break down the good bacteria, so it's the perfect way to add to your repertoire of trying to build your immune system is by diffusing and using essential oils, so you can get immediate benefits or over time, people have noticed that their immune system is boosted or they're sick less often on their families stay well, and it helps to really kill microbes and keep their health going, so that sounds wonderful and I really... Yeah, even with the skin care portion of that too... I'm very interested.

Yeah, you have to try the rose regenerative facial oil. You would love it.

Well, I will... Let's see, what is the most common misunderstanding when it comes to medical aromatherapy, and we kind of touched on it, but really that place in America and around the world where they're sold for different things like lotions and potions and candles and things like that, that's all fun and valuable, and because ours are organic, you can still do all of those wonderful things, but using the plans for their medicinal purposes is really a misunderstood, it's misunderstood and most people don't realize what the plants do and don't realize what they're capable of, so I would say that most people misunderstand, they'll say, Oh, I love my lavender, I just spray a little bit on my pillow, and that's a great use, but lavender can heal a burn like nothing else, so I keep it in the kitchen and lemon lemon actually activates the phase one phase two liver enzymes when you eat it, so putting a drop in honey or olive oil can actually activate that phase one phase to liver enzyme that helps cleanse the body and cleanse the liver. So there's so many uses, so many reasons why you would use them, and most people use them just for the aroma, which can calm the nervous system or create energy or focus... Wonderful for those uses as well, but I find that the physical medicinal benefits outweigh that many times, and people don't realize that, so they're just using it 'cause they love the smell of or, but they don't know that there's actually a cleansing property to more... No idea in the highway that he can really get on board with close... What is the future of essential oils in America?

For our company at Veritas, we find that we have our own lane because so many other companies are in the body care and skin care industry, which is a wonderful place for them to be, we find that people are finally starting to see the benefits of diffusing and using essential oils topically and thinking about the medicinal properties within the plan, so we find that our lane that we forged for the last 10 years is the future of essential oils, because there will be a separation of who we are and who those other companies are that wanna just be in the body care and do safe dilution, which is valuable, but different, and so there's room for everyone, in my opinion, and I find that we're able to get those studies and show people that what really happens with the plant when you use it medicinally and that is what's changing aromatherapy in America, in France and Belgium and Austria, Germany, and parts of Australia and Italy, they've used the medical aroma therapy for many, many years, but we haven't seen that happen because most of it's in French, so the English version has been the version that we use, and that English version is valuable, but now we're bringing the French along, so I think that's the future.

Well, congratulations and good luck to you and thank you for sharing and educating all of us on what's happening in the tank, you and the aroma therapy scientific industry. And thank you for your time, some great advice, and we really appreciate your knowledge and we look forward to having you on again, but in the meantime, get more information on terra on her website, Veritas botanicals dot com.

Thank you, I couldn't have said that better myself, this were your next visit.

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