I thought I would share why I’m interested in learning about essential oils. Warning it’s going to be long. Professionally I am a critical care nurse, so I’m steeped in American BIG medicine. My thought is that the American medical community is that it tries to fix everything with the equivalent of a sledgehammer. Sometimes it’s needed (like my ICU patients who have multiple organ systems failing and are on the verge of dying), sometimes its not. Do we really need EVERYONE on a cholesterol reducing medication? When most of the time it could be corrected with proper diet & exercise?
Anyway my big personal issue for the last 11 years has been Irritable Bowel Syndrome. I’ve been through 2 colonoscopies and I’m not even 40 yet. I have had episodes of so much pain from the abdominal cramping that I have passed out and been taken to the ER. I was supposed to take a mega dose of Fiber and a Proton Pump Inhibitor medication daily with an Antispasmotic as I needed it. Both the PPI & Antispasmotic were prescriptive medications. In February of 2014, I was doing some literature search again. It lead me to Lactose Intolerance which sounded right symptom wise, but I knew the cause was wrong. This lead me to Fructose Intolerance, same problems but a different sugar as the culprit. It fit because the foods I knew set my IBS off was naturally high in fructose. So more literature reading into fructose intolerance and I discovered the low-FODMAP diet. This actually was researched and brought to the medical community in 2004 (year I was first diagnosed with IBS) by Monash University outside of Melborune, Australia. The Aussies & Brits are much more likely than Americans to recommend dietary changes and research them. It’s a highly restrictive diet, but has a 75% compliance rating along with it because IT WORKS. Within a week of starting I was feeling much better than had felt in years. I even was able to advance to a low-FODMAP with lactose reintegrated. In September, when i was hospitalized for Pneumonia, the hospital didn’t have a category for that diet in the dietary orders. The nurse practitioner who did my admission had never heard of low-FODMAP. The hospitalist who was on duty the first 2 days had never heard of the diet. The day I was discharged (day 3), the hospitalist on duty knew about the diet, but I think she was the only one in the hospital who had.
My hospitalization in September with pneumonia left me with a cough and basically bronchitis induced asthma. I was obviously over the infection, but couldn’t shake the cough. I was allowed to go back to work because you can’t give anyone asthma, but I had a nebulizer, breathing treatments and I did 2 rounds of steroids without it helping. What helped was the nurse who was orienting me had a roll on of Breathe in her bag and she let me use it. It helped the coughing almost immediately. Of course I had to find out what it was. It was DoTerra’s blend of Essential Oils. I did sign up for Doterra so I could get it, but a lot of my literature reviews since then have shown the research being done as using Young Living oils so with the Black Friday special I decided to sign up.