3 Reasons for Making Custom Essential Oil Blends
Earlier today, I found myself in a conversation with someone currently using Young Living Essential Oils. Well, truth be told, I was across the room from this group when I heard one of them mention essential oils. I listened for a few minutes before asserting my participation.
After I introduced myself and offered a bit of background, I was welcomed and presented with both questions as well as some personal experience with oils. Quite frankly, hearing people’s stories and thoughts about essential oils excites me beyond description. At the same time, our cultural understanding of essential oils is limited; therefore, I take pride in sharing what I’ve come to know about plant constituents, essential oils, and their influence on systemic activities. I certainly don’t mean to offend anyone when I speak up. I just feel very strongly about sharing accurate information and helping people get the best results as wellness is our birthright.
That said, I learned quite a bit in a very short amount of time, including the various blends being used. Without question, this individual had both positive and negative experiences, and even though I had several insights and suggestions, I respectfully refrained from oversharing my viewpoints due to time and circumstances. Oddly enough, it appeared as if I may have overstepped a boundary when I shared my website information.
Nevertheless, helping people get the most out essential oils means the world to me. Don’t ask me why; I simply feel it all the way to the heart of my being. In this case, I kept my thoughts to a minimum and said nothing about premade blends. It seemed a better idea to share those thoughts in writing.
3 Reasons for Making Custom Essential Oil Blends
1) synergy ~ chemicals interact and plant constituents, including those found in essential oils, are active chemicals which means the way they are combined in nature contributes to their ‘well-known’ properties. However, synergy doesn’t stop there. When two oils are combined, there is yet another level of synergy that leads to changes in the way the oil affects the body and the overall outcome. Yet, no one blend will have the same effect on everyone because once in the body, the reactions that occur depend upon the epigenome which is as unique as our fingerprints.
One of the points that was mentioned to me was that this individual has severe reactions due to the cinnamon found in a specific blend. While this may sound ‘right’ to a number of people, I have to object to the idea that cinnamon is the problem. I’m more inclined to say it’s the combination of constituents that activates a strong detox reaction.
Cinnamon is a ‘hot’ oil and is known for being highly irritating to the skin; yet, when combined with other oils and used with a carrier, skin sensitivity is diminished and the systemic effects are changed a bit. What those changes are vary between people; yet, that’s not the only point here. It’s virtually impossible to fault cinnamon until ‘you’ deliberately test the way your body reacts to just cinnamon.
What’s interesting here is cinnamon may stimulate a detox reaction which is only enhanced when combined with other strong antimicrobial oils. On the other hand, there may be no reaction at all until combined with other oils. Again, the way each human body reacts is unique. A strong detox reaction tells me the body is over producing oxidative stress and cannot clear it as fast as the oils are helping to eliminate the toxins. In fact, this is a sign the premade blend is not addressing the entire system. Therefore, a custom blend personalizes the synergistic reactions and …..
2) addresses the entire system ~ some might argue that a premade blend can’t help but support the whole system. I say, yes and no.
Our cultural mindset is basically focus on what the immediate issue is and even though essential oils are 100% active and affecting the entire system, generally a premade blend is designed around a very specific concern albeit hormones, muscle pain, digestion, calming, energizing, etc; yet, there’s much more going on than just the obvious concern. In fact, I’ve seen digestive blends made up by primarily estrogenic oils. The reason this is a potential problem is while the blend may offer a bit of digestive support initially, it’s actually counter productive with long term use because estrogen is more than just a reproductive hormone, it’s also a stress hormone involved in the activation of the stress response which slows the digestive process down.
Therefore, it’s always wise to design a blend or blends …
3) based on your specific needs ~ whether digestive, hormonal, pain, autoimmune and so on, health issues are unique despite the fact that many people live with the ‘same’ condition. A name is just that .. a name. Anxiety, pain, migraines, autoimmune and so on are due to a reduction in the body’s ability to breakdown macronutrients, compromising its capacity to assimilate them. What’s more, how a body manifests anxiety, pain, migraines and so on differs depending on the function of the individual epigenome. Even though this sounds like a complication, it’s not.
Take anxiety, for example, the chemistry involved isn’t always the same which means there will be additional symptoms that may seem completely unrelated. They’re not; therefore, including them into the design of the blend improves the synergistic effects of the blend on your body.
With this in mind, it’s always good to keep a selection of single note essential oils on hand so that you have the ability to not only create a blend specific to your needs, you also have the opportunity to change it according to the way your body responds.
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