Why You Should Dilute Essential Oils

If you are an essential oil user, you may have heard that diluting hot oils, like oregano, that you want to use topically or diluting the oils you put on your child’s skin is recommended. However, I've recently learned that diluting all essential oils is beneficial. I only recommend using therapeutic oils, especially if you are putting them in or on your body. If you want to apply oils to your skin, I recommend using a carrier oil to dilute them and increase their effectiveness.

Watch the short video below on how to dilute essential oils, or read on for more in depth help diluting your essential oils.

Does diluting essential oils reduce their effectiveness?

It may seem that if you dilute the essential oils you are using, you may also be reducing their effectiveness. However, diluting oils may actually increase their effectiveness.

First, diluting the essential oils you apply topically will decrease the amount that evaporates into the air. This means that more of the beneficial oil will stay on your skin and be able to bring support to your body.

Your skin is the largest organ of your body. It's made of several layers that help to protect your internal body. The outermost layer of your skin is called the epidermis. This is the part of your skin that provides a waterproof barrier and is tough for solutions, like essential oils, to permeate. Diluting your essential oils before you apply them to your skin actually drives the oil solution into your epidermis layer, easier and deeper. This means the oil reaches your internal body quicker and you are able to see the benefits faster.

If you have sensitive skin issues, diluting your essential oils before applying them is additionally beneficial. Diluting will help lower the risk of you experiencing skin irritation.

These emotion oils are part of the Touch Line from doTerra. All of the oils in this doTerra line are prediluted to the correct ratios for quick application. You can order the Touch Line for yourself here.

How do I dilute an essential oil?

To dilute an essential oil before you apply it to your skin, you use what are called carrier oils. Carrier oils include avocado oil, olive oil, jojoba oil, grapeseed oil, or coconut oil (especially fractionated coconut oil.) In selecting the ideal carrier oil for you, you want to always make sure that it is 100 percent pure. Each oil has a different scent and even texture so selecting your carrier oil could be researched or just be a personal preference.

The following ratios of dilution come from doTerra, my preferred brand of essential oils.

For one teaspoon of carrier oil add:

• 1 drop essential oil for a 1% ratio

• 2 drops for 2%

• 5 drops for 5%

One tablespoon of carrier oil:

• 3 drops essential oil for 1%

• 6 drops for 2%

• 15 drops for 5%

One fluid ounce of carrier oil:

• 6 drops essential oil for 1%

• 12 drops for 2%

• 30 drops for 5%

What do you think? Will you try diluting your essential oils next time?

If you want more information on essential oils, I share more here!

10 Ways to Consume Meat Stock

Meat stock is one of the pillars of a healthy gut diet. While bone broth is getting a lot of press lately, I don’t recommend it for most people. (Learn more about why I recommend meat stock over bone broth here.) Meat stock really gets a gold medal as a great nutrient dense food that can boost your immunity, help with healing allergies, and is easy to digest, especially for those with a leaky gut. Even better, meat stock is meant to be a meal all on it’s own! You can make meat stock with any meat, though I think chicken meat stock is the easiest beginner stock.

Consuming meat stock is a habit I encourage my clients to do throughout the day because of it’s great health benefits. There are many ways to consume meat stock and some creative ways so that you don’t get bored with consuming meat stock frequently. Here’s a few of my favorites!

Vary Your Meat Stock Recipe

Try adding different spices and herbs to your meat stock recipe when you cook it. This will change the taste to keep it interesting. You can also vary the vegetables and aromatics that you add - or add no aromatics like onions and your dogs can consume your meat stock as well!

Have It Warm

Heated stock is a great warming beverage, especially on cool winter mornings. Keeping heated stock in a mug next to you will allow you to drink it alongside your morning meal.

If you’re on the go, keep your heated stock in a thermos so it stays warm throughout the day. Then you can sip on it just like a tea or coffee.

Eat It Cold

Drinking cold stock is very refreshing on a hot summer day!

If your stock gets a good gel at the top, you can simply pop the gel off the top of your stock and eat it cold like a meat jelly.

Use Meat Stock as a Base

Meat stock makes an excellent base for different soups and other recipes. I’ve been partial to this chicken tortilla soup recipe recently but you can make it into any variety of soup that sounds delicious.

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Add an Egg (or Two)

You can poach eggs in warm stock for a delicious breakfast. Use the stock as a replacement for the water that you would normally poach eggs in.

Or, break and stir a few egg yolks only into warm stock. This will create a cheesy tasting drink that is delicious.

Consume Meat Stock on the Go

Traveling can bring up a whole host of stressors and traveling on the GAPS Diet means paying closer attention to your food. Since meat stock is one of the pillars of the GAPS Diet, it’s important to factor it into your travel plans. There’s a few different ways to consume meat stock on the go, from dehydrating it to making it when you get there.

What are your favorite ways to consume meat stock? If you have other ideas, share them in the comments below!

Gentle Detoxing with Juicing

There are many methods we use to gently detox our bodies from toxins—a holistic way to aid healing. This series explores each of them. We’ve covered oil pulling, detox baths, sunbathing,enemas, and grounding. Today, we’re covering juicing.

Why do we detox?

Detoxing helps take the load off our liver. Our liver does many things, one of which is to process toxins out of our bodies. In the simplest terms, toxins are anything that are not helpful to the body at that time. Gentle detoxing methods, including detox baths, can have a positive effect on symptoms triggered by inflammation: like allergic reactions, headaches, aches and pains, negative emotions, brain fog and fatigue.

What is juicing?

Juices provide many nutrients in concentrated amounts, helping to remove nutritional deficiencies.

People all over the world have freed themselves from the most deadly diseases with juicing. Some very big names in natural medicine strongly advocate juicing and use it actively in the treatment of their patients, like Dr Gerson and Dr Norman Walker.

Hundreds of scientific studies have been published on the health benefits of fresh raw fruit and vegetables. Juices provide all the goodness from these fruit and vegetables in a concentrated form and in large amounts. For example, to make just a glass of carrot juice you need a pound of carrots. Nobody can eat a pound of carrots at once, but you can get all the nutrition from them by drinking the juice.

Juicing removes the fibre, which impairs absorption of many nutrients in fruit and vegetables and aggravates the condition in the already sensitive digestive system of a GAPS patient. The digestive system has virtually no work to do in digesting juices, they get absorbed in 20-25 minutes, providing the body with a concentrated amount of nutrients.

What juices should I consume?

A combination of pineapple, carrot and a little bit of beetroot in the morning will prepare the digestive system for the coming meals, stimulate stomach acid production and pancreatic enzymes production.

A mixture of carrot, apple, celery and beetroot has a wonderful liver-cleansing ability.

Green juices from leafy vegetables (lettuce, parsley, dill, carrot and beet tops) with some tomato and lemon are a great source of magnesium and iron and good chelators of heavy metals.

Note: Spinach and kale are also great heavy metal chelators, but I only recommend consuming them cooked or dried, as these raw vegetables may have a goitotrophic effect, especially in people who have thyroid issues.

Cabbage, apple and celery juice stimulates digestive enzyme production and is a great kidney cleanser.

There is an endless number of healthy and tasty variations you can make from whatever fruit and vegetables you have available at home.

How should I juice?

Only organic fruit and vegetables should be used, as non-organic contain pesticides and other agricultural chemicals; by juicing non-organic produce you will get a glass of concentrated amounts of those chemicals.

Juices are best taken on an empty stomach 20-25 minutes before food and 2-21/2 hours (or more) after a meal.

Can I buy juice from a store?

Juices that can be bought in a store have been processed and pasteurised, which destroys all the enzymes and most vitamins and phytonutrients. They are a source of processed sugar, which will feed abnormal bacteria and fungi in the gut. In freshly extracted juice the natural sugars are balanced with enzymes, minerals, and other nutrients which turn them into energy for the body. The only exception to this is juice bought from a juice bar, where they prepare the juice from fresh ingredients right in front of you.

When you make your juice at home you know what you put into it, you know that it is fresh without any contamination and oxidation, and you can have great fun by mixing different fruit and vegetables together, making different tasty combinations. There are a large number of books on juicing with wonderful recipes for every health problem and every occasion.

The GAPS Milkshake

One of my favorite juicing recipes in the GAPS Diet was the GAPS Milkshake. The addition of sour cream and egg yolk balances the sugars in the juice with protein and fat, and it is so delicious! It helps to remove bile stones from the liver and improves fat digestion over time.

See my recipe for the GAPS Milkshake here!

Gentle Detoxing with Detox Baths

There are many methods we use to gently detox our bodies from toxins—a holistic way to aid healing. This series explores each of them. We've covered oil pulling already; next we'll cover detox baths.

Why do we detox?

Detoxing helps take the load off our liver. Our liver does many things, one of which is to process toxins out of our bodies. In the simplest terms, toxins are anything that are not helpful to the body at that time. Gentle detoxing methods, including detox baths, can have a positive effect on symptoms triggered by inflammation: like allergic reactions, headaches, aches and pains, negative emotions, brain fog and fatigue.

What is a detox bath?

Baths are a great way to relax! The warm water soothes us and helps put us into a meditative state. A detox bath is just like any other bath except that you add something to the bath water to help get rid of toxins through the skin.

We all have toxins that are floating through our blood stream. The material (agent) in a gentle detox bath allows your body the space to get rid of the toxins circulating in your bloodstream. As your pores open, the detox agent will draw toxins out through the skin and into the bath water.

What to Use in Your Detox Bath

There are a variety of agents you can add to your bath to trigger a detox response. These natural materials will help your body detox gently.

You can use baking soda or raw apple cider vinegar (with the live mother). Another common agent is Epsom salt. This is what my body has been liking most lately. Add between 1/2-1 cup of your desired detox agent to your bath. It's good to rotate these agents (only add one type per bath), and you can practice your "expert detective" skills by seeing if you can figure out which one your body is wanting each time.

What is the ideal temperature for a detox bath?

Keep your water temperature warm but not scorching hot for your detox bath. If your bath is too hot, you might initiate a detox in your body that's not gentle. The cells will say "Oo, a relaxing bath! Let's get rid of these toxins!" and dump additional toxins into your blood stream.

If the water temperature is too hot for your detox bath, you may experience an increase in your heart rate, become nauseous, get flushed, irritable or have a headache while you're in the bath. These symptoms can also happen if you put too much of your detox material into the bath or if you stay for too long in the bath.

If you experience any of these symptoms while you're in the detox bath, get out right away. Drink a lot of water and the symptoms usually pass fairly quickly.

Detox Baths When You're Fighting a Cold

Detox baths are a great option when you are sick. They help aid your body in getting rid of the collateral damage that happens when you're sick. Plus, they're a great way to warm up and relax an aching body.

I recommend adding 1/2 cup to 1 full cup of Epsom salts or raw apple cider vinegar, with the mother, to your bath. It's important to take a detox bath at least once a day while you're sick. And don't be afraid to take more than one!

Make sure the temperature of your detox bath water isn't too hot; you don't want to add to your illness symptoms with a new headache or nausea.

How do you like to detox bath? Let us know in the comments below.

Sick? When to Contact Me!

Oh no! You’re sick!
Here's when you should call in a
holistic healthcare professional, like me!

One of my goals in life is to empower you to be able to take care of yourself and your loved ones when faced with a health concern: whether that be an cold, or a new surfacing of allergies.

But each one of us has different life experiences, a different knowledge base, and different comfort measures.

When you feel that you are “coming down with something,” or even feeling run down, take that opportunity to focus in on rest, good food, and maybe some extra boosts like essential oils or herbs. If you take a day off to rest when you are just starting to feel poorly, you will most likely be able to return to everyday life quicker than if you keep going until you are too sick to function anymore. This will not always work, but it often does.

Early is the perfect time to call me! Most of the time, my recommendations for natural remedies are all the support your body needs to recover—no pharmaceuticals needed. But in the few times that prescription medications have been needed for patients. Most of those were cases when the person didn’t call me until they were very sick and had been so for several days. Natural remedies work best when they are administered early and when there is time to find the right remedy (we'll talk more about this in another post).

That being said, I hope that you won’t need me every time you get sick! One of my desires is to bring back the lost knowledge of nursing your body back to health (hopefully without medical intervention). I want you to have enough knowledge and resources so you can help yourself or a loved one through an illness in strength, and with relative ease. One way to learn more is by working with me through a cold or two. Most illness support is the same, no matter what the specifics of the illness are. After you successfully walk though one or two illnesses, your knowledge and confidence will grow!

Whether you are new at natural support for illness, or if you are fairly comfortable with supporting the body through illness, the time to call me is as soon as you are feeling out of your depth. I am here for you as soon as you feel at a loss of what to do, or would just like a second pair of eyes on it.

No matter what you know, when you or one of your children is sick, sometimes you just need someone else to remind you what to do. Even I ask for help and reminders from friends and other practitioners when I am sick. It’s always better to be in community!

You have the tools to help your family through most experiences of illness. And I want to be one of the resources in your toolbox.

So when you are sick, call me! I'm happy to help.

Onward!

GAPS Legal Caramel Recipe

Several years ago I discovered that the mythical candy known as caramel was actually fairly simple to make. It merely involved heating a mixture of water and some type of sugar substance to a certain temperature to change the properties and create soft caramel syrup, chewy caramel candies, and even hard candy. This discovery has lead to many delicious treats and snacks!

And over the years I have become more and more comfortable with the caramel-making process. You can also make caramel more complicated by adding milk, coconut milk, or other ingredients. But I like the simplicity of honey, water and vanilla. And in this combination, it is full GAPS legal! Leave the vanilla out and it can be had in very small amounts starting on Intro Stage 4.

I would like to again point out that I do not like to heat honey on a regular basis. Ayurvedic tradition holds that heating honey over 104°F is unhealthy. The chemical changes that can be seen in heated honey* indicated that the honey becomes less healthy when it is heated over 140°F. For this reason I do not bake with honey. In fact, caramel and marshmallows are the only time I ever eat heated honey. But when caramel is needed, I'm sure that the homemade caramel I make with honey is much better than the commercially-made, sugar or corn-syrup based caramel alternative. Even so I recommend that if you do choose to eat heated honey, you do it in very small amounts, for special treats. And as soon as I discover another way to make caramel, I will let you know!

*It's also important to note that most honey commercially available has been heated to pasteurize it. For this reason it is very important to know your honey source, and make sure you are getting a raw honey.

Ok, back to caramel. You can easily look up the temperature ranges for your desired caramel range, from syrup to toffee. And depending on your purpose for the caramel, you should choose your temperature. The ingredients and procedure is exactly the same, only the end-point temperature varies.

Don't have a candy thermometer? No problem. You can check the stage of the candy by dripping a little caramel into a glass of clean, cold water. I prefer this way, and have learned at what "stage" I like by how the caramel behaves in the water.

Have fun with this! And don't be afraid to "mess up." The worst you can get (unless you let it burn) is a sugary treat in a different stage than you were hoping.

My final tip: Stir constantly and don't turn up the heat too high. Clean-up is a breeze. Just add hot water and the honey will clean itself off. But if you burn the sugar, you may never get it off the pan!

Now it's your turn!  

GAPS Legal Caramel

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup water

• 1 cup honey

• 1/2 - 1 tsp. vanilla (optional)

Directions:

In a saucepan, add water and honey.

Stir constantly on medium to high heat for 7-12 minutes.

As the mixture begins to form into a caramel sauce, slowly drip a few drops of the sauce into a cup of cool water to check for the beginnings of the 'softball stage' of candy making. Alternatively, use a candy thermometer. You're looking for temperatures between 116° & 120°.

Once sauce reaches this temperature, remove from heat.

Optional: add in vanilla.

Option 1: Caramel Candies

Prepare a glass dish with parchment paper.

Pour hot caramel sauce into the prepared pan.

Cool overnight.

Once cool, remove the parchment paper and caramel.

Cut the caramel into small square pieces.

Twirl or press the square pieces into candy shapes.

Option 2: Dipping Sauce

Simply serve the sauce warm once it reaches 116 - 120.

Dip in your favorite fruits!

Enjoy!

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Print

GAPS Legal Caramel

Author: Amy Mihaly, Be Well Clinic

prep time: cook time: total time:

ingredients:

• 1/2 cup water
• 1 cup honey
• 1/2 - 1 tsp. vanilla (optional)

instructions:

How to cook GAPS Legal Caramel

1. In a saucepan, add water and honey. 
2. Stir constantly on medium to high heat for 7-12 minutes. 
3. As the mixture begins to form into a caramel sauce, slowly drip a few drops of the sauce into a cup of cool water to check for the beginnings of the 'softball stage' of candy making. Alternatively, use a candy thermometer. You're looking for temperatures between 116° & 120°. 
4. Once sauce reaches this temperature, remove from heat. 
5. Optional: add in vanilla.

Option 1: Caramel Candies

1. Prepare a glass dish with parchment paper. 
2. Pour hot caramel sauce into the prepared pan. 
3. Cool overnight. 
4. Once cool, remove the parchment paper and caramel. 
5. Cut the caramel into small square pieces. 
6. Twirl or press the square pieces into candy shapes.

Option 2: Dipping Sauce

1. Simply serve the sauce warm once it reaches 116 - 120. 
2. Dip in your favorite fruits! Enjoy!

Created using The Recipes Generator