A Mom Essentials reader named Melissa asked:

I am looking for some help with asthma. My 3 yr old is showing symptoms, including one serious attack. We have not had him diagnosed because I don’t want steroids or other meds. I watched my little brother go that route a long time ago and would like to avoid it.
So far my treatment regiment has been Breathe, Geranium (just tried it in a pinch because it has worked for inflammation), a tea for bronchial inflammation, and smelling raw honey. I am looking for other ideas for maintenance/cures while also having a remedy for flair ups. If you have anything in mind I would sure appreciate some help.

Thanks for your blog, I have been following this for a while and appreciate all the time you put in to it.

Sincerely,
Melissa

Response and Natural Asthma Remedies by Jenni

Hi Melissa,

Thanks for reading and good for you for seeking out a better path for your son! Your questions reminded me about an email I received from my friend a couple years ago. I had asked her what she did to manage her husband and son’s asthma. She told me about “Barley water” and gave me the recipe and instructions below. She mentions using mullein herb oil, which I also recommend to strengthen the respiratory tract and I sell it as Dr. Christopher’s Respiratory Massage Oil. Christopher also has a Respiratory Syrup, which contains a blend of herbs that strengthen the respiratory system.

My number one remedy for breathing is doTERRA’s essential oil blend called Breathe.

It also helps open the respiratory tract fast and helps it work better. I dilute it and rub it all over chest, back, neck and behind ears. I also diffuse it or have my kids inhale it straight out of the bottle.

My number one herb for acute difficulty breathing is lobelia. I use Vickie Sorensen’s glycerite and take 5-6 drops straight in the mouth to relax the throat and bronchials. It’s been very effective for me and has saved me at least one trip to the ER. I would use it 2-3 times a day until symptoms diminish, and up to every 15 minutes in acute situations.

Vickie teaches that many cases of asthma are caused by a small parasite. I’ve never seen scientific evidence of this, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true. I usually tell people, if it were my child, I would give them Vickie’s Parasite Cleanse until the bottle was gone. It’s definitely not going to hurt anything, and as a possible cure, I would definitely want to check that off my list.

Natural Remedies by my Good Friend, Kirsten Miller

“Here are a few of my tried and true remedies.  I had others I used when I first started but these are what were effective for the long term.

Barley Water

1 Gallon distilled water

1/4 cup dehulled barley (do not use pearl barley)

Pour one quart of distilled water into a saucepan, add the 1/4 cup of barley.  Simmer on low (but still consistently boiling) for 45 minutes.

When finished pour the water and barley back into the remaining water in the gallon jug.  Shake before every use.  We found that keeping the barley in the water adds extra to the water.

Barley water puts usable calcium in your blood.  It relaxes your broncioles just like your medications are supposed to. Cream of tarter is known to help with acute asthma attacks.  Mixing 1/4 tsp of cream of tarter in one cup of barley water can calm an acute attack.  Of course, I suggest if you want to try this have your inhaler close by.  Never ditch your asthma medications unless you have proven it for yourself.  Note:  my son will not drink the cream of tarter.  He won’t drink the barley water consistently plain either. I put in a drink mix in or mix up a drink flavor of his choice. Barley water is sold in Europe, they buy it when they are sick (side note, I was watching the movie Mary Poppins the other day and it mentioned in a song that the children did not want a nanny who stunk of barley water:)

My husband and son drink 2 glasses of barley water a day to keep their asthma under control, they drink more when they are sick or allergies make their asthma flare. Barley water is also great for any respiratory problems, including colds and stuffy sinuses.

I use Mullein oil on my son’s chest before he goes to bed.  It seems to relax his lungs and it clears his breathing.  He is also able to make it through the night without waking. In asthmatic patients it is prevalent to have them wake periodically at night, which indicates a breathing problem.  I don’t worry about it now.

During sickness and allergies (which is when my son is more prone for asthma attacks), I will make a mullein pack for his chest.  I take 1/4 cup of mullein and brew it in a cup of water.  After 10 minutes and it cools to a warm tolerable temperature I soak a washcloth in it and lay it on my son’s chest.  He always falls asleep because his lungs are finally at rest, especially after being worked so hard.

I just picked up a book called Prescription for Nutritional Healing
at the health food store.  It gave a barley water recipe.  It’s as follows:

Barley Water

1 cup Barley

3 quarts steam-distilled water

1.  Place the barley and the water in a large pot and boil for about 3 hours

2.  Cool the broth.  Strain out and discard the barley and serve the broth as desired.

I haven’t tried this one yet, it is definitely more concentrated.  Just thought I would throw it in.”

Thanks for asking, Melissa and thanks to Kirsten for allowing me to publish her ideas!

What have you found to be effective for asthma? Please let us know if you try any of these remedies and how they work!

Disclaimer: I am not a doctor (that would be my husband). This information is for educational purposes only and is meant to help you take more responsibility for your health. If you or someone you are caring for, is having serious trouble breathing, please get immediate professional medical assistance.

We had delicious giveaway for a chance to win one dozen chocolates infused with doTERRA’s essential oils…perfect for the holidays! They are called CHOC”oil”LATES for a reason

Utah Truffles has combined with doTERRA to create these yummy chocolates. Utah Truffles are a 100% natural European chocolate with no preservatives, no trans fat, no hydrogenated oils and are gluten free.  Combined with the highest quality oils that doTERRA provides, the truffles are smooth and delicious!

The following oils are used in the chocolates:

Peppermint: refreshes, increases energy, calms stomach upset, elevates mood, relieves inflammation, aides in memory performance and promotes alertness.

Wild Orange: relieves anxiety, strengthens immune system; use for insomnia, complexion, colds and flu.  Calming and uplifting to the mind and body.

HOLIDAY PRODUCT: WASSAIL!!  The Wassel Truffle contains doTERRA Wild Orange essential oil with a touch of doTERRA cinnamon oil. This is a fun, festive treat!!

Click HERE for more information on purchasing Essential CHOCoilATES and HERE to like them on their brand new Facebook page.

Thanks to everyone who entered the giveaway and congratulations to Brooke Jacobson, our winner!

Why reach for chemical, preservative laden treats, when we have healthier choices like these?

Since I’ve received so many requests for the Modern Essentials reference book, I am giving away another copy, which makes me happy that you all are interested in education! I am also giving away a large (15 ml) bottle of Wild Orange essential oil and a bag of On Guard Protecting Throat Lozenges. One lucky winner will receive each of these items.

There are 3 ways to enter. You will receive 1 entry to “Like” Mom Essentials on Facebook (or if you already do, share this website with someone new), 1 entry to Re-Tweet this giveaway, and 1 entry to Re-Post on your Facebook profile. Then leave me a comment here telling me how many of these you did. Deadline is midnight, November 30th.

If you are interested in buying essential oils at wholesale prices, see the Doterra promotion at the end of this post or fill out the contact form on the Doterra page of this website.

The On Guard Protecting Throat Drops are wonderful to have at this time of year. They contain essential oil of Doterra’s OnGuard blend, which has just been shown at Oklahoma University to inhibit viral replication within the human cell.* It really does boost the immune system and help prevent winter illness. It immediately resolves my sore throats and reduces yucky “getting sick” feelings.

Wild Orange essential oil is one of my favorites. Just one drop in my water with a couple drops of lemon and a dash of stevia gives me daily enjoyment and protection. I’m going to try it in my wassail this year.

Here is a recipe from Doterra’s Holiday Gift Guide:

Hot Cocoa Flavored With Essential Oils

INGREDIENTS
1 Cup Water
5 tsp. Cocoa Powder
½ Cup Sugar
1 ½ tsp. vanilla
3 Cups Milk
ESSENTIAL OIL FLAVORINGS
Peppermint, Cinnamon, or Wild Orange Essential Oil
DIRECTIONS
Heat water, cocoa powder, and sugar on stove until ingredients are smooth. Add vanilla and milk and bring to a simmer. Pour into your favorite mug . Introduce flavor by swirling a toothpick dipped in your favorite essential oil.

Here are a few more ways to use essential oils around the holidays.

Christmas House Spray

Add 8 drops White Fir or Pine, 4 drops Wild Orange, and 2 drops Cinnamon essential oils into 2 cups water. Put in a spray bottle and use to spread holiday scents all around your home.

Everyone I’ve shared White Fir essential oil with, raves about it. Its woodsey smell brings back memories and feelings from years past. It makes Christmas become more real to me.

Aroma Candles

If you love candles, make your own real aroma. Synthetic fragrances just don’t please me anymore. Natural oils are so much more enjoyable and healthy.  Just light a candle, wait til a little wax melts, then add one drop of essential oil right by the wick. It’s delightful!

Doterra has a special holiday oil blend available called Holiday Joy. It’s wonderful to use this way or to diffuse.

Christmas Tree Aroma

The fake trees don’t have it, and even many of the real ones are sprayed with preservatives that inhibit the release of the natural resin smell. So make your own by combining 12 drops of White Fir or Pine essential oil in 2 cups of water into a sprayer to spray on your tree. Or put a few drops of oil on cotton balls at the base of your tree.

You can also infuse pine cones with delicious aromas by putting them in a large ziploc bag with a cotton ball containing 2 drops of essential oil.

Essential oils are so practical to use around the holidays. They help keep us healthy and let us enjoy wonderful tastes and smells. I hope you’ll try them this year!

*Study at University of Oklahoma was just completed last month and will be available in its entirety soon. The results showed that by taking 4 drops of On Guard internally, twice a day, virus replication in cells was inhibited by 90%.

Congratulations to Paul White! He is the winner of this Holiday giveaway!

I want to thank you all for entering, and more than that, for helping promote my website and my messages of inspiration and self-reliance. I am grateful to you all for reading and for all your encouraging comments.

I wish you each a wonderful, healthy holiday season!

(Please keep in mind that I am a stay-at-home Mom that has had some great weight-loss success lately, but I am not a doctor or trained health professional.  I’m just sharing what has worked for me.)

First and foremost, your body needs good food and nutrition to lose weight.  There are many fad diets, magical weight loss pills, injections, etc. out there that promise good results without you having to change your lifestyle – but let’s face it, THOSE WON’T KEEP YOUR UNWANTED WEIGHT OFF.

I don’t have any studies to prove it; just lots of friend that I love that have dropped lbs only to put them back on as soon as their diet has ended.  It’s frustrating, disappointing and a waste of money.  But you might be saying what I often find myself saying – “It’s TOO HARD to eat healthy all the time!” or “but I CRAVE SUGAR!  I just want it RIGHT NOW, or ELSE!” or something similar.  I know, I’ve been there and done that.  But there’s a way!

Let’s talk about controlling cravings.  Most cravings come from an unhealthy unbalance of yeast in your body.  Not like a yeast infection per say, just an excess of it.  It’s called Candida.  Candida is normal, but if it gets out of hand it will make you want sugar and carbs ALL THE TIME at whatever cost.  How bad are your cravings?  That’s probably directly proportional to how out of hand the Candida is in your body.

First things first. In order to eat better, we have to stop our desires for the junk food.  For this purpose, Doterra came out with GX Assist, an essential oils blend, formulated in an enteric coated capsule.

It’s basically an intestinal/lower GI tract cleanse that helps kill off and clean out that excess Candida.  And it WILL help with those horrible cravings!

They recommend taking it for 10 days, one capsule 3 times a day.  You should feel a difference within 2 days, but keep on it until the 10 days are up!  Otherwise, the cravings will just come right back.  When I feel like it’s too strong, I just cut back to 1-2 capsules a day.

We know that fat comes from excess calories and sedentary lifestyle.  Then the obvious way to burn fat is to watch your caloric intake and exercise more.  While this works for some, for others it will only take you so far on your weight loss journey until you hit a plateau.  Sometimes it’s the way your body metabolizes fat that helps you lose it.  That’s where our “Slim & Sassy” oil comes in to the rescue!

There is so much to say about this oil and the amazing things it can do!  I’m going to give you some info from a webinar given by Dr. Hill.  To get all of the details and the science behind the oil, you can watch the webinar yourself at www.builddoterra.com.  Just look through the webinars until you find the one about Slim & Sassy.

Slim & Sassy has been formulated to help balance and regulate our metabolism.  It contains pure cinnamon, ginger, peppermint, lemon and grapefruit essential oils. 

Here’s why each individual was put into the blend:

Cinnamon –  The cinnamon helps reduce the obesity factor.  Cinnamon is as antioxidant, it helps reduce damage done to the liver, it helps us metabolize sugars more appropriately, helps balance your cholesterol, and most importantly it stops your body from producing more fat cells.  HELLO!  I need more of that.  Now, I honestly am no good at trying to explain the science, but as I said above you can hear all the details on the webinar through the link above (its only 48 minutes).

Ginger – Ginger stimulates weight loss through lipolysis (the way your body lets go of the fat in your fat cells).  It also helps your body produce more epinephrine.

Peppermint – Peppermint has been proven to curb appetite and reduce cravings.  They did a study (details on the webinar) where they compared 2 groups of people and their caloric intake.  One group didn’t change their diet, they just supplemented their meals with peppermint oil while the other group restricted their caloric intake.

They found that on average the group that took peppermint with every meal ate 2800 fewer calories per week, while those on a restricted diet consumed on average 2200 fewer calories per week.  Peppermint increases the sense of fullness after eating so that we don’t have the desire to eat as much!  Um, excuse me for a minute, I’m suddenly craving peppermint…  Peppermint also enhances the flavor and taste of the food we eat.  Nice huh.

Grapefruit and Lemon – Citrus oils!  Citrus oils also help reduce appetite because of their high amounts of limonene.   Limonene interferes with your cells ability to change.  So basically, it deters your body from producing more fat cells and also inhibits tumors.  I so need that too.

Using Slim & Sassy on a daily basis can also improve glucose utilization, reduce oxidation and inflammation, improve digestion, reduce the need for calories by improving the way your body digests food, reduce cholesterol and increase energy.  It can also help reduce water retention.

My Story

Want a real life example of how this can help you?  Let me tell you how it helped me.  After having my 3^rdchild I once again found myself with excess weight I definitely did not want to be stuck with.  I hit that do or die stage where I thought, I HAVE to drop this weight and I have to do it NOW.  I started with my cravings and a little exercise.  I found a few friends to play racquetball with and attacked my sugar cravings.  With my sugar cravings a little more under control it was much easier to eat healthy and cut out the junk food.

I slowly but surely dropped about 15 pounds.  It took me about 4 months of being diligent but it paid off and it felt great.  But then I hit my plateau.  I wanted to drop at least 5 more lbs, but no matter what I did it just wouldn’t come off.  I started playing racquetball for longer periods of time.  I added Zumba classes in on top of the racquetball, and at one point I started throwing in 5 miles here and there on the elliptical trainer on top of the other exercise.  But, I was stuck.  I felt good, but the scale didn’t budge.  This is where metabolism played a role in my weight-loss, or the lack thereof.

Luckily, after a month of not budging, Doterra came out with the Slim & Sassy blend. Click for Slim & Sassy Info -3 page PDF.

I ordered it right away and followed the directions putting 4 drops in my 8 ounces of water.  I found the taste to be a little stronger that I was ready for, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me, so I put it in a capsule.  You can just buy empty veggie capsules at the health food store.  I opened them up and dropped 6-8 drops inside and took it 1-2 times a day.  I found right away that within 30 minutes of taking that capsule I had a burst of energy.  It’s one of my favorite perks!  Within about 5 days I started to see the scale start to tip.  Within a month I had finally got through those last 5 lbs!  It was exciting and liberating!  I still use the Slim & Sassy on a regular basis and find that it has had many other impressive side effects that I will share with you some other time (soon, hopefully).

Here are a few ways people are using Slim & Sassy:

• 3-5 drops in water 3-5 times a day
• 3-5 drops on the tongue 3-5 times a day
• 6-10 drops in a capsule 3x a day

You can obviously experiment to find what works the best for you.  Since it is 100% pure from the actual plants, it’s hard to take too much (is there a way to eat too much cinnamon or grapefruit?)

Try it until you find what you like best!  It should not interfere with anything else you are doing.

We would love to hear how you like it when you give it a try!

I am currently taking an aromatherapy course through Dr Christopher’s School of Natural Healing, and one thing I’m learning is that the same plant can have different compounds and constituents depending upon what variety it is, where it’s grown, how it’s processed and what parts of the plant are used.

Usually, there is one specific part of a plant that contains essential oil of the highest medicinal value. Many producers use additional parts of the plant because they smell the same, but they don’t have the same amount of compounds or potency.

Many essential oils are extracted with chemical solvents. It’s hard to remove these solvents completely and makes the production process more expensive. As a result, most companies in the past have not been willing to pay the extra expense to do this extra step or buy more expensive oils extracted a different way. And some companies dilute or adulterate their oils to make more money.

In fact, the FDA requires that only 10% of an actual oil be present for a company to claim it as being 100% pure. Don’t be fooled!

This is why it’s traditionally taught that essential oils should not be taken internally. And it’s true that many brands of essential oils are unsafe to take internally.

I’ve been asked many times why I recommend one company in particular. It’s because I’ve never found another organization at all like them. The company is Doterra, and they are absolutely committed to having the purest oils possible. They go to great lengths and spend the money it takes to do so. Not only do they outside-test all batches of oils to make sure they are pure, they also measure the oils to verify they have the correct amount of medicinal compounds. They call their oils CPTG: Certified Pure Therapeutic Grade essential oils.

As a result, their products are safe to take internally within recommended guidelines, which is the same as herb and drug usage. I’ve used Doterra’s products for a year and a half, and have been amazed at the power and purity of their essential oils. My nose has gotten better at detecting differences in quality between brands. Some are so obvious when you have something really pure with which to compare.

Doterra is definitely a pioneer in the field of essential oils. They promote scientific research, and have already had success in the areas of cancer and diabetes. It’s exciting stuff, and I’ll be learning more at their convention this September.

There are other reasons why I love Doterra. They offer things I couldn’t find from other companies.

• Beautifully printed educational materials (even their catalog has usage charts)
• Free videos and webinars
• A generous rewards program for monthly auto-ship ordering
• An opportunity to pay for my oils by sharing them with other people
• A wellness philosophy I heartily support

This is why I am so loyal to the Doterra brand. They’ve raised the bar of quality for essential oils to a very high level.

Go ahead. Try some. You’ll be able to tell a difference too!

Essential oils have a pretty long shelf life if they are protected from heat, oxygen and light.  So I figured it would be a good investment.  With the economy the way it is, I wanted to be prepared with effective tools with which to care for my family.

So I was sitting in this meeting listening to them tell me how great their oils were.  From what I knew and the way they
smelled, (although I was no expert then, and I’m still learning now) I figured they probably were high quality.

It was their supplements that really caught my attention.  I had been researching antioxident drinks and comparing ORAC scores, so I was familiar with some of the numbers they were using.  I was impressed with their “CRS” antioxident supplement, as its potency was higher than the others’ I had been considering.  The vitamin/mineral product looked all right.

The omega oil formula impressed me.  It was half land based (seeds, etc) and half water based (fish), but it actually contained essential oils!  I had used enteric coated peppermint oil caps in the past and knew they worked really well for digestion, but I had never seen a product like this.

I wasn’t ready to sign up, but I bought 2 “Wellness Packs” on the spot.  I took them home and started taking them.  I liked them.  I had good energy taking them, and I knew I was getting the elements I wanted in my diet.

I started using Doterra oils little by little.  I came to love their blends and smells.  I started to share them with my friends.  Doterra educational materials are beautiful and plentiful.  This made it really easy for me to share and educate others.  Now I’ve gained much more experience and knowledge about the high quality of Doterra oils.

I’m hooked!