A lot of my friends are getting into doTerra, which is a Multi Level Marketing company that sells essential oils at in home parties. Their products are awesome! I've been hearing the buzz about these oils for over a year now and even declined going to a party due to lack of interest and distance.
Recently a friend signed up as a distributor and started sharing with me the benefits of using essentials oils as part of day to day living. This took place during a time period when many of us were sick, particularly Sara, who had pneumonia so bad that one of her lungs quit working. Not that I wanted to replace modern medicine, but I would have liked to treat the problem before it got SO bad. (A doctor who misdiagnosed didn't help anything.) I asked for a catalog and started reading through what some of the oils do and how much they cost. They are EXPENSIVE. There's no way I can afford the collection of oils I would need to have on hand in order to put together recipes for whatever use we need to treat, so I began my research.
MLM companies mark up their products in order to pay bonuses to the uplines. This gets seriously expensive. Having sold Pampered Chef, Discovery Toys, Home Interiors, and having been a wholesale buyer with Avon and Mary Kay, I know very well how it all works. Considering that essential oils is nothing new, there are lots of companies that sell essential oils. doTerra teaches the importance of using good oils. Are they FDA approved? Were the plants originally grown and pressed in their natural environments around the world? Has there been anything added to the natural oils? With these questions in mind I began my research.
First I found essential oils on amazon.com for dirt cheap. I was super excited until I researched the company and found that they don't tell you much about where they're getting their oils from. This is a sure sign that the quality of the oils are not as good as they should be. Exactly what I want to avoid. Google provided me with a list of several other companies to research. One of which was really cool. They sell essential oils that are talked about in the Bible and they teach you how they were used in the Bible. Really cool and still very expensive.
After researching a couple other companies, I found Rocky Mountain Oils. They have a whole slew of information about their oils, where they come from, how they're pressed, and the many uses for each type of oil, as well as several blends to treat specific concerns. Here I learned that just because an oil has been FDA approved, does not mean it is therapeutic grade. FDA approved simply means the FDA thinks that oil is safe to ingest. The FDA has not tested the oil for whether or not it will actually do what it claims to do. Rocky Mountain Oils tests their oils to see how high the count is for the qualities that oil should contain. If it's not good enough, they don't sell it! This company purchases their oils from around the world so that the plants were grown in their natural habitat, providing the oils with the correct therapeutic qualities. Rocky Mountain Oils has great prices considering they are a high quality oil seller. A couple differences I have found between doTerra and Rocky Mountain Oils is that Rocky Mountain Oils offers 5 ml bottles for all their oils; whereas, doTerra sells most of their oils in 15 ml bottles. So retail price comparison, this make doTerra about 50% more. If you buy into doTerra's wholesale option, it's only 25% more. I like the option of buying the 5 ml bottles so that I can afford more initially and see what we'll use regularly before I buy the larger bottles.
After writing down my family's typical medical needs, I researched all their products and decided on a handful of oils to begin our journey using essential oils. We started using them right away! Sara has been using German Chamomile on her eczema and it helps reduce the inflamation. We haven't used it long enough to see if we can get it healed, but I am hopeful, even to find something that actually works to reduce the eczema and relieve the pain. Sara is also using the immune booster (blend) to help her recover from pneumonia. I also bought oils to treat headaches, warts, boils, and other things. I plan to keep a journal on what we used it for and how it worked. I will say that I am going to put together a recipe to treat the eczema since German Chamomile is so expensive. Plus, the combination of several oils that treat the same thing can increase the desired outcome.
Initially I was skeptical about how essential oils work. Afterall, they just have you breathe them in or massage a couple drops into a part of your body. Why do they work? I've purchased a couple books and have learned that the oils are easily soaked into the body and absorbed by the nervous system, which can carry them to the needed parts to do their job. For this to work well, one has to learn about where to massage the oils. At Sara's last doctor visit we discussed essential oils and the doctor explained that essential oils can break the cell barrier to treat the problem at the cell and that modern medicine can only treat whatever is in the blood stream. WOW! That is exciting stuff. Of course there's a whole lot more information about that, but if you want to know it, you should get a book and do the research yourself so that I don't bore everyone reading my blog! I did see a book on amazon.com about the science behind essential oils. Or there's always a supply of great books at the library.
Anyway, order number two went in for more oils and I discovered that Rocky Mountain Oils is running a Mother's Day special. They have three different gift sets, the big one being 20% off! That set has a couple of the oils I had on my list to get so by golly, I got it! Happy Mother's Day to me!
So when you're invited to a doTerra party, remember that there are options equivalent to their high quality product for much less money. If you can afford doTerra, more power to ya! But when they tell you that no other company makes oils as good as theirs, remember that they have not researched all the companies. They want you to buy their products, which is okay, just not in my budget. For the record, Rocky Mountain Oils offers a lot more single oils and a lot more blends than doTerra. Even so, as I have researched recipes for my oils, I have found oils that even Rocky Mountain Oils does not carry.
If you decide to get into essential oils, let me know and I'll give you the name of the company that sells containers for half the price as doTerra. I don't have that information handy right now, but you'll need tiny bottles to keep your mixed recipes in.
