Episode 133: Is the Air in My Home Toxic?

doTERRA: The quality of air inside your home can have immediate as well as long-term effects on the health of you and your family. Understanding how to create an ideal air environment in your home isn't always easy. So today, we're going to be talking about toxins to watch out for as well as replacements you can make.

Welcome back to Essential Oil Solutions with doTERRA, the podcast where you'll hear exciting, useful, and simple everyday uses for essential oils from experts in the field. If you like what you hear today, rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen. We always appreciate hearing from you.

Today, we're excited to talk to Lauren Busch about how to rid your home of toxins in the air. Lauren, thank you so much for joining us today.

Lauren Busch: Oh, thank you so much for having me on!

doTERRA: We are so excited to talk to you about this topic, and it's a really big topic. But first, can you tell us a little bit about your background?

Lauren: Yes, absolutely. So my background is a medical ICU nurse, so most of my patients were trached and ventilated. So respiratory care is kind of my specialty.

doTERRA: That's amazing. So what led you from that to the world of essential oils?

Lauren: You know, as luck would have it, my little girl was actually diagnosed with a respiratory issue at about nine months old, and going into the hospital, going to all the doctors, we just couldn't find answers. It was probably a solid three years, maybe even a little bit longer, that we were searching for options for her.

And at the beginning of our journey, I had asked somebody—a friend had asked me, like, “Are you open to trying essential oils?”

And I totally pooh-poohed it. I was like, “No, there's no way that these little tiny bottles have anything to offer me, my daughter, my family. If there was something to them, I would have heard about them already.”

And at the end of about three years: “All right, I'm open. I'm willing to try.”

doTERRA: And how did this journey with essential oils help you to become aware of the toxins that were in the air inside your home?

Lauren's Research Journey

Lauren: So after we were introduced to doTERRA and the power of essential oils, I went on a research journey because I just didn't understand if these amazing oils were so powerful, how I had never heard of them before. And it just took me down a rabbit hole. I started researching everything. I wanted to know what oils did, how do they support the body, what research was there to back it. And as I drove into that research, I was opened up to the research of what things are we doing that on a daily basis aren't supporting our body or could be triggering or harming.

Most of it came because I wanted to know all the things I could do with my essential oils, right? So I wanted to know all the DIY recipes, and as I dived into the DIY recipes, like, why do I want to make it on my own? Why do I want to spend the time doing that?

Discovering Toxic Load

And I found out very quickly it was just because of the toxicity of the products that are available on the shelves. And I felt so naive as a consumer. I had chosen my products based on one, how strong smell the smell was. I loved fragrance. That's how I think we make our house feel like home sometimes. It's the smell. We want someone to walk in and smell our house is clean. We want them to come and feel welcomed, right? And that hope that whatever I purchased from a store because it was on sale or because it smelled good that somebody had already done the research and made sure that they provided me with the safest product possible.

doTERRA: Absolutely. A lot of people see that realization as very daunting because then you have to do something about it once you know a little bit more. So how did you go about ridding your house of those toxins?

Becoming Aware of Your Products

Lauren: So the first thing I did was I became really aware of the products I was using on a daily basis because that's where I felt I could make the biggest impact—was what can I eliminate that I know we have the highest exposure rate of, right?

And so I found anything with fragrance was our highest exposure rate, and it is for most people. In fact, indoor air, our air quality is about two to five times more polluted than outside air. And it's because of fragrance. Again, we want to make our house smell good. So I started looking at the things that I was using on a daily basis to make my house smell like home. And that was something very quickly that I was able to sub out. I already had these oils in my home.

Replacing Products with Natural Options

I get to multitask them. I get to use them for supporting my daughter's body, for supporting my health, my husband, my other children. But now I'm going to multitask them. I'm going to put them to use with making my house smell like home.

Then after that, I made a list of the things I was about to run out of, and I knew I had to replace them anyway. So why not start looking for better options? And if I couldn't find a better option or if the next option was that was safe and clean and effective, wasn't budget-friendly, I decided to learn to DIY.

And I found very quickly that there are so many DIYs out there that are very easy to make. The ingredients are easy to come by. They're incredibly safe, and they're just as effective as the things that I have been paying more for that I just enjoyed the smell of. And then I got to infuse them with essential oils, and I still got those amazing aromas that I was in love with and made my house smell good, my kids feel good, everything in my house smells good. But I saved our family time. I saved us money and obviously made a huge improvement on my daughter's quality of life.

doTERRA: Well, Lauren, your story is incredible, and it's amazing that you've been able to see such changes and such benefits for your family. So the big question is how do other people do this? What products and resources does doTERRA have to help other people on this journey?

Cleaning Products and Fragrances

Lauren: Well, I would highly suggest first looking at some of the cleaning products. The cleaning products in our homes, on a daily basis, that we use, the toxic exposure especially to our lungs, right?

Think of the things that you're using to fragrance. When we focus on respiratory care, when we focus on our lungs, I want you to think of what the sole purpose of our lungs is, right? So we're constantly, on a daily basis, we’re doing this gas exchange for breathing in oxygen and breathing out the carbon dioxide.

So every time you walk through your home and you're able to smell things, just know that because you're able to smell them, you are also breathing in those little odorants. And those little odorants are getting into your airway. They're getting down into your lungs in the same way the oxygen you're breathing is, it is going in, right? So look at the things that we fragrance our home with. Look at the things that are aerosols, things that we're spraying, like our cleaners. It's a quick, easy swap. And again, most of you probably already have some of the most basic essential oils in your home.

Now they have to be doTERRA. So look at the things that we're breathing in. It's very easy to stop burning the candles. It's very easy to dump the plug-ins and not going around and spraying different scented fragrances on our soft surfaces in our house and eliminating those. But then the cleaning cabinet, we definitely addressed that. We're spraying those, but most of us use those on a daily basis.

DIYs

And then I love the simplicity of DIY. So doTERRA has, if you just type in your search bar “doTERRA DIY Blog,” you're going to see countless articles on different DIY recipes, whether it's things you want to use in your cleaning cabinet, things you want to use as replacements in the bathroom, or anywhere else in life. But DIY isn't as hard or as frustrating as we sometimes work it up to be inside of our heads. And the ingredients, most of us can find any big box store local to us. So that’d be a great place to start.

doTERRA's Youtube Channel

Second is doTERRA's YouTube channel. I don't know about anybody else, I love to read, so I do a lot of it when I research. But if I get to watch something, it sinks in a lot faster. So I make heavy use of doTERRA's YouTube. And again, just go check out their DIYs. If I can watch somebody else do it, it's so much easier to replicate it and not feel like it's so overwhelming. And sometimes when we get to see it visually, we're like, “Oh yeah, that wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be.” So definitely make use of the blog, make use of the YouTube channel.

Get Creative

And then feel free to learn to experiment. When I started out with my DIYs, you’d look at a recipe, right? And you’re like, “Oh, I don't have that oil. I can't make that recipe.” That's totally not true. Our oils multitask themselves, right? We can use Lemon for a countless number of applications inside the house, but we can also use a countless number of different essential oil blends when we're doing our DIYs. So look at what you do have and put them to use. And just think of what is the intention? Is it just because I want a good smell, or is there a benefit that I'm looking for as I'm infusing each of my DIY recipes with my essential oils?

doTERRA: Well, that is incredible advice. And I want to just hit back on something that you mentioned earlier, that your family didn't feel like they were sacrificing the good smells or sacrificing the things that they had, that you made these switches and it was the same benefits and then even more benefits, which is amazing.

Lauren: Oh, yeah, absolutely. And even now, my kids are much older. I have teenagers now, so I have daughters who—smell is everything, right? They want to spray their perfume, their body spray, all these things, right? And so to just pull that away from a teenager would feel horrible.

But instead, we get to take something like doTERRA's unscented lotion, and we actually infuse Citrus Bliss® into it or Citrus Bloom™ or Lavender, whatever scent that you love. So we can still cover our bodies, fill our homes, make amazing recipes, where our home just smells like home because it is a part of what makes us human.

It's one of our five senses. It's what we're using on a daily basis. When we walk into any new place—into somebody else's home, into our own home—visually, we get to assess things. But the scent, it’s a big one. So being able to still make my house smell like home, doesn't have to not smell like anything. It can still smell like home, but now, again, I'm multitasking my oils. I'm getting benefits from them. I’m getting to enjoy their beautiful fragrances.

doTERRA: Absolutely. Lauren, thank you so much for talking with us today, for sharing your story, and also for your advice. It has been incredible.

Lauren: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

doTERRA: Thanks for joining us and congratulations on living a healthier lifestyle with essential oils. If you liked what you heard today, rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen. Also, if you want to try any of the products you learned about, go to doterra.com or find a Wellness Advocate near you to place an order today.