Episode 172: Keeping Your Body in Balance

doTERRA: When your body is out of balance, you can tell, and it's not a great feeling. Thankfully, there are things you can do to help keep your body in balance every day.

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 Kat Brown about how you can utilize lifestyle changes and powerful doTERRA products to keep your body in balance. Kat, thank you so much for being here with us today.

Kat Brown: Hi and thank you for having me on here! It's my pleasure.

doTERRA: This is a topic that I am really interested in. So I want to ask you first before we really dive into it, what does it even mean to keep your body in balance?

Kat: I kind of feel like this is kind of a trick question because we all kind of have this image in our mind of what a balanced body would be and all the boxes checked. And if you think about a scale, everything is given equal attention. And, you know, we've perfectly aligned everything, right? And I don't know, it kind of stresses me out to even think about that.

But I think it's just understanding priorities, right? Looking at nutrition and exercise, weight management, reducing toxic load, rest and manage stress, all the things that we talk about a lot in doTERRA and just really understanding the priorities that are involved with each of those as far as lifestyle is concerned and the balance overall in our body.

doTERRA: Absolutely. I love that! Now, you know, life happens, and things get in the way. What are some of the different life events that might be affecting our bodies’ balance?

Kat: I think with this question I immediately go to after I had my kids, and I felt like hot mess express, you know, just you kind of feel like everything's off, like nutrition. You're eating weird or not sleeping. I think having kids would be a really good example of a life event, but also, you know, if you're going through any type of recovery.

If you're a caregiver, my gosh, that puts a lot of stress on your body. Maybe you're taking care of someone else, but not necessarily taking care of yourself.

If you're traveling a lot, that exposes us to a lot of different environmental factors and then also puts us at risk for, you know, not sleeping well. Maybe we're not exercising as much. Not really looking at our nutrition.

doTERRA:I think all of those are wonderful examples and things just happen, and we can't always control it. But what are some of the things we can control? What are some lifestyle changes we can make to bring ourselves greater balance?

Kat: So this is where—I love this visual that doTERRA has. It's called the doTRRA Wellness Lifestyle Pyramid. And if you're new to doTERRA, this is something that is built into our philosophy. But it's not just doTERRA. There's other respected healthcare institutions that have adopted a similar structure, if you will, or philosophy.

And what this is, and you can easily Google this or search this on any search engine and just type in “wellness lifestyle pyramid” and if you add “doTERRA,” then you'll see doTERRA’s specific one. But what it is, is a pyramid shape, and the structure is broken down into different layers, and each of these layers represents lifestyle and health care.

Obviously, the bulk of this structure is the bottom four layers, which is nutrition being the foundation, then exercise and weight management, and then rest and manage stress, and then reducing toxic load. And these are all areas where we can have the most influence on. And then the top two layers are informed self-care and working with a trusted medical provider.

Nutrition

But where we want to focus on as far as lifestyle changes that will support greater balance within our body are, of course nutrition, those bottom four layers, and nutrition is the foundational layer that takes up the most real estate. So any time you're thinking about I just want to kind of get things back in order, you know, your body thrives on order.

Any time we're thinking about where to kind of start, nutrition will always be that first foundational layer that we’ll go back to. And really, if you're wanting some direction in that, just looking at what you're consuming. And so I think the aim is just to try to have a clean diet. Obviously, that's not 100% possible all the time. My family kind of lives on an 80/20 rule, 80% clean, 20% mind your own business.

Exercise and Weight Management

And then you know you have exercise and weight management. And moving our bodies is just so good not only just for physical well-being, but also for our mental health as well. It also supports our rest in our sleep.

Reducing Toxic Load

And then looking at things that we're exposed to in our environments. What kind of personal care products are we using? Are we being exposed to environmental threats regularly? My background is in ICU nursing, so I'm around radiation to a degree, and so I have to think about those things and do things in my personal life to help kind of counterbalance some of those, those things as well.

doTERRA: I think that's amazing. And it's those little things, like you said with the nutrition, you don't have to be 100% perfect, but we need to make sure we're making an effort and that we're really trying to do what we can to improve our lifestyle.

Kat: Right and have some grace, right?

doTERRA: Right, absolutely. Now, Kat, bringing essential oils into the picture, how can I use essential oils aromatically or topically to help bring balance into my life?

Kat: So aromatically is just a really cool way to use essential oils. But if we're looking to create a little bit more balance in our life, aromatically and topically, when we breathe in essential oils, we're impacting the limbic system. And so this is where you can kind of listen to your body.

Aromatic Use

And you know, I live in Alaska where it's dark and snowy and cold, and so I don't always want to get up and do a workout. And I can definitely hear my body tell me, you know, I don't feel like working out today, but that's when I can utilize oils like citruses and mints to diffuse around the home, just to kind of elevate the mood.

On the flip side of that, if you have a household that's, you know, maybe you’ve got some rambunctious kids or there's a lot of stress hanging over the home, this is where you can incorporate flowers and trees. Those oils bring in a much more—they create more of a calming environment and just a place that feels more like a haven.

Topical Use

Topically, the oils that I think about for topical use, obviously, you can use those to get systemic benefits or localized benefits. But I got to go back to like the first oil that I was ever introduced to. It was two that I used topically.

Deep Blue® was incredible when I just had my son. Carrying kids around is just a lot of work. And I remember Deep Blue just bringing a lot of relief to that and some of the discomfort that I was having in my back and my shoulders.

And then also dōTERRA Balance®. I know we're talking about balance, but Balance is an actual blend of different tree oils that helps to create a calming environment. I remember standing in my kitchen and my kids just screaming and hollering. They were one and three, and I remember having that first experience with Balance, breathing it in and then applying it to my shoulders and just feeling like I was just in this bubble of calm and tranquility. And I knew something was different at that point, but that's a blend that I wear every single day is Balance. It's almost become my perfume at this point.

doTERRA: I love that and finding what resonates with you. Like you said, there are so many different oils and scents that you can use for different situations and finding what you connect with and what really is going to work for you is so important.

Kat: Right, and you can use oils, ladies, you can use oils in your hair. I like put oils through my hair, put the Balance into my hands and then run it through my hair. And then you basically become a walking diffuser for not just yourself, but everyone around you. So you basically create this bubble of calm.

doTERRA: Absolutely! Now, before we end, I want to ask you one more question, and it's about using oils internally. Which are your favorite? And how can I use essential oils internally to help keep my body in balance?

Kat: OK, I love to use oils internally. My husband and I both do, and our kids do, too. It's very safe. I also want to just remind everyone that you want to make sure that you check that there is a supplement facts label on the bottle of whatever oil you're going to use. You can use a lot of oils internally, by the way, but always double check to make sure that that's on the label.

Internal Use

Some of my favorites to use aside from using dōTERRA Lifelong Vitality Pack®, which we've used that for three or four years now, we love it, and it has oils in it.

But after a hard workout, my husband and I both use Turmeric Dual Chamber Capsules, which contains the turmeric extract, the botanical, but it's encapsulated in Turmeric essential oil, and it's the Turmeric essential oil that makes the turmeric extract work better, so to speak. It makes it more bioavailable, which in turn makes it more effective within your body. And if we know anything about turmeric, it's wonderful for just supporting healthy inflammation within our body.

And after you've worked out, one of the things that your body goes into is repair mode, right? And so that's when you really want to focus on supporting good inflammation and the right kind of inflammation. And so this is where turmeric has been just a game changer for us whenever we have really hard workouts, other ones that we love, Adaptiv™ Capsules. Now, this contains different essential oils, but it also contains botanicals in there as well. So we love those just for just for days that feel heavy and you just need a little extra support when it's just stressful and things feel a little overwhelming. This is where we really love to use the Adaptiv capsules.

Likewise, we like to put Copaiba under our tongue just for like, it's almost like a quick go-to for, you know, If you need some immediate assistance, you know, things feel a little overwhelming. Put a couple of drops under your tongue. That's always nice.

The last one, I would say, is DDR Prime®. DDR Prime is a blend of oils that helps support us on a cellular level and helps to fight free radical damage that occurs within our cells. And so this is this is one that we like to use and recovery as well. We've really seen DDR Prime be a superstar in that respect.

doTERRA: I love all of those suggestions, and there are definitely a couple that I haven't tried yet, so they're on my list now too make sure I include them in my routine. Kat, it has been wonderful to talk to you today and learn a little bit more about what we can do to keep our body in balance. Thank you so much for joining us.

Kat: Thank you so much! Have a good day.

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.