Balancing Hormones Naturally: The Essential Oil Approach

Introduction and guest overview 0:00

Hello. Welcome back to Hormones and Mental Health. Overcoming anxiety, depression, ADHD, and women. I am your co-host, Sharon Stills, and as always, I'm excited to be here with you all. I love having these conversations. I love having you listen in because I know what you hear will change your trajectory. It will change your path. It will change how you're experiencing your health and I pick the best people to come and talk who are really going to make a difference for you. And today I have done that again.

I have Jody Stern up coaching with me. She's a bestselling author. She's an award winning journalist, she's a functional practitioner, and she's the founder of Vibrant Blue Oils, which are like my favorite oils. And her essential oils are there like no other out there. And she is like the the doctor of essential Oils and her essential oils. Like this one. I have this professor release and she has for your adrenals and your gallbladder and your lymph and your parasympathetic nervous system and so much more.

And today we're going to chat about her oils, her story, and how they can help you modulate emotional things that you are experiencing. So welcome, welcome, welcome, Jerry, I'm so happy you're here. And thank you. Yeah. And and right back at you. You're of hormonal expertise. Yes. You can topically apply oils and they're actually fabulous for anxiety, depression and had and it really helps to test and don't and balance your hormones. So Sharon. Yes. And you know that's it's like I think some women get confused and they just think I just need hormones.

And yes, you need hormones, you need your hormones balance. But then you need all the other things that go along with being in a happy, healthy body and balancing your terrain and so essential oils. I think there's so much misinformation and different kinds. And so how did you get into essential oils and like what really sets apart how you do them? I want them to hear it in your words. Yeah, I, I actually necessity is the mother of invention. Right. So when my kids were little and my son had definitely had A.D.D., he had some stuff and I was really I was basically killing myself trying to make these nutrient dense whole foods, you know, gluten free, dairy free.

How essential oils support hormones and emotions 2:37

It was very hard to get them to kale. But he never refused a foot rub for mom with oils. And so I started playing with oils with all of their medicinal properties to help ground him, to help regulate his nervous system, to help kind of calm his energy, help him sleep, help him focus. And they weren't so well. I started playing with them for myself. And what I realized, first of all, you know, I'm killing myself to make organic food and oils are really the concentrated essence of plants. You know, you go into the field, you pick the lavender, you put it in the fat.

It's not the boiling water that you use, but you boil the water elsewhere and then you steam distill it. The steam rises with the healing properties, and then you cool the steam and it becomes the water, which is the hydroxyl, and the oil which is the highly concentrated essence of the plant. And so it's really important that it's clean and not full of pesticides. Otherwise you're getting concentrated pesticide. So I always use organic oils. And then what I found is, you know, I think they make it incredibly complicated to blend it and somewhat expensive.

I started realizing that the more overwhelmed you were, the more you needed, like a done for you solution. You needed a combination of two or more oils that was already diluted, that just arrived, and you were told exactly how to use it. And that just made life easy. And especially, you know, I, I joke, I had that kid who did those things. It can be exhausting to have a very intense child, you know, because you're always like, on. And it's really hard. You're not getting rid of your child. You know, you're not necessarily getting a divorce.

You're not quitting your job. You can't fire your mother in law, although sometimes you might want to. And so I started realizing, you know, I can't control the external world, but I can regulate my response. And so the first oil that I really created that I actually think is fabulous for hormonal balance, for anxiety, I use it all the time for anxiety, for panic attacks, and just for regulating health because it's really, you know, if you think of being driving your car right, you turn your car on and wait a minute, you're pressing the gas, but it's not going.

Maybe you're in neutral. If you were in the wrong gear, your car is not going to go. If you're in the wrong gear, your body's not going to really function properly. And the gears in your body are kind of safety, which is what allows for healing and stress or danger. Your nervous system responds to danger. It has two gears. Your sympathetic fight or flight danger is present, including even emotional danger. My child is having a complete meltdown and it's making my heart race. And I'm really anxious and slightly overwhelmed, and I'm not quite sure what to do in this moment or safety.

You know, they've eaten, they're sleeping. I'm good. The house is clean, and the gearshift between these two branches of your autonomic nervous system is your vagus nerve. Cranial nerve number ten starts at the base of the head, splits and winds around both sides behind the ear lobe on that mastoid bone. It then winds through your thyroid, your heart, your lung, every organ of digestion and detoxification. And if it believes that there is danger present, even emotional danger, it allocates resources towards survival.

Blood is right into your arms and your legs, so you can fight or flee and away from your core, away from digestion, which allows you to get the raw materials that can help you, you know, support yourself during all stages of your hormonal growth.

Vagus nerve, parasympathetic balance, and anxiety relief 6:12

Also your detoxification, which is really critical, especially as you age, because you want to make sure that you're eliminating old hormones and not recycling old hormones and throwing off your hormonal balance. So the easiest way that I found, you know, even when the world, when everything is kind of overwhelming and falling apart and I feel my heart race and like, even literally putting a shoe on feels like too much, I either topically apply the parasympathetic behind the ear lobe on the master bone.

You can even feel if you feel behind your earlobe, you're going to feel a divot, acupuncture points or divots and that automatically like gearshifts you out of danger and into safety. And you might find right away. Like if you're feeling really overwhelmed all of a sudden you're like, oh, well, you know, I guess I can put one shoe on and tie it in and, you know, like you're able to break things down and manage them and then smell, smell gets directly into the brain, which we can talk more about.

But smelling things through the left nostril, you know, anxiety is often in like, functional neurology. It's kind of the right frontal lobe that's overactive. So to balance that response, if you smell anything through your left nostril, it could be an oil you could peel a citrus fruit. You know, oils are found in the peel of the citrus fruits. Peel them and or, mandarin orange and just smell that and plug your right nostril that. Then activate it's the left frontal lobe balances the two hemispheres and you'll feel a lot less anxious.

And, so I'm like, I just smell nine because I always forget. I'm like, yeah, yeah, like put them on. But that just smelled. And that's such a good reminder. So I love that you started with the the vagus nerve and the nervous system because again, I think so often when we're feeling anxious or depression, society has told us to look outside ourselves to go get a pill, to take an anti anxiety, to take an antidepressant. And what you're talking about is like a core root cause of imbalance that can be leading to those feelings.

And so it it's so, so important, I always say, and I've yet to say different in 23 years of practice. Any patient I see who has a chronic disease diagnosis, they are always stuck in the sympathetic and they always don't have enough parasympathetic tone. And this is exactly what you're talking about. Yeah. And I mean, the other thing I love about it is it's not just managing symptoms, it's addressing the underlying root cause. And over time, it's almost like if you start weightlifting, you know, at first 3 pounds might feel heavy, then you can work up to five, you get stronger and it gets easier if you, you know, you're able to recognize like what? Why?

Yeah, sometimes. And I still catch myself in traffic. I'm like, oh, look at me. Not parasympathetic at all. And then I'm able to kind of shift out of it. Yeah, yeah. If we're human, we're not perfect. Yeah. Recognizing. Oh, I'm feeling anxious. Let me, grab some oils. Right. Because no one is going to just be then 100% of the time. So what are some of your other favorite formulas that you have that you have found to be helpful with anxiety, with depression, or even with ADHD? Yeah. You know, it's so funny.

Like I'm 56, so I think I'm probably completely A.D.D.. Like I just to overshare. Like in order for me to write, I like to have like a stupid video on in the background. Like, it's almost like I need to distract myself in order to really focus. And so the one that I love, we've got a focus blend that I sometimes apply to the temples or smell. And then we also have a circulation blend that I originally created. I too am working on my thyroid. Talk about a hormonal unpacking, but for a long time my hands and my feet would be freezing.

So I created this, which is great for, you know, carrying blood flow, kind of vessel dilating. And I used to put it on my wrists and on my ankles. And now that I'm warm, most of the time I don't use it for that, but I use it around the neck because I've found that when I'm able to enhance blood flow to the brain, I'm really able to enhance my ability to focus, to regulate, to stay on task. Sometimes I smell it, I, I don't like driving at night, and I'm not going to drink caffeine if I'm driving at night.

So that is, you know, when we go night skiing and the roads are treacherous and I'm like, I just need to focus and, you know, stay on the road. That's not you know what? What's in the focus, what oil's. Focus is a lot of the blends that they talk about, you know, like there's a lot of research behind peppermint, behind rosemary, behind basil. It's kind of all of the ones that are known to enhance your focus and help with memory. It's interesting. When I was writing my second book, I, I really went down an intense rabbit hole of like, let's look at all the research we can find on like, Rosemary and focus and peppermint and focus.

I was using my children. You know,

Focus, circulation, and ADHD support 11:23

there's all this research that if you smell something when you're, like, studying, you know, math tables or spelling words, and then you smell it again when you're taking the test, it helps with recall. It's it's really fabulous. I do that actually. Sometimes when I'm giving speeches and I'm just trying to remember points, it really seems to help. And then the circulation blend has a lot of basil dilating oils, including cypress. But the, the magic one I think is black pepper. It's so interesting.

There are supplement formulators that actually add black pepper to their supplement formulations. The idea being that if the, if there is more room for the blood to flow, then the supplement actually gets to the cells and organs and tissues more quickly. And so it enhances the effectiveness just by enhancing the delivery mechanism. I love that I'm, I'm and I'm like, I need focus. I need to because I just I'll tell you, a little holiday. Gift will give us. A great idea. Like I kind of think this must be the same day this year we'll give you.

Oh, I know, very exciting. All right, so we've got focus, we've got circulation, we've got the nervous system. What do we. Know? The other one that's really good. I find for myself for and especially it's so interesting. Like 5G, everywhere, omnipresent now grounding what I've really come to realize is the world what happens in the world and in the environment is completely outside of your control. The only thing you can control is yourself. You know, like I use that example of traffic earlier. There are days when someone catch me off, when I'm just like, whatever, you know, get there safely.

And then the next day the. Exact same thing happens and there are four letter words flying out of my mouth. And the only difference is me and kind of how resilient I am in that moment. And so the more, you know, regulated I am, either by stimulating my vagus nerve, we can talk about supporting adrenal function, but also just grounding yourself, like feeling really stable in the Earth. You know, the interesting thing with these 5G towers, they're so close together and there's so many of them because the Earth kind of grounds, the, the radiation, the frequency.

And so they have to put them close together. So if you are near one, you know, the best thing you can do is support your own grounding. I like sleeping on grounding pads. We have an attention blend that's, vetiver, lavender, frankincense and, cedarwood. You know, anything that kind of comes from a tree that has really deep roots in the earth? It almost works like that on you. And the more grounded you are, the more in your body you are, the more kind of regulated and the easier it is to respond.

And I love that analogy. So what is the name of it? Is it called grounding or it's. Actually called attention. It was based off of there was some research with ADHD kids, and they found that this combination of oils really help them focus. And they do believe it has a lot to do with the vetiver. But my son Max, I used to use it on him all the time, like he had a blurting out problem. He, you know, he would know the answer, you know. Like, oh, you know. So we really kind of worked on that. That was called the blurt out blend.

But, it's a tension and you could just put it on the bottom of your feet. I put it on the bottom of my feet all the time. It really helps me. You know, I, I do try to get outside in nature. I tend to live in colder places and like any Arizona. So, I'm not going barefoot often, but I do try to kind of connect with nature that way. Well, I like what's really sticking with me is what you said about, like, using the oils from the tree and that, you know, we have a lot of cactus here. We don't have a lot of those lovely trees like redwoods that you can just hug and ground to.

So I love the intention of like using the tree oils to help you be more grounded. And anything we can do to protect ourselves from the 5G from the Wi-Fi, from the dirty electricity. I mean, this is just we can't see it. And so it's easy to forget about it. But this is an epidemic of toxicity that is just barreling. It's I know it's invisible. And so we don't realize it, but our nervous system is responding to it and to that no fluid flow. You know, my friends, for practitioners that work in kind of the lymphatic space, a lot of them are working with professional athletes and they're like, no one moves more than these guys, and they're still congested because there is something about that frequency.

So the other thing that I'm a big like, actually, I've been doing this since I started working with you. I think that moving my lymph and the fascia and, you know, the fascia, the nervous system and the lymph all work together, especially in the neck. Our friend Christine Schaffner did all this research. You know, she, like you, was finding that her chronically ill patients often had some kind of their vagus nerve was a little bit off line, or they weren't in parasympathetic. And then she went a little deeper, like, why?

What's going on? She was calling it vagus nerve toxicity. And she works a lot with pathogens in the mouth. So the exit route for the pathogens in the mouth is the jaw line. Right. And then it intersects with the vagus nerve and goes drains down the neck. And then the lymph, all of the lymph, which is your garbage,

Grounding, lymph drainage, and fascia support 16:48

you know, your sewer system drains through the clavicles. So this is bottleneck spot, you know, number Uno, if you can open these clavicles and this neck root, then you can help eliminate drainage. Christine did these sonogram photos of the neck and found that the lymph was congested. It was pressing into the vagus nerve. You know, the fascia was almost gripping around it. So that ecosystem wasn't really allowing for drainage. So the bad thing stayed longer than they could should, and sometimes got uptake in by the nerve and the good things couldn't really get in.

So just opening lymphatics, I don't know if you remember this, you had me do, a thermography and you were like, wow, this works really good. Well, back story, at one point it didn't, and it terrified me. And so I've been obsessed with lymphatic drainage. And that honestly, if you get nothing out of this, but you can stimulate your vagus nerve to activate your parasympathetic nervous system. And it's really good to drain your lymph and oils can just help because like, you know, sometimes you go to the acupuncturist and they leave the needle in.

It just continues to kind of stimulate the spot even when you're not there. And so point number one is the clavicles. Point number two is the neck. And if you want to do under the armpit, that's really wonderful for breast drainage and breast health, you know, just yeah. I mean, I started doing CRT, which is computerized regulation, thermography, like you came in, had when I was a baby doctor, like, so I've been doing it for 23 years when I just started. And it's why a lot of us became so obsessed with the lymph, because it's not really can do a blood test for your lymph.

You can kind of symptomatically, but this is an actual, repeatable, reproducible test of the nervous system that actually tests the lymph. And in pretty much every patient, unless there's someone who's been obsessed and working to open things, it's exactly what you said. These spots above and below the clavicle, the neck is always lit up like a Christmas tree with congestion. And we just don't move these areas. We have to really have a focus and, you know, if you're not moving your lymph, you might not be circulating your progesterone, which can cause anxiety.

You might be holding on to toxins which can, you know, so this whole area. Right, like and I don't want to go off into a whole dental tension like, you know, I will say, you know, it's interesting. I don't have any cavities, but I swear to God, my dental cleanings were like crime scenes because my gums were so inflamed. And then one time I went in and it no bleeding. They're like, what are you doing right away? What am I doing? What could I be doing wrong? And I realized it was the lymph drainage, because I think all of the toxins that were lingering, that were causing inflammation, if they can drain, they're not causing inflammation.

And I did some research and wrote a blog on it. And then Rachel Cava, a friend who's a biological dentist, said, oh, thank you for writing about this. I see this all the time, but no one's really talking about it, you know? And also just in terms of aging, like the turkey gobble, you know, there's so much that Cristina always gets a little grumpy. She's like, you know, these facelifts are horrible for lymphatic drainage. Like, there is so much that you can do naturally that helps you, helps you look younger and helps you feel better.

And exactly. I went and got a I had acupuncture, facial and gua sha and. Yes. And the red light. There's so much fun stuff you can do that is in putting toxins into your body, which just congest the lymph even more. So how about depression? What do you think about from your line? You know, it's really interesting. So I, I don't know, I told you this, I had crazy mold in my ceiling. Like, I didn't know I went to, an event, and I was listening to this guy kind of talk about the physiological effects of mold depression being included as, like, that sounds like me.

And he said, you know, it's hard to find, but, if you take the supplicant supplement Merica for two weeks, twice a day, and it works for you, you probably have mold. So I did, and I went and, found the mold, remediated the mold, and, did a lot of drainage. So I kind of I was suffering from things that I would perceive the depression like symptoms. And what helped me when I was in it was actually our anti-inflammatory blend. I'm a big fan of this blend. I have dry skin, so acne is not my problem.

But a lot of my daughter's friends were putting it on the bottom of their feet before bed and saying it cleared up their skin. So it's like, oh, that's kind of cool. Like wonder, you know, if I can do that. And it clears up aches and pains, it totally does. But it also really helped with depression. So it's like putting it, actually the back of the head, like, right. You know, the I'm going gonna say I'm going to mispronounce it basically the base of the. Skull, the occipital ridge. That's what I that's the word that was in my head that wasn't come out of my mouth.

That's good, because there is some belief that depression has to do with, brain inflammation. The other thing that's that's really uplifting, it's really interesting. Different oils have kind of different sizes. And, you know, we talked about smell. Smell is the fastest way into the brain, you know, the, a factory lobe is located right by the Limbic Club. We have a blend called Limbic Reset that has a lot of, it actually has Melissa, which is, outrageously expensive and really great. It's a citrus oil, but just smelling and, you know, and it could be anything like if you, you know, I used to have a small bar at my, practice and just let kids pick, you know, a lot of, like, orange smelling things, especially citrus.

They're really light and uplifting and goes directly into the brain, and it can help kind of reset the volume on, you know, how you're feeling and your mood. Rose, too. There's actually some really interesting research on Rose. There is a Nobel laureate from Seattle, who was looking at kind of the olfactory receptors for predator odor, and she took it one step further and realized that if you smell rose, it almost kind of counterbalances and knocks out that fear response. So that whole idea of stopping to smell the roses is great.

Oh my God, I love that. Linda. But I love that I always say we get to stop and smell the roses because it just helps us to slow down. Right? We're so go, go, go and we miss all these mundane moments that are so beautiful. And if you can embrace stuffing and smelling the roses. But now here's another reason. So how many nouns invest in my own personal? Like how many different, blends do you have like in your life? We have. We have about 50. The most popular are, the parasympathetic for regulating the nervous system, the lymph for drainage, the fascia for fascia release.

Because I, you know, when I first started talking about the vagus nerve, no one had heard about it. They were like like Las Vegas. I'm like a clap for you.

Depression, inflammation, and mood support blends 23:58

You know? And now fascia, they're like, what am I hope is that in a couple of years fashion will be is as omnipresent. But it just, really helps you regulate. We have one that helps you fall asleep. We have a couple that help you stay asleep. We have some to support all of the organ systems. But in terms of, you know, if you're listening to this and you're like, I never really thought about oils, you know, maybe I'll try it. I would, you know, the low hanging fruit and the things that seem to help everyone are the parasympathetic for the nervous system, the lymph.

We all need drainage support and the fascia release. We all need, you know, to kind of be less tired and more mobile. And, It's my little threesome. I'm looking at over half baths. I can you. So of course I'm like, I want that one. I want like, can you overdo it? Should you be, you know. It's I, I, I am a fan of like, kind of keeping it simple. And so I tell people like, you know, if you're going to group them, group them in threes, you know, and do three together. We also have a hypothalamus, one that's really good.

Like if you've ever muscle tested someone and they're switched or blocked sometimes it's almost like a reboot button. It's right here. And it just helps people to regulate, you know, or if, like our circadian rhythm is supposed to help me fall asleep, I can't even smell it. Like at a conference, or it'll kind of put me to sleep. But if it makes you wide awake, you're switched. Your nervous system is reacting the opposite. So you just need, you know, like your phone is glitching. You just reboot it.

I think that, supporting the hypothalamus is a bit of a reboot for the brain. I love that because when we start our thermography scans, which is a test of regulate and the glabella, that point you're pointing to is where we test to make sure someone is regulating before we move on to do all the points so that makes like 3,000% sense to me. That's that's awesome. So anything else? I mean, this is, like, I get so excited when I talk to you and I'm so excited because I'm like, my new clinic I'm going to have I want to smell bar for patients.

It's great. You know, the one thing I will say, I think that people feel, I think it's easy to feel kind of disempowered, you know, or, even connecting to people, like, sometimes, sometimes it feels like, you know, everyone has their own opinion and, where it's us against them a lot, and it just sometimes feels hard. And so I guess what I found is I've noticed if I have a problem that feels slightly insurmountable and I just focus on regulating my nervous system, it allows the blood flow to now go to the frontal cortex, which is the problem solving area, and I kind of regulate, and then I revisit it and all of a sudden I, I'm better able to connect, to have solutions.

You know, even things like conflicts that feel hard, it just makes everything easier. And I do think that, you know, what what you look for is what you see. And when you're able to see solutions more than problems, that helps with the anxiety, the depression, the focus, everything. So I just want to empower people. Yes, that's so true. Now you wrote how many books. Too. And do your books go into just in general essential oils, or how do people learn more about like your specific blend? Yeah. So the first one was when I was in clinical practice and I felt like, you know, I would just give people the book on the first session because I'm like this, you know, group has lots of quizzes.

I just felt like it was a more efficient use of their time, and they could kind of digest it, and then we could talk about it at the next session. And it does go into detail, mostly about the body and the brain. Balanced lens. The most recent book, Essential Oils to Boost the Brain and Heal the Body. What it really talks about is that idea of the root cause. I think for most people, you know, everyone you see, whether they have, you know, Lyme or autoimmunity or whatever is going on. Often, you know, if you're not sleeping is really hard to heal.

So step one is making sure that you're sleeping if your nervous system is dysregulated, like you mentioned, it's really hard to heal. So step two is making sure that your nervous system is that you're able to access your parasympathetic healing branch of the nervous system. Step three is if you're not, if the garbage isn't leaving and just recirculating, it's hard to heal. So let's open and support drainage pathways. You know, step four is inflammation. If you have chronic systemic inflammation, that's going to throw other things off.

And we can talk about we didn't even mention how, you know, estrogen, testosterone and progesterone play into inflammation

Using oils as bio-regulatory medicine and where to learn more 28:38

and how getting those imbalances can help kind of calm inflammation throughout the body. And suddenly the symptoms are gone. And then the final thing is immune modulation. So it's kind of five things that seem to be at the root of everything. And it can't really hurt you and just kind of set you up to support the healing. And it just really gets into why that is and how you can support those five areas with essential oils. I, I just adore you so much because you so many people do essential oils and it's just like this oil for that or this oil for that, or take this because it'll make you have better memory, but you are taking oils and applying them as bio regulatory medicine, and which is.

What I think plants are, if we're being honest, that's what I think Earth does. I think Earth, I think when we train with the Earth's frequency is we bio regulate. Yeah. And so it's so to me it's medicine. It's not just a random oil that you're providing. You're providing medicine. It's it's powerful stuff. So where can people where can our ladies who are listening learn more website. How do they find your book? Do you hang out on social media anywhere? Tell us all. I'll try. So you vibrant. Food oils.com.

You can grab a free guide which will give you some more information. The book is Essential oils to boost the brain and heal the body. It's random House. You can buy it anywhere. They buy books. I'm trying to think I'm not. I'm working on it. I I'm probably on Facebook and Instagram the most. And then my daughter set me up with TikTok, which I'm, you know, I think part of aging gracefully is accepting your limitations and moving beyond them, like doing things that, make you uncomfortable. So I'm trying to lean into it.

I'm laughing because I'm the same way. I'm like, I go in and out of social media, right? It's and there's so much benefit to it. But then there's also just this I don't want to be filming every single thing I do because I want to be smelling the roses, maybe following me, filming me, smelling the roses. But it's hard to smell the roses and film at the same time. So I, I hear you, and I'm still trying to kind of figure out the, the optimal balance. We do have a Facebook discussion group that I'm trying to pop in.

What I really am trying to do is add value. So if I can kind of show up and answer questions or share things that are helpful, that's that's where I'm trying to. If I can kind of lead with like, this might help someone as opposed to like, no one really wants to, you know. Exactly, exactly. So it's vibrant blue oils.com. Exactly. Okay. So go check her out, get some oils, see what resonates for you. We talked about some great ones here that you cannot go wrong with. But check out maybe there's something else on there that's calling your name.

And you know integrating oils. They're not going to interfere with anything you're doing. They're just going to add, like you're saying add value. They're just going to add value to your health and help you on your journey. So thank you so much for being here. What an important conversation and addition. You know what an important modality that the way you're applying it is just crucial. It's crucial in our healing journey. So thank you for being here and thank you for what you do. Thank you for all your oils and thank you everyone for for taking time out and smell in the roses with us today.