Highlights from Jonathan Otto's interview with Jeff Styba, for the Depression & Anxiety Series. Jeff discusses how to use essential oils for depression and anxiety.

Jeff Styba

Jeff: Yeah, so typically people think of essential oils as, like their background or their experience would be aromatherapy purposes. So, just the aroma. When, in fact, the aroma of essential oils is actually really the side effect of what they do. So, it’s a beautiful side effect because aroma has so many emotional benefits, aroma is the fastest way to access memory and emotions, but the reason why we use essential oils outside of that, and the majority the time therapeutically is for the molecule benefits that are absorbed into our bloodstream when we put them on or ingest them.

So, when it comes to usage, a therapeutic dose is gonna be about three to four drops. So, if you’re using five different oils, you want to use three to four drops of all five oils that you’re using. And then within 30 seconds of applying them topically, really anywhere on your body, one of the big concerns that people have is they don’t use them because they’re concerned they gonna do it incorrectly.

William, all you have to do is just put them on or ingest the ones that are meant to be ingested, and you’ll see the results and you’ll get great results.

So, as soon as you ingest an oil or apply it topically, the molecules are in our bloodstream within 30 seconds, systemic, meaning inside every cell in our body within about five minutes. And many of the molecules that are found in essential oils will actually cross the blood-brain barrier, where the vast majority of pharmaceuticals do not do that. So, from an emotional health standpoint, for feelings of anxiousness or depressed-type feelings, essential oils can be very, very effective because the molecules cross the blood-brain barrier.

Then lastly, the effects of essential oils last about four hours, so if you’re using them to help support your body in any physical ailment, or to help treat any type of disease process that you’re suffering with, you’re gonna have to reapply the protocol of oils every four to five hours, and you’re gonna do that through all waking hours until your body is better, and you’re starting to get the results that you want.

For adrenal fatigue, it’s usually high cortisol, high stress, stuck in sympathetic mode. The sympathetic, parasympathetic nervous system. Sympathetic is fight or flight, parasympathetic is sleep and eat. So, your sympathetic nervous system is very wired, and our cortisol levels are really high, and our adrenal glands start to burn out, and so that’s when you’re stressed out. And the essential oils that you’re gonna want to use are the oils that contain certain molecules that have a calming effect on our nervous system. The essential oil molecules that stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system, and suppress the sympathetic, and then you’ll start to feel much, much better, much more calm, much more clear-thinking. You’ll sleep better.

So, from an adrenal energy standpoint, you always want to be using calming essential oils.

William: Excellent. I love that. So, how would I apply them? Which ones? And how many drops?

Jeff: There’s so many different calming essential oils. Some of my favorites are Roman chamomile, lavender obviously. Lavender is the number one essential oil used in the world. So, lavender is a great calming essential oil.

There’s so many. Frankincense is even a calming oil. There’s different types of blends that have all the calming oils. Sandalwood is a great one. But the best way to use them is just put them on. My favorite way to use them and teach people how to use them is just put them on pulse points. So, like, your wrists, your neck, the back of your spine, the bottom of your feet if it’s a child or an infant, is a great place to use them.

As long as you just apply them topically somewhere, or if it’s an oil that’s meant to be ingested, ingest them. Like I said in the beginning, you want to use three drops of all the oils that you’re using, and do that as needed, or if you’re really suffering from adrenal fatigue, you’re gonna want to do that every four hours while you’re awake. Then diffusing at nighttime, so you’re breathing in those molecules as you’re sleeping, is gonna be really effective as well.

Yeah, so the diffuser just atomizes the molecules, so attaches it to a water molecule, atomizes the molecule in there, so they just float around the air and you’re breathing them in all night long when you’re sleeping.

So, at nighttime, we always like to diffuse ... Aroma is such a personalized experience, so you can do just a little bit of research and find out which ones are the best calming essential oils. Like I said, Roman chamomile, sandalwood, cedarwood, lavender, a lot of the wood oils from trees are very, very calming.

I always recommend using the oils that you love the aroma of, and diffuse those at nighttime, diffuse them throughout your home, and it just creates a nice, calming atmosphere, and then when you’re sleeping, obviously you’re breathing in all those molecules. My six-year-old daughter has never had a pharmaceutical, she’s never been vaccinated. She is an incredibly healthy little girl, but she has had oils on her since birth. Like, every single day, and she has her own little oil kit that she knows what to use.

Then, our 10-week-old daughter that we just had, Mila, the first, like, five weeks, she was really fussy and wouldn’t go to sleep. We couldn’t get her down. She’d fall asleep and then she’d wake up 30 minutes later, and nobody was sleeping. Obviously, with a young infant. But, right away, we just started using different calming blends. We put Roman chamomile on the bottom of her feet, three drops like we said earlier. Three drops of Roman chamomile, three drops of lavender, and within minutes, she would go down, fall asleep, she’d stay asleep for a few hours, and we could actually get some rest as well. But, using them on infants is very, very effective as well. So, they’re incredibly safe as long as you’re using them properly.