Essential Oils with Chiari

Essential oils are polarizing. People either think they’re the best things since sliced bread or absolute snake oil. I don’t care what camp you fall into. Essential oils aren’t going to cure your Chiari (or probably anything else). I’m not here to sell you on doTERRA or any other brand of oils. This is just an honest admission of how they’ve helped shape my health and healing at a time when nothing else seemed to work.

When I started using essential oils in 2017, I didn’t have a clue what to do with them. Mostly I liked the way they smelled and was intrigued by this oil culture that seemed to include healthy, vibrant, beautiful people—the opposite of what I saw in the mirror every day—and I wanted that. I wanted to feel healthy, vibrant, and beautiful too.

They mean so much more to me than that now.

At the height of my symptoms, I lived in a home full of toxic chemicals that I put in, on, and around my body, and all that crap flying around made it hard to breathe...which made me cough...which gave me SO MUCH PAIN. One of the easiest and most obvious ways I found to reduce coughing/PAIN triggers is reducing that toxic load—both in my home and in/on my body.

 Where do essential oils come in?

At their simplest, high quality essential oils can be used to make non-toxic perfumes, personal care products, and household cleaning supplies. If you’re like me and you’re not super into brewing your own batches of all-purpose cleaner or making my own bars of soap, doTERRA—my preferred essential oil brand—makes all of these things for you, as well as nutritional support products and every kind of supplement imaginable.

In the beginning of my doTERRA experience, I didn’t think it would be financially feasible to use their products because they can be expensive. You’re paying for quality and it’s worth every penny, but it can be daunting. I started slowly with a handful of oils. Today, essential oils are an essential part of living.

how I use Essential oils daily:

Take doTERRA PB Assist (probiotic) capsule and a few drops of Copaiba essential oil (nervous system support) under my tongue after breakfast.

Set diffusers in living room with the abode essential oil blend. Set diffusers in kitchen with lemon and clove oils.

Clean kitchen counters with doTERRA OnGuard concentrated cleaning spray.

Use an essential rollerball on my neck for perfume (usually something floral like Jasmine or Davana).

Mix half a MetaPWR Advantage packet (metabolism support) with fiber and Vitamin C before lunch.

If I’m having allergies, I rub peppermint, lavender, and lemon oils (with carrier oil) on my neck—my husband’s favorite for his own allergies—and pop a doTERRA TriEase softgel.

With dinner I take doTERRA Microplex VMz (multivitamin) and vEO Mega (omega). If it’s a heavy meal, I’ll add TerraZyme (digestive enzyme).

At bedtime I take a DDR Prime capsule (cellular support) or a few drops of the DDR Prime oil blend underneath my tongue.

I brush my teeth with doTERRA Supermint toothpaste.

I use doTERRA natural deodorant.

I use a few drops of peppermint oil on dryer balls instead of dryer sheets.

My son uses doTERRA children’s IQ Mega (omega) vitamins and when he was a baby we used their gentle baby hairwash.

I spray doTERRA OnGuard on shopping cart handles and other surfaces, and on my and my son’s hands when we eat food at restaurants.

If I think I’m getting sick, I take doTERRA OnGuard capsules (immune support) and up my supplement intake.

If I’m actually sick, I use the doTERRA Breathe blend in diffusers and on my neck, and take the Breathe droplets to soothe coughs and sore throats.

If I’m really sick, I’ll make an essential oil “shot” by adding a few drops of potent oils to a shot glass and downing it (not recommended without guidance) and have my husband rub a mix of peppermint, lemon, lavender, rosemary, sweet basil, cypress, and anything else that sounds good onto my bare back.

This list, as long as it is, is not everything, but it is the minimum of where and how I use essential oils today. Full disclosure—I’m not perfect. I still burn the occasional candle and not every single personal care product I use is non-tox or even low-tox BUT at the current level in my home I can live here without coughing, which means I exist most days without pain.

Maybe even more important is the immune support I’ve gained from making changes like this. I spent years catching every bug in an eighty-mile radius because improperly administered medications destroyed my immune system. The very “medicine” prescribed to make me better was keeping me sick (back when the Chiari was misdiagnosed as asthma). Years later, I’m prescription-free and no longer have to carry a quart of cough syrup in my purse. Instead I use essential oils to boost my immune system naturally because, as good as I feel, when I get sick (and I do), common colds are still accompanied by weeks of coughing and unbearable head pressure and pain.

I don’t live in a bubble. Over the past few years I’ve traveled on airplanes, taken a cruise, and visited other countries, and I did it without getting horribly sick. 2023 was…a tough one though. I was hit with a nasty case of bronchitis in May, and my son’s preschool sent fresh and phlegmy viruses home every week from November through March of 2024. I had some…dark days. But overall my health has vastly improved, and I don’t catch every bug hacked in my general direction anymore. There’s still a lot more I’d like to do for my body to get it in better shape to take care of me, but with the oils I’m off to a great start. 

Cleaning up our physical environments and improving our overall health is massively important to living well with Chiari. But there’s another step, and it’s crucial.

We need to do the INTERNAL WORK.