Audio: Lemon oil, Purification blend, and Thieves Household Cleaner

Doug Corrigan: Welcome and good day to you! This is Doug Corrigan, Director of Training and Education for Young Living Essential Oils. I’m joined today by Dr. Peter Minke. Dr. Minke, how are you doing?

Dr. Peter Minke: Hi, how are you? We’re great over here!

Doug: Terrific! Today our topic is about several Young Living products that are closely linked to the whole idea of spring cleaning and things that you can use around your household on a very frequent basis, of course hopefully you’re cleaning a lot more often than just in the spring; I know we’re cleaning every single hour at my house! But these products all have that commonality that they can all be used in that regard, but of course they have many and diverse uses beyond that.

We’re going to talk about the single essential oil Lemon, we’re going to talk about the essential oil blend Purification, and then the household product Thieves Household Cleaner, which actually incorporates some of the same oils that we will talk about initially; just tremendous products, tremendous versatility. They are some of Young Living’s most popular products for good reason. There are tons of different testimonials out there but we’ve invited Dr. Minke to come on and discuss this because he has a great background and wealth of information in regard to each of these and has used them extensively. Tell us a little bit about your background, Dr. Minke.

Dr. Minke: Sure. I’ve been in Young Living as a product user and distributor for a number of years, for 14 years or so, and I’ve just absolutely had health transformation effects from these products. At the time I was going through chemotherapy-induced lymphoma. I had lung issues when I was 20 and then a few years after the chemotherapy I ended up with something called chemotherapy-induced lymphoma. When the doctors told me to go through another round of chemotherapy to deal with this lymphoma I thought that was kind of insane so I went looking for answers. I cleaned up my diet, I made the changes, and I arrived at a lot of the same things that I’ve heard Gary Young expound and talk about over the years, and every time I’d arrive at something and listen to Gary Young saying it I’d be nodding my head saying “Yeah, that’s absolutely true, that’s what I’ve had to deal with! It all comes down to the liver; it all comes down to cleansing.” You’ve heard Gary talk about these things.

So when I came to the Young Living products I had just made such a transformation in my health over such a short period of time that I realized the essential oils were something completely different. That’s really the kernel of my story in terms of how I came to Young Living and how passionate I am for it. I did end up resolving the chemotherapy-induced lymphoma without any kind of further medical types of approaches and I’ve done it all through wellness-based information, diet, and the Young Living products, so it’s something that’s really passionate for me. I’ve used these with my whole family; I have 4 boys who range in age from 14 years to 18 months and you’re talking about cleaning! My goodness spring is not the only time we clean; it seems like every day all day.

It’s also a comfort to me to have products that are safe and I’m sure we’ll talk about that in this discussion; safe cleaning products and safe things to help make sure that my house is clean but also without the chemicals that come along with a lot of cleaning solutions. That’s my interest there; I do have a PhD in cell biology, I also do bodywork/massage therapy, I’m in the wellness industry and it’s been a real passion of mine. I appreciate you letting me come on the call and I’m happy to share anything I can.

Doug: Always a pleasure to have you. Dr. Minke is part of what we call at Young Living the Integrated Health Professionals Council; it’s a group of people who have different diverse backgrounds but they have one commonality in that they are all health practitioners of some sort and have a health background, and Dr. Minke is a great addition and a great contributor in that regard and a very popular educator throughout Young Living generally; he has traveled globally to different markets and we’ve always had great response to what you’ve done at Convention and at seminars worldwide so we are glad to have you with us and welcome.

Let’s tackle this first oil single which is such a popular product out there, it’s something that most of our tried-and-true Young Living distributors are using on a frequent basis, daily if not more often than that, and that’s Lemon oil. You know on a warm sunny day this renowned citrus fruit can be turned into an incredibly refreshing lemonade, but what’s really surprising for a lot of folks is that the true power of this fruit is really not found in the flesh, it’s found in the rind and in fact it takes the rind of about 3,000 lemons to produce one kilo of essential oil. Give us a little of your feeling in regard to Lemon oil and generally how you fit that into your repertoire.

Dr. Minke: We could talk for hours just on Lemon! Just to give a quick education about lemons and Lemon oil, first of all Lemon oil is not actually a true essential oil; it’s pressed from the rind. We call it an essential oil but it’s really one that’s kind of on the fringe, it’s not exactly an essential oil and it’s not distilled out of the plant, most of those are distilled but this is pressed from the rind. It is completely 100% bioflavonoid, which is the actual chemical makeup. Everything in the Lemon essential oil is bioflavonoid. You may have heard that the body needs bioflavonoids in order to absorb many of the vitamins and minerals that exist in our food, and one of the most important vitamins that bioflavonoids help absorb is vitamin C so we can immediately say “I would like to add bioflavonoids to my diet,” and I’ve heard people say this, so I look at them and say “You’ve already got that, you have a whole bottle of bioflavonoids in the form of Lemon oil.” And of course one drop of Lemon oil in a drink of any kind can make it flavored nicely but it will also give you those bioflavonoids that are supplemental to the diet, which is very important, we don’t get enough. So that’s a little bit of the chemistry; bioflavonoids include limonene, which research has documented to be useful in reversing certain health issues; these are mostly done with in vitro studies and they’re backing that up with some human studies.

One of the most exciting things that we use Lemon oil for is the ability to stimulate the immune system. There has been some research that shows that the Lemon oil will help activate the white blood cells in a positive way. We all know that our immune systems need to be activated because of chemicals, because of stress and lots of different situations; cell phones, radiation signals, a variety of different causes can actually shut down our immune systems and make our immune systems basically fall asleep. One of the things that’s so amazing about Lemon oil is that it just kind of wakes up the immune system in a positive way, not in an autoimmune over-stimulating kind of way, but it actually just gets the white blood cells more activated. You can literally watch them crawl around more actively on a blood slide. If you were to take a blood sample of someone before and after administering Lemon oil you would see the white blood cells being more active, literally crawling around better. So it’s an exciting type of research that brings it into practicality.

Our practical use of it is that whenever we have a situation of illness or fever, one of the early first oils we turn to is the Lemon oil. We put the Lemon oil very liberally on the body. A lot of times if it’s a very small child, an infant, we’ll put it on the feet but it’s one of the safe oils; it’s very, very safe and gentle. We use it during pregnancy, we use it while nursing, we use it for infants; very safe, very gentle and you can use a lot of it and use it repeatedly. Our method for illness is to use it every 10 minutes and apply it 2 to 3 drops on a toddler, one drop or ½ drop on an infant, or if it’s an adult such as myself I might put 8 or 10 drops every 15 minutes until I feel that my body has gotten up on top. So it’s one of our primary immune stimulators. I know that people don’t necessarily think of it as that, but it’s an awesome oil for that.

Doug: Those are some great points, and the great thing about Lemon oil is that it’s safe to say that not only are you going to be enhancing your immune system by applying it topically or even taking some of those bioflavonoids internally; there’s a double threat because even just the very scent of Lemon oil really initiates an invigorating response, not only in the immune system but also through our emotions it really invigorates our nervous system as well and helps to balance that out. That’s one of the reasons, I think, that we see a lot of studies in regard to Lemon oil with nervous tension and stress. Do you use it that way as well?

Dr. Minke: It is very refreshing, and it’s one of those we put in the diffuser. We can barely keep enough Lemon oil in the house – we pull a bottle off the shelf and look at it and it only has 0.3 mL left, and I think “oh bummer! But surely I have another bottle,” because we order 2 a month, and then I go and find the other bottle and it’s empty too. The kids use it and it’s fresh and like you said they love to use it because it’s a familiar smell, it’s very uplifting, people come into our house and they ask “Wow, did you just clean?” and of course if you look around you can tell we didn’t just clean! But it smells so nice, and that’s the constant citrus smell and it’s very invigorating and very uplifting like you said.

We use it for refreshing, to keep the air fresh, and we also use a blend called Citrus Fresh (we talked about that a couple of months back) but it’s that Lemon oil, that lemon-fresh scent. We’re getting pretty pounded in the marketing of cleaning materials that have that lemon-fresh scent; what a nice thing to actually have true Lemon oil instead of some synthetic lemon aroma that is not at all Lemon oil, so not only do we get the benefits of that uplifting smell but we get the therapeutic power of having authentic bioflavonoids getting into the system, activating the immune system, activating the amygdala and the center of emotion and all that.

Doug: Well I love what you said initially, and that is that we have a choice to make and it is a totally positive choice, all upsides and no downsides. You’re using something in your house for cleaning or as a supplement that, again, has absolutely no downside. Speak to us a little bit about lemon not only having these phytochemicals, not only do they boost immunity and boost the balance in the nervous system and help us in that way, but they also have some real cleansing power as well – Lemon, Orange, many of those citrus oils are those go-to substances whether it’s to get rid of adhesives or gum … what have been your experiences with that?

Dr. Minke: There are actually 2 elements to discuss in terms of cleansing; one is that it’s cleansing for the body so Lemon oil itself, in addition to all the things we just talked about, actually helps to clean out the lymphatic system, it helps to solubilize stale fat and you see that in Grapefruit as well, another citrus oil, but Lemon oil is very activating for the lymphatic system.

When we talk about these cleansing effects on the outside, maybe many of you have seen the demonstration that happens a lot in Young Living meetings where we take Lemon oil and drip it on a Styrofoam cup, and within a period of a few minutes that Lemon oil will totally dissolve that Styrofoam cup. The statement made is that the Lemon oil can dissolve petrochemicals. I think it’s pretty obvious that there is definitely a cleansing action going on, whether it’s outside the body or inside the body; Lemon oil is pretty amazing at dissolving these nasty things whether it’s some kind of residue or whether it’s something that has been accumulated in the body; I think it works both ways. Of course the beautiful thing there is that it’s not a solvent, this is not some nasty compound I have to use that’s going to toxify my body in addition to just trying to clean up the mess. More specifically I’ve heard of people using it for gum or Silly Putty or other things that end up getting stuck where you don’t want them like in hair or carpet; I’ve heard of people using Lemon oil, dripping it on there and having it dissolve that substance enough to pull it off and it’s really useful that way. As an anti-stain agent, I’ve heard of people using it on carpet and working stains off that way. I personally use the Thieves Cleaner for that so I haven’t done a lot of that with the Lemon oil.

The cleansing properties go one step further and that is that they are antiseptic. Lemon oil is a very potent antiseptic so it’s hard to believe that one substance in one little bottle would have all these effects, but keep in mind the way this works, and the reason it has all these properties is because it’s not just one compound – it’s a symphony of different chemical compounds – bioflavonoids, multiple different compounds that the lemon tree produces to exist in the rind of the lemon for the purpose of keeping the lemon fresh; it’s antioxidant for protecting the seeds, protecting them from fungus, protecting them from bacteria. When you go back to nature and ask yourself how it does all this, how are these compounds in the rind of the lemon, it does it because that’s how nature designed it. That’s the way it’s designed for the lemon tree itself. It doesn’t just produce it because it smells good – it does do that – but it produces these compounds to preserve and protect the seeds so it has antioxidant capacities, it has antiseptic capacities, and it is just amazing.

Doug: It is! It’s truly a marvel of nature in so many respects. Do you have anything else as we move on? We have 2 other key products to discuss so we can’t spend all our time on Lemon, although we really honestly could! In our household we like to use a drop of this in our dishwasher, when we’re cleaning dishes; we put it in the mineral oil as we polish our wood and our wood floors, we just love it and not just the scent but it just has really powerful properties.

Dr. Minke: I do have one story that I think is worthy of sharing. I was at a medical mission trip to Guatemala and it was the last day we were there (we had run a clinic for 5 straight days and I think we saw about 2,000 people through that clinic) and there were really a lot of very, very poor people in the mountains of Guatemala, descendants of the Mayan Indians. On the last day the trucks were loaded and there was a man who brought in a baby; this baby was 8 or 9 months old and it looked like a newborn. It had a tiny little body. The head was big but the body was absolutely tiny. The doctor looked at this baby and said “Wow this is bad.” She looked at him and he had a severe challenge in both lungs. She wanted to give him a shot but she was concerned that he didn’t have enough muscle mass to do that, so she was trying to have him take something orally but he wouldn’t take it. I’m watching this process and she is getting frustrated, and I asked “Doc, do you mind if I try something?” She said, “Go ahead, this baby is not going to make it if we don’t do something.” So I took Lemon oil because I knew it was gentle, and I put 4 or 5 drops straight on this little tiny baby, on its tiny little legs, and I just rubbed in on his legs. That oil went right into his system. I waited 2 to 3 minutes and I put another 5 drops on, and this is absolutely amazing but in just a matter of minutes, 10 minutes total from the time I first applied the oil the baby picked up his head, looked around, started reaching and grabbing. He pooped and peed and took his medicine. She gave him the pills and he swallowed it; everything went down just fine and it was an absolute transformation. That was simply from a few drops of Lemon oil. So I handed the bottle to the father, we gave the explanation of how to keep putting it on there every 10 minutes. I have no idea whether he did that; literally we got on the truck and we were out the door right after that. I hope that it worked out for that little baby, but it was one of those things where just a simple bottle of Lemon oil may very well have saved a life.

Doug: Absolutely. It’s funny that you bring that up, because in regard to a Lemon oil promotion that we did a few months ago, the details of that were called Lemon Aid for Haiti and we partnered with Urban Zen in regards to supplying those people who were displaced and they had rampant outbreaks of cholera out there. One of the things about Lemon and some of the other citrus oils like lime essential oil, there is some literature out there that talks about, as you said, how they are very antiseptic and specifically can be helpful in treating food and beverages and things like that when you’re worried about cholera, so we supplied that out there and had tremendous feedback from the people about how many different disease cases were avoided by using this Lemon oil. That was really exciting project and again just speaks to the power of this Lemon oil.

These oils, as you described Dr. Minke, really are a symphony of different things. When we put these powerful oils in connection with other essential oils, that symphony effect is quite pronounced or enhanced. Let’s talk about how that works together in the blend of Purification, which is really kind of an institution in and of itself in the Young Living world. Purification is one of those things that I love to use on a daily basis when I need something like a fresher scent or something to clean because I mix it a lot of times with citrus oils like Lemon, use distilled water and use it in a spray bottle as an air freshener. I call Purification the great neutralizer, and we’ll talk a little bit about what that means, but just talk a little bit about your experiences with this product.

Dr. Minke: As you said, Purification is a blend of oils and when we talk about a blend, we talk about different single oils that are all blended in various concentrations within that. The ingredients in Purification are citronella, rosemary, lemongrass, tea tree oil (Melaleuca alternifolia), lavandin (a hybrid lavender), and myrtle oil. We won’t go into the individual oils or the individual components, but that makes up the blend. It’s an amazing, powerful blend and it is one of our essential blends that we have in our first aid kit. We’re still in the diaper stage so we call it our diaper bag essentials. My wife and I get mad at each other when we run out of Purification because it’s one of our primary first aid tools and in fact it’s being used in my house as we speak because my 3rd son has an eye irritation. We have used Purification over the years very, very successfully to deal with eye irritations. A lot of people will ask how to use it exactly because you don’t want to put any essential oil in your eye. What I do is put a drop in my hand, in my palm, and then I’ll wet my fingertip and I will coat the eyebrow and the lower orbit on the cheekbone. Of course if it’s a small child the chances of them immediately bringing their hands up and rubbing their eyes is pretty good, so I follow it right away with some ointment; either the Animal Scents Ointment or the Rose Ointment and I will just put that over top of it. We’ll do that for both eyes because even if they only have the issue in one eye, you know it’s going to go to the other one. We do that for both eyes every hour or so and it’s amazing. That’s what we did yesterday and by last night the eye issue was pretty much gone. I haven’t talked with my wife yet today to see if she has had to do it again, but Purification is one of our main first aid tools for something like this or a skin irritations. We use it for any kind of broken-skin injury; whenever you want to put Neosporin or something like that on, we use Purification. It is a potent antiseptic microbes so when you add them all together as you said it’s a symphony, it’s an entire orchestra of tools that nature has brought to bear for us and here we are able to just put it on a drop at a time, it’s just amazing.

One of my early experiences with essential oils, with the first kit that we got as many people did back in the day when we didn’t have the Everyday Oils kit we had the Essential 7 kit. Those drops of oil were precious to me; we didn’t have a lot of money, we were really really cautious. When I would unscrew that cap and a drop of oil would come out, then 2 drops oh, that’s too much! I would use as little as possible. I remember getting an irritation underneath my fingernail, I had a hangnail that got infected and as a massage therapist I would be out of work, so that night it had this big angry swelling going on at the side of my finger and I thought to use the Purification, I put a drop and oh, an extra drop came out, so I ended up with 2 drops. I slathered it around, I went to bed and when I woke up in the morning it was pretty much gone, it was healed. It was amazing to me that something could work that fast in such a little amount. After that we’ve used Purification in quite a number of applications and I can’t be exhaustive here but one of our main ones is for stings and insect bites. We have fire ants down in Texas and if we can get that Purification on the wasp sting, on the fire ant bite, the spider bite, whatever it is, it’s amazing. Now we might have to apply it many times, we might have to put 4 or 5 or even 10 applications if it’s a very large sting or bite; I had a situation where I had 20 bites on one foot so I slathered the whole foot with Purification and ended up using 1/3 of a bottle but the results were absolutely amazing. I had none of those pustules, I had no negative side effects afterwards. So we use that as our primary anti-bug sting and it helps with repelling as well.

One of my examples of Purification is that I had put some linoleum down in the pantry. I had to use that spray glue (or at least I thought I did at the time; I don’t let that stuff in my house anymore) but at the time I used the spray glue, I sprayed down the floor and pressed the linoleum down and the smell was horrid. I had also missed a little bit and gotten some of the spray glue up on the molding. I didn’t know what to do and the stink was so bad that I really felt that I had to do something so I got the Purification and I sprinkled it around, maybe 10 or 15 drops on the floor. Then I took a little bit and swabbed it on and it took the glue off the molding right away. Then something amazing happened – I went back in the pantry to assess the situation and there was no odor! I couldn’t smell the Purification but I couldn’t smell that nasty glue either, it was like they just negated each other and so I was reminded of that story when at the beginning, Doug, you said that Purification was the great neutralizer. That’s absolutely what it is for us for odors. I use it to get rid of any odor of any kind and it’s amazing.

Doug: Absolutely. I’ve used Purification for neutralizing odors from cigarette smoke. One of the things I’ve noticed is that when you get a rental car somebody who has not supposed to have smoked in it inevitably has smoked in it; or you get laundry that has a mildew smell; people who have pets, the litterbox area; of course we have kids and sometimes they have accidents at night and there’s that urine smell on their bedsheets and mattresses; Purification is an amazing thing to employ in those instances because again it just neutralizes every single time. You mentioned the insect bites; we’ve had the same scenarios with hornets and wasps and bees. It just seems that when you have a big family there are all kinds of irritating, noxious fumes and things that are happening that have to be neutralized on a regular basis, and Purification is really heaven-sent in that regard!

Dr. Minke: It is, absolutely. Another application in that regard, talking about travel and hotels, absolutely the first thing that comes out when we get in our hotel room, even before we can find the diffuser we’ll take 10 drops in the palm of our hands, rub them together and waft around the room to just freshen the whole place up. I don’t know about you but when you sit in an airplane (and I don’t’ know if it’s a problem with the air intake or something), but occasionally sitting in the plane on the tarmac they rev the engines and you get this backwash of exhaust. It’s so nauseating I can barely breathe and that’s when I get the Purification out. I will put a couple drops in my hand and cup it over my mouth, put some on my lip so that I’m inhaling the Purification while this jet fuel exhaust is wafting around. I have had more than one occasion when I’ve used that right there in the airplane, which of course is a closed environment, and people around me immediately turn their heads and ask “What is that, that smells so nice! I hate this exhaust smell.” So we strike up a conversation and of course by the end of the trip I have some phone numbers and emails that I need to follow up with and help them get some Purification.

Doug: It really shares itself in so many instances. And the great thing again, though we hit this with the Lemon already, is not just the fact that it neutralizes odors and things like that but there is a direct connection with, as you talked about, the limbic system that immediately has a positive and health-promoting, invigorating response. There are all kinds of oils in there responsible for that; melaleuca and rosemary are very inspiring to our mental faculties. Purification is a winner big-time and we could go on and on about that but let’s shift gears a little bit. This conference call is great because we have the opportunity to talk about 3 of these different areas where Young Living really excels – it excels in, of course, providing pure and authentic essential oils; it excels even more so at putting those oils together in synergistic blends; and then we also use those oils in household and nutritional products. Specifically on the docket today is Thieves Household Cleaner. Thieves Household Cleaner is composed of many different oils but the reason it’s called Thieves Household Cleaner is that the engine, the real workhorse in that cleaner, is the Thieves essential oil blend and that is combined with other all-natural ingredients that really produce a tremendous product.

Dr. Minke: The Thieves Cleaner was a triumph for us; when we saw that come out we were so excited about that product. We do use cloth diapers, so for those of you who are looking at laundering diapers you can end up with not only the stains but the smells and all the rest, and wanting to keep that pure. I don’t know about you but the last thing that I want against my baby’s skin is bleach! So as an alternative to some nasty compound bleach we use a capful of Thieves Cleaner in the wash. Of course we can use it for any of the wash but we particularly focus on the cloth diapers. It’s absolutely amazing. We’ve been without it and having to wash the cloth diapers, and it’s not the same experience. We ended up having to wash them 2 or 3 times just to get them to smell neutral whereas one wash with Thieves Household Cleaner is absolutely amazing.

On that note, we actually started putting Thieves Cleaner in our dishwasher and it actually detoxed our dishwasher. I know that sounds kind of funny but after the first time we used a little capful of Thieves Cleaner in the little dispenser, after that wash we started smelling rancid stuff and after the next wash we smelled it again, the next wash we smelled it again and we noticed all this gunk coming out of the edges. This was an old dishwasher. Then, after about the 4th wash it was gone; there was no more smell and no more gunk and it was like, this is amazing; this cleaner is actually cleaning all the nooks and crannies of the actual mechanisms inside the dishwasher and routed out all the nasty stuff that was in there. This is an amazing cleaning product. We use it as I said in the dishwasher, we use it in the washing machine, we also use it in a spray bottle for various things. And don’t ask me why but we ended up with a pale-colored white – well it certainly isn’t white anymore – but we have a white couch and 4 kids and they eat frozen blueberries and such so we get stains all over the place. I don’t mind the blueberry stains but when it comes out the other end we end up with stains I don’t want! That’s when the Thieves Household Cleaner comes out and we use the Thieves Cleaner to get all those other stains out. It’s an amazing product for that.

I feel confident when I’m using the Thieves Household Cleaner that I really am cleaning and I’m getting that antiseptic effect. One of the things that’s unparalleled, and the research is pretty outstanding, is the antiseptic effect of the Thieves blend. We get the authentic Thieves blend in the Thieves Household Cleaner, and with the Thieves blend you have the power of the cinnamon and clove for antiseptic properties and again, these are essential oils that come from the plant kingdom. The plant kingdom has used and designed them, and God designed these within the plant’s system to be used for the immune system of the plant. They are the chemical immune system of the plant; they protect the plant from injury, they protect the plant from harsh conditions. The plant can’t get up and move when a cold snap comes along, the plant has to deal with that cold snap. So when the physiology of the cellular level of the plant gets stressed it uses these essential oils to balance that stress. That’s what we get in a bottle of essential oils – we get nature’s balancers, we get nature’s healing substances, we get nature’s protectants, we get nature’s antioxidants, we get nature’s antiseptic agents. It’s everything all at once all in a chemical cocktail of different compounds that are all carefully made by the plant. They are very deliberately made by the plant. This is what we have when we talk about essential oils, and we have these put into household products that we can use everyday.

I gave a talk a few years back about essential oils and how amazing they are, and at the end of it I asked “How often then do you want to expose yourself to essential oils?” And of course the answer is “Every day, all the time.” Well what better way to do that than to have your everyday household products – your toothpaste, your shampoo, your cleaning solutions – contain therapeutic-quality essential oils that give you all the benefits of those authentic plant compounds without you having to try to do it? It’s just happening because you’re using your soap and shampoo, because you’re using your toothpaste, because you’re using your cleaning solution. That’s the amazing thing that I love about Young Living and Gary Young’s vision. Again I’m very grateful to Gary Young for all that he has done, for his dedication, his vision, and his continuing to carry out that vision. We know that we do not get those same effects from synthetic compounds, from some of these essential oil-like compounds that are not authentic, they’re not true, they’re synthetic. Clove oil, for example, contains eugenol. I can show you a study that was done that compared eugenol that was isolated from Clove oil compared directly to a eugenol that was synthesized in a laboratory. They documented very clearly that the eugenol that was natural does not have irritating properties, whereas the synthetic eugenol was very irritating to the skin, very irritating to the system. It’s not the same thing just to say you have an identical compound; you might see that when you hear bio-identical or the rest of that but it’s not the same thing. When we talk about a natural compound there’s no substitute. It means it comes from nature, it comes from the clove bud, no other source. That’s what we have with the guarantee that we have from Young Living, Seed to Seal. We have authentic products made from nature in that bottle.

I know I diverged more philosophical there, but Thieves Cleaner is just an example of one of the many awesome products that we have available to us to use every day and I highly encourage people to use essential oils every day because the health benefits are unparalleled whether you’re going to use Lemon oil that’s very gentle on the system, deliberately putting it in the air like Purification blend, or whether going into everyday stuff with Thieves it’s an amazing opportunity.

Doug: Absolutely. While you were talking about those philosophical points, which hopefully we all get passionate about, something that came to mind was the motto that one of our distributors uses, Kathy Kouwe, one of our top leaders for a long time has a motto that I just love. She says “I love waking people up to the fact that they have a choice.” When it boils down to it that’s really what you have; when you go to clean or you go to take care of your body or you go to take care of your kids, you don’t have to ‘pick your poison’ as they say, no you can pick something that has tremendous upside and none of the downside of some of these other things because so many of these chemical options come with significant downsides; not just the downsides for our own immediate bodies, but then we can talk about the environmental downsides which is another big topic and you can know that Thieves Household Cleaner has nothing in it that is dangerous for you or for the environment at large. We recognize the fact that we all live downstream and we have to toe the mark when it comes to a green, sustainable, chemical-free cleaner. In fact it reaches all the parameters that it needs to for the stringent Green Seal and the EPA design seal for environmental standards, so it’s a household cleaner that’s totally safe for the environment and the family, and very effective. All kinds of places that we’ve used this, in areas where we thought ‘man, that thing is a loss; that carpet that we spilled something on, that is a total loss’ but Thieves Household Cleaner was able to bring it back! I like to mix and match with my cleaner; I put some extra Lemon or some extra Purification or some other different things just to enact the different scents and my own secret remedies that I think will work even better for certain things, but that base of Thieves Household Cleaner is a must-have and is available in a 14.4-ounce and a 64-ounce container.

I’ve had a great time talking about these products today and like you Peter, we’re all in this battle every day, trying to find the very best options to take care of our families in the very best way. You’ve given us some great weapons for that battle and some great ideas.

Dr. Minke: It is a pleasure to be here Doug and to share about the Young Living products. They’ve been amazing for us and our family and I feel grateful that someone introduced them to me and that I recognized them for what they were, so if you have essential oils in your life be grateful, keep using them, they are a little drop of nature that we desperately need so badly in our world. Then if you know someone who doesn’t have essential oils in their life you might introduce them to a little drop of nature and see what that does for their life. We do have the opportunity in spring for spring cleaning and spring transformation; maybe it’s time to wake ourselves up to a little bit more in our world and share that with others.

Doug: I think that with just these 3 oils and the information that we’ve presented here somebody could grab those, invite all the people in their neighborhood over and give some demonstrations. I think that’s one of the things that we constantly underestimate. Obviously when we have an audio presentation we are lecturing and telling you about these things, but it’s so much more powerful when they experience them for themselves. As they often say, “If you tell me, I’ll forget. If you show me then I’ll remember, but if you let me have an experience then I will understand.” You as distributors out there, and people who have oils in your lives, like you were mentioning Peter, you have a responsibility, a stewardship as we often talk about, to help other people to have those same experiences. So we’ll let these people go out and share!

Dr. Minke: Talking about Thieves Household Cleaner, I know that Dr. Ed Close is one of the experts in the Thieves Cleaner area and the Thieves oils and the antiseptic stuff so I’d like to make sure we mention him; he’s a member of our IHPC and he has a lot of fantastic information. I saw one of his presentations in Australia on the mold remediation using Thieves essential oil, and he was going to do some follow-up research with the Thieves Household Cleaner. It’s amazing what Thieves can do, so do check it out. I think he has a booklet on that mold remediation.

Doug: It’s a good point to mention Dr. Close because he has indeed done some studies in regard to the Thieves Household Cleaner and has issued some different information. I’m going to see that in connection with this presentation, through the product blog and through the website, possibly even through Facebook, that we get some of this information from Dr. Close and he can tell you the results and remind everyone about that. He’s written some great books and issued some great pamphlets, and you bring up a great point for people to get more information and real scientific evidence from a tremendous scientist and somebody who is passionate about the things we are talking about today.

Dr. Minke: And the Thieves product line, you just mentioned that we do have a choice in terms of whether we are going to use something toxic or not, and I just want to point out the Thieves Hand Sanitizer. I know it’s not on the product list but the Thieves line of products – the toothpaste, the hand sanitizer, etc. – there are so many things with nasty chemicals that we end up putting on our children that we don’t think about because somehow they’ve gotten approved by the FDA, and the hand sanitizer is one of those that I’m really passionate about because the typical hand sanitizer out there contains compounds that have been banned in the European Union based on the data and information gathered by our own EPA researchers and FDA researchers. They went over to Geneva and gave testimony and, based on that information, they banned a bunch of chemicals. Now those chemicals are typically still used in the United States so we really have to be aware and understand that we have to make our choices based on information, good information, and it’s our responsibility to help know about that. One of the passionate things that we have at our house, my wife and I both, is one to share about these wonderful oils, but then also to make sure that we have good information that’s going out so people can make that decision. This is not trivial stuff; it’s important that we have the opportunities to make the right choices for our families.

Doug: Absolutely. Great information again from you, and thank you for being one those who walks the talk. You inspired a memory in me in regard to these toxins that you’re talking about, those chemical-based commercial cleaning products, that in American there’s actually on average 210,000 exposures a year to these commercial cleaning products that make medical treatment necessary. So you can see that these things definitely have some profound drawbacks to the point where even just exposure to some of these things can really have an impact on people. You will never have to worry about that when you are using a natural product, especially not just a natural product since everything is called natural nowadays, but let’s call it pure, genuine products made from real essential oils like the oils you get from Young Living.

Dr. Minke: In light of some of the things we’ve been talking about, I just want to let people know that we do have a CD training on Family First Aid with essential oils; these are 3½ hours of my wife and I talking about the various ways that we use essential oils, the household environment with children, accidents and injuries. Family First Aid is available on our website, www.minkewellness.com, so there’s an opportunity for more education on family first aid with essential oils.

Doug: That’s a great tool and we can’t get enough of this good quality education, especially that specific application. It’s so important to know exactly how much and when and all those things that give people real empowerment.

With that, thank you again for your time today. Dr. Minke you’ve inspired us and edified us and given us some great information. On behalf of myself and Dr. Minke, I wish everyone out there Godspeed in their quest for health and happiness.

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