HSN Episode #18: One Of The Biggest Dangers In Your Home and How To Fix It with Andrea Bazoin
INTRO: Welcome to Healthy Sexy Nutrition with me, Michelle Fox, culinary nutritionist, health coach, and your host for this podcast. I teach busy professionals how to get more nutrition in their bodies and how to have more fun in their home kitchens. If you struggle with consistency or sometimes forget to make your needs a priority or you avoid planning your meals, you, my friend, are in the right place.
Join me each week for inspiration to increase your energy, discover new recipes, manage your hormonal woes, and so much more. You are a busy professional, but that does not mean your nutrition should suffer. You deserve to live in a body and have a life that you love.
So let's dig in.
MICHELLE FOX: Knock, knock. It's your body calling. Have you noticed and or are you curious about a possible toxic load that is happening? Just. Walking through the world, much less the things that you're putting in your body. Well, I am so thrilled that I have my friend Andrea Bazoin with me to help us talk about reducing your toxic load.
And for my friends who haven't met this beautiful shining light, let me just read a little bit of her bio so you understand who we are talking to today. So Andrea Bazoin is a human resilience activator. Mm, yes ma'am. Which means she works with individuals and teams to identify and dismantle the practical and personal barriers that keep them from thriving in our ever accelerating future.
She is the founder of Share Oils With Us. That puts the biggest smile on my face. It's an inclusive community of people who desire to leverage the pure power of plants to support health and wellness while uplifting the lives of those who supply the products we use. Andrea, welcome.
ANDREA BAZOIN: Oh my gosh. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so thrilled to be here.
MICHELLE: I don't know if I've shared with you before, but I traveled to Belize, it was about 20 years ago now, to study with a shaman, and we learned all about plants and literally how to talk to plants. And so the fact that you are here, it just brings back so many memories and it's a nice reminder to tell me. “Yeah, Michelle, it's time to get back on the essential oil train.” So. With all this excitement, as I'm sure you can see and feel. Before that, I really wanna play a game first if you're open.
ANDREA: Oh my gosh, I'm with it. I'm in, Let's do it.
MICHELLE: So it’s a business question.
ANDREA: Ok.
MICHELLE: Inbox zero or inbox 10,000?
ANDREA: Oh my gosh. Um, inbox hundred. So I don't think I'm ever gonna get to zero, but I really try hard. I'm a deleter, which sometimes, you know, works against me, but yes.
MICHELLE: Fair enough.
ANDREA: Or, or on the zero than the 10,000,
MICHELLE: For people that don't know, I have three children. And so from early on we always practice or have practiced the love and logic method, which is you give your child two choices, but both of those choices have to truly be, you know, choices that the parent can agree with. And so I love that you just picked your own choice, cuz that's exactly what they've done the entire childhood.
ANDREA: Oops. I'm like, clearly my mom did not raise me with love logic.
MICHELLE: No. It tickles me every time. I think it's fabulous. And the little bit I do know of you, you always created your own path and I honestly, I admire that about you. Thank you.
ANDREA: Thank you. Ok, I'll try harder to do the A or the B.
MICHELLE: No pressure at all. Actually this one I'm giving you A, B, or C. Let's see what you say. Sweet, salty or savory?
ANDREA: Damn. I wanna combine them again. Uh, I'll say savory. Savory. Savory.
MICHELLE: Okay. Love it. How about your favorite movie of all time?
ANDREA: Uh, um, probably when Harry Met Sally. It's got comedy, it's got drama, it's got romance. It's just got it all. Got great memories. Fashions. It makes smile.
MICHELLE: And last but not least, would you be willing to share one of your favorite childhood memories in the kitchen?
ANDREA: Oh, childhood memories. Uh, well this is just a funny story. I was probably, I think four years old and I was trying to be helpful in the kitchen, and so I refilled my mom's jar of powder. Didn't realize that I was refilling the sugar jar with salt. And so she made a cake after that and she doesn't really bake much, so it was a really, she's like, “I knew I was a terrible baker.” She tells the story, I don't quite remember it. She said that it was, um, that I was very surprised and felt really bad.
MICHELLE: Well, so for my friends who don't know, the way I met you was actually through food, you and I being in Costa Rica together about a year ago, and Oh boy have you made up the difference from that four year old Andrea because you took control of the kitchen. I'm like, teach me.
ANDREA: Oh, I had so much fun. I still, I swear, I still think about you every time I use cilantro because I just shove it all in with the stems and everything. And when we were cooking side by side, you're lovingly taking this, the leaves off and making a nice pile and like, you know, beautifully dicing and chopping and I'm just shoving everything. And that's how I learned to cook was from my mom. It's real messy, but it tastes very good. So I, I really appreciated having that experience with you as well. I learned plenty myself.
MICHELLE: Soul Sisters.
ANDREA: Absolutely.
MICHELLE: All right. Well, let's jump into today's topic, which is reducing our toxic load. So when I say that, of course I have some definitions of what that could mean through nutrition, but I'm really curious when it comes to plants and essential oils and, and your world, what does that mean to you?
ANDREA: So, such a great question. I love the work that you do with helping busy professionals to eat more cleanly and better and so some of the obvious things are the foods that we put in our bodies. Like McDonald's has a bunch of preservatives in it, right? Like sugar, sodas, uh, anything that's processed, anything your great grandma couldn't have found in the pantry, right? Like, we know those things are not great. Where it gets tricky, I feel like is the labeling.
So I'm sure you talk to your people about labels, but you know, when you see things that say natural flavorings or natural colors or things like that, it's just right? It's just marketing terms. And so, uh, that's just in the foods we eat. So once you've, you know, fallen Michelle, fall in love with Michelle, followed, I wanna say, once you followed Michelle's advice and cleaned up your pantry and cleaned up your eating, you might say to yourself, “oh, I'm living this non-toxic life.”
Well, the problem is from day to night, from the time we wake up in the morning until the time we go to bed, we're basically bombarded with toxins. So, most people think that, you know, when they think about toxins, they think about, um, you know, going outside on the interstate and all the cars and the pollution that's getting emitted from the cars. You see factories, you know, you think about air pollution and things that are outside. but the reality is our indoor pollution is the thing we really need to be worried about, more than what's outdoors. Of course, we need to be kind to mother earth, but what's, what's indoors is a thing that's hurting us worse.
So that is things like VOCs in our paints, in our carpets, you know, when we buy things made of plastic and all those things like it's, that's part of it. It's BPA in our cans of food and, but most importantly, and I think this is where we have more control because unfortunately, You know, you're not gonna listen to this podcast and immediately go rip up your carpet. Right? Like, that's, that's not gonna happen. And I wouldn't, that's just not practical. But where we have a lot of control is what we put on our bodies. And that is where we actually have a lot of sneaky toxins. The biggest offender is fragrance. And if you look right, So, I don't know, are you, do you have, is this something that you've, come to learn in your own household about fragrance?
MICHELLE: Yeah. Yes. I haven't talked about it publicly yet, which is why I'm so glad you are here, speaking of it. But yes, in my family, we've already moved and, lemme take a step back. It's been a process because we're still learning, but I will say we've moved away from the antiperspirant to more natural deodorants, and so the teenagers and the husband are on board and we've, uh, removed the like heavy perfumes, and we stick with our essential oils, which I'm excited to talk about in a little bit. Um, but yes, I am wide open to learning more because I do know how harmful these toxins can be to our kidneys and to our livers and to our brain functioning.
ANDREA: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I'm gonna read, I just wanted to get this right. I'm gonna read a little thing. It's from a website called Green Matters. So it says, um, most of today's perfumes, colognes, deodorants, candles, air fresheners, cleaning products, soaps, shampoos and detergents contain synthetic fragrance compounds of unknown origins. Any one of the thousand compounds within a particular scent could be harm, a harm harmful carcinogen, but you never know because the list of ingredients is protected by intellectual property laws. So, to, to sum that up.
MICHELLE: So mad.
ANDREA: It makes me so mad too. So basically, I, if I can invite you or your listeners to check out the documentary called Stink. This is one of those documentaries that I watched it and I said, okay, that's the end. Because if you think about it, so, okay, I'm out of shampoo. Well, I need shampoo, I'm not gonna not, you know, clean my hair, whatever. So I'm gonna go to Target, let's say, or Walmart or wherever people shop, and I'm just gonna go to the shampoo aisle and, and find something. Well, there's so much green washing. And so this says all natural, organic, or, or contains organic. Organic or made with, made with organic ingredients. I love that one. Cause like what, 2% of them, like how many, how much of that is made with organic ingredients? Um,
MICHELLE: Right.
ANDREA: Um, you know, it's, if it's not certified organic could be so many different things. When you're looking in that sea of choices and colors and smells and all the things, it is really challenging for the average consumer, just for any of us to make a good choice. And you're busy. I mean, especially your listeners, they're busy professionals. They don't have time to like read every single label and research every single thing. So I think that's why making the choice to just look for that one word fragrance. If it has fragrance in it, it's kind of a non-starter. You gotta find something else because it's the fragrance industry that's not one ingredient. It's literally tens of thousands of mystery chemicals that are unregulated and they're mostly petroleum based, but they have unknown harm. So that's why it's, if you watch that documentary, it's really fascinating because the, the man who put it together, his wife passed away of breast cancer and left with two young daughters. And basically he, he kind of went down a rabbit hole, why she was young. You know, why, why would this happen? And he learned a lot about fragrance along the way and then made this documentary. But it's really the bottom line is we're not being protected. And we think to ourselves, well, it's on the shelf. It must be okay. Somebody must have checked it. Right? Somebody must have thought that it's okay for our health. It's not, it's just not.
MICHELLE: Right. And I love that you used the word chemicals. It's like when we look at pine-sol just for an example, like, we're not thinking, “oh yeah, I should put that in my body.”
ANDREA: Right.
MICHELLE: But yet we look at this, you know, bottle of eaves in the raw and it's like, same thing. You know, it's the same thing.
ANDREA: Absolutely. It's exactly the same thing. And, you know, on the topic of, of pine-sol or things that people use to clean, we've just, I, I know I've been brought up to believe that chemicals help make our our house clean. Right? Like, we need chemicals to clean, to kill the germs. Right? Like that's what we need. We do not need that. In fact, it's harming us. Especially if you've got fur babies. Oh my gosh. Like you clean the floor with the pine-sol and they just walk right on that and get that on the pads of their paws. We just, it's harmful and it's the air that we breathe in with the pine-sol.
So the wonderful news is we don't need any of that. And my, like, my shower has like three things in it. If you open, you know, a lot of people when they open the, the bottom cabinet under the sink, that seems to be where people store all their chemicals and you open it up and it's just piled with bright colored, smelly garbage. Right. Just a mess. My cleaners, I'm gonna, actually, can I do a little show and tell?
MICHELLE: Absolutely.
ANDREA: So, so this is little mason jars for people who are only listening. I've got, um, a mason jar here. In it, I've made a mix of, I got a big bowl and I put a cup of baking soda, a quarter cup of citric acid, one tablespoon of, so I'll explain in a minute. I use products from a company called doTERRA, and I'll tell you in a minute why I, why that's what I use. But OnGuard is a really great antiviral essential oil blend and they make a cleaner called the cleaner concentrate. So this is what it looks like. I put a spray top on it, so here I'll do that. That's actually what it looks like. And this bottle makes this one bottle, which is 12 ounces, makes 24 spray bottles of cleaner. So I use like a tablespoon of this. It's just soap. All it is is soap and essential oil, like a Castile soap.
MICHELLE: Ok.
ANDREA: And, and then some essential oil, uh, grapefruit. I put five drops of grapefruit.
MICHELLE: Oh, I bet that smells amazing.
ANDREA: It smells amazing. So I use this cleaner. It's like a scrubby cleaner. It's, it's a powder, right? I use it to clean my tub, my toilet, like anything really the, the, the oven, uh, the top of the glass, you know, anything. I use this for everything. And then a spray. And sometimes I use vinegar, white vinegar.
MICHELLE: Okay.
ANDREA: And, That's it.
MICHELLE: And I bet you walk through your house and it just smells like clean. Right?
ANDREA: It does.
MICHELLE: Like what clean is supposed to smell like.
ANDREA: You know, people often walk into my house and tell me it smells so fresh in here. Um, and even if they don't say it, I can see that they feel comfortable. It's just, the air in my house is really, like you said, it's clean. It doesn't smell heavy. It doesn't. And I'm gonna just say a family member. I'm not gonna name that family member just in case, but I have a family member who loves scented candles and scented everything and perfume and so air fresheners and it's, when I go to visit this person, I get headaches. I feel sick to my stomach, you know, it's not a good feeling and I, and I think to myself, this is somebody I love dearly and it just hurts my heart because I know that when they have brain fog and when they're having chronic headaches and when they are just like, their endocrine system is all messed up and they, they don't know why they're gaining so much weight. This is not helping. I can't say for sure this is the reason, but it certainly isn't helping
MICHELLE: And I so love that. You mentioned the endocrine system in the research you've done and or what you've seen with your community, like what are some of the other harmful effects that these fragrant chemicals are doing to our bodies?
ANDREA: So I would say that the, the top three are messing up hormones, the endocrine system, um, just something like skin irritations. It can, usually that is, things being out of balance and so extra dry, extra greasy, pimples, you know, just things not looking right. You know, and not knowing why. Could be dandruff, you know, just your body's basically screaming to say, “Hey, this isn't working.” Um, and, and so it's, it's coming up with all kinds of symptoms to just get your attention, right? And then respiratory issues. So kind of coughing or clearing the throat all the time, you know, folks who have asthma just need to know, like, stop with the fragrance because it's, it's really damaging for your lungs.
So, um, I would say those are the, the biggest things. But for me, the reason why I cut fragrances out pretty much immediately, as soon as I saw this documentary, and I'll be clear, like, so my husband's from France, you know, this, and every year for Christmas, I used to ask for a bottle of perfume. So my mother-in-law for my mother-in-law, so she would give me, you know, these beautiful Chanel and all these things, and I'd put them on and I, every time I'd get a little bit of a headache, And I didn't. I just took it as normal, which is so funny to me now because now I'm like, oh, I was just microtoxin, you know, toxic, what do I say? I was just..
MICHELLE: Microdosing the toxins?
ANDREA: No, I was, I was poisoning myself. You know, I was giving myself little doses of poison essentially every time. And that's why my body produced a headache, because it wasn't good for me, you know? And so it's just interesting the way that, you know, you can go along and go along and think something is normal and not question until you just get some new information. And then of course the saying, when you know better, you do better, right? And so I think…
MICHELLE: Yes.
ANDREA: Going back to why I gave up fragrance altogether is just, you know, I can't say that I necessarily noticed coughing or noticed in severe symptoms, but it's the, it's the long-term effects that are unknown that worries me. And when we think about, so I'm so excited. Recently I was able to help my sister-in-law detox their home of fragrance. And it made me so happy because I have two nieces and they are 10 and 12. And from the time we're little, we are marketed, especially women, men too, but more women we're marketed to. We need to smell good because we must really stink, right? We must stink everywhere. So fix your armpits. Fix your undercarriage, fix all the things because, because you're not smelling right. And so let's put all this fragrance on top, which is so unfortunate cuz we're naturally, you know, if you're eating well, you naturally have a nice…
MICHELLE: Human scent.
ANDREA: Right.
MICHELLE: Yeah. I always tell my husband, I'm like, you smell like Steve.
ANDREA: Yes.
MICHELLE: And he's always looking at me kinda sideways, but I'm like, I just love the Steve smell.
ANDREA: Oh. And that is part of…
MICHELLE: It's him, it's his skin.
ANDREA: And that's pheromones too. And when we're covering up all those natural human chemicals that connect us, then it's, it's sort of messing with our brains. But uh, going back to my nieces, you know, from a young age, they had scented soaps. I went to their house before they made the switch. Right. My sister-in-law really loved Bath and Body Works.
MICHELLE: Yes.
ANDREA: And, right. So all the tooty fruity kind of soaps and all that stuff. And, and that just goes right into the bloodstream. And so it's, it's very harmful. And when you think about, you wake up in the morning, you go brush your teeth and that's gonna have chemicals in your toothpaste, then you're gonna go take a shower, you're gonna use shampoo, conditioner, body wash, a face wash, maybe, you know, all those things. Each one of those is gonna have fragrance. And you get out, then you put some body lotion on, you know, put some hair product on. So this is interesting. Just recently there was, I saw a report on the news, I forget which station, about, uh, a recall of dry shampoos because they've been found to have carcinogens, which honestly was no surprise.
MICHELLE: Ugh.
ANDREA: But right? And I know a lot of folks
MICHELLE: That breaks my heart.
ANDREA: Do you like dry shampoo?
MICHELLE: No, I'm saying it breaks my heart that…
ANDREA: Oh, that…
MICHELLE: That these manufacturers allow these harmful chemicals to come on our bodies. So that's the part that breaks my heart.
ANDREA: Yep. They're cheap and there's no regulation. So I'll just show you this, another show and tell.
MICHELLE: Nice.
ANDREA: This is a little mason jar. I just filled it up with, a homemade dry shampoo. So in this is arrow root, equal parts, arrow root, and cocoa powder.
MICHELLE: Is that chocolate? Is it brown?
ANDREA: Yes. Yes. Cocoa powder. Yeah. So equal…
MICHELLE: You get to put chocolate in your hair? Oh my goodness. I think people are leaning into their earbuds right now. Tell us.
ANDREA: Yes. So equal parts, uh, arrow root powder and cocoa powder. And then a few drops I've got it here, peppermint, lavender, and rosemary essential oil. That's it.
MICHELLE: That sounds so heavenly.
ANDREA: It does, it actually, it sort of smells like a peppermint patty or something.
MICHELLE: It's really good. I'm gonna have to try that one with my teenagers cause they love the dry shampoo.
ANDREA: This is something I found just on Amazon. It's a barber's powder bulb.
MICHELLE: Oh.
ANDREA: And so it's just, I don't know if you can see like little burst of powder come out, but it's just so fun. A little powder that comes out. So that's what I do, you know, if I wanna do a dry shampoo, that's it.
MICHELLE: That is fabulous.
ANDREA: Mm-hmm.
MICHELLE: I love it.
ANDREA: And I could literally, you know, I wouldn't like the experience, but I could eat it. Right? It's so clean. You could eat it. And that's really the goal. Like, just put things on your skin that are so clean, you could eat them.
MICHELLE: And so my friends who are listening to us and they're like, well, they just said no fragrance, but they're talking about these essential oils. Like, can you share a little bit about the difference of why perfume, eh, but the yumminess of essential oils? Yes. Yes,
ANDREA: Yes. Yes. Absolutely. That's such a great question. So essential oils are volatile aromatic compounds that come from plants. So it comes from the bark, roots, leaves, stems, flowers, the rin of citrus, so many different things. So they are extracted, they're a hundred percent natural. Uh, the thing I wanted to mention about the essential oils I use, so I use oils from a company called doTERRA, and going back to where we said, you know, you go to that shopping aisle and you see all the, all the labels that say natural and 100% pure, those are marketing terms and just like essential oils, there's no regulating body that's saying what has to be, what is considered pure, right? And so it really matters that you find companies that you can trust. The reason I trust doTERRA is because we source our oils with something called co impact sourcing, basically because, because there isn't regulation, we've made our own.
So co impact sourcing is the way that we determine how we source oils in a really ethical manner, which is essentially making long-term partnerships with farmers. We, right now we're in 43 different countries making long-term partnerships with farmers and with distillers. So it goes from the farmer to the distiller to doTERRA, and then extensive testing. So they do, an average 50 tests per batch and then as a consumer, and then you buy it direct from a distributor. And I know I'm gonna just put this out there, I know a lot of people are like, oh, direct sales, it's the worst. And I completely, just yesterday somebody asked me questions about this, direct sales has a really bad wrap. And for, you know, for a lot of companies, it's for a good reason. Why I really honor and love this sales model is because it doesn't rely on advertising. It relies on personal experience. And so it is really about, I've, I'm using something, it's changed my life for the better. It's helping me, it's serving me. I wanna share this with you so that you can experience this as well. And so it's, for me, it's a really heart centered business model when done well. And so, what that means is from the farmer to the distiller to extensive testing to the consumer through, through a friend, through a partner, through somebody who's gonna give them some education and some support.
And so that is a really nice closed loop and you can actually look up each of the oils. So each oil has a code on the bottom of the bottle and you can put that code in a website called sourcetoyou.com, put it in, and then generate a PDF of the test results so you can actually see the test results from this very batch of oil.
So for me, that's like, that's transparency and trust, and I know that the farmers are taken care of. I know where the supply chain is. So I feel like these, and that's why I, I've been so surprised. I'm not surprised anymore, but in the very beginning, I was so surprised at how effective they were. So I've been using essential oils just from the shelf for about 15 years, and they never wowed me. They were fine. You know, I was trying to, when you know better, you do better, right? So I'm like, oh, well I'll just, you know, use lavender for relaxation and whatever I was trying. And they didn't really work that well. And now I know why. The reason why is because most essential oils you're gonna find in the open market are adulterated. So there are synthetics, ethers, fragrance, vegetable oils, you know, whatever will augment that supply to make it cheaper. So not only is it not giving you the benefit, but it's actually potentially harming you. So it's, it's awful, right? It's the same with food. You go into the store and you're like, oh, this is all natural, and you think you're doing better. And yet, it's more complicated.
MICHELLE: Right. You used the term greenwashing earlier that people can put on the plants and the essential oils, and I use the term health washing that people put on food products. And the example I like to use with people. Just to talk about reading the labels is Honey Nut Cheerios, like they have a marketing budget, so of course they're gonna find ways to make you think you're feeling and being so healthy by eating these oats that can, oh, by the way, lower cholesterol, until you read the label and it's like, it's more sugar than, you know, a cup of juice and it's loaded with carbs and it has preservatives and all these chemicals. I'm like, there's nothing healthy about Honey Nut Cheerios. They're delicious, but there's nothing healthy. So yes, the green washing with the oils, the health washing with the foods, it just, makes me so mad. So in order for me to just like release that energy. Let's get back to the oils. You sent me some yumminess. Can we play with some oils next?
ANDREA: Yeah. So the one that I wanted to, okay, so, and this is gonna be a little sneak preview to your retreat in Costa Rica, which I am so excited.
MICHELLE: Yeah. So for my friends who aren't aware, I am taking a beautiful circle of women to Costa Rica in March, and Andrea has graciously agreed to be one of our esteemed teachers. And so we're gonna walk through, actually you tell me, is it called a five sensorizing?
ANDREA: Five sensorizing, yeah. And so, It comes to, yes. I can walk you through just small basics. Basically, uh, well, I'm gonna start with a quote because this for me makes it all make sense. So this is a quote from Albert Einstein.
Albert Einstein said, “everything is energy and that's all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want, and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy, this is physics.”
So what's so amazing to me about that is that Albert Einstein was essentially talking about this, you know, very woowoo concept called manifesting, which let's be real, like that's been co-opted like crazy, and people are all talking about what it means to manifest. But what he's saying, what he was saying is when you use the energy of your being, of your body to match the energy of the reality that you are hoping for. So let's say the reality is you want this particular job, or you wanna, you know, find a soulmate or whatever it is that you're wanting to find you, you can use your body as a type of antenna. To, right, to mirror that and to kind of attract what it is that you would like. So we do that through our five senses. And so the one that we can focus on today, we're gonna focus on smell. But you know, if you think about just the, I'm gonna give this in short, we think in pictures, right? When I say dinosaur, you have a dinosaur that pops into your head, right? So that can be very powerful, right? Let's see, we, when you hear sound, it really sets a mood. So we were just talking right before this, oh, we need to like, get some good music on to get our mood going, right? Like music and sound. Or when you watch something scary on TV and you, you're really not wanting to feel that you can mute the TV and suddenly it's not scary anymore, right? Like sound really evokes emotion. Let's see. Touch. So whether somebody you can feel like if somebody shakes your hand, right? You, a lot of information is communicated by the way they shake your hand. Is it firm? Is it loose? Is it, you know, you kind of already know a lot about them by that one physical experience, right?
MICHELLE: Yes.
ANDREA: And then taste, I mean, come on with taste like that is really to your whole world, you know, if you eat something and we really express a lot of our emotions through flavor descriptors, like something that's bittersweet. You know, they're kind of a salty person, right? Like the, that can really describe how we feel. Smell for me has been the most fascinating because, so our olfactory bulb is directly behind the bridge of our nose and it's tied to our amygdala and our limbic brain. And so, and our amygdala is what controls memory and emotions. So what that means is when you smell something, you feel something and you remember something, right? And so it's so powerful. If you think about, you know, the smell of fresh baked cookies or the smell of a hospital, or the smell of Steve, right?
MICHELLE: That's right.
ANDREA: Hopefully you're whatever few people on earth who knows that smell, but it's like, or the smell of your children, right? Like you can detect it. It doesn't even have to be something you can describe, but you detect it. We detect really hundreds of thousands of different smells. Actually that's not true. I wanna say the number is trillion.
MICHELLE: Oh wow.
ANDREA: That we can detect.
MICHELLE: Oh wow.
ANDREA: I need to go back and double check. But I know it's, it's many, many, many, many, many, and it's many more than, you know, than, different colors that we can see. Different senses we can, it's our most heightened and, what do I wanna say? Primal. It's our most primal sense is smell.
MICHELLE: That makes so much sense.
ANDREA: Yeah, it does. So essential oils in particular, because they are the, the essence of the plants, the smell, we can actually utilize them to move stuck emotions really quickly. So when you were talking about feeling a little stressed or you know, especially, I'm gonna go back to those busy professionals. I mean, y'all don't have time to like, you know, sit and meditate for an hour, right? You just, sometimes you just need a thing to hold onto, a thing, to just interrupt that pattern to say, “okay, I'm, I can tell I'm going off the rails here emotionally and I just need to get back to center.” Essential oils are amazing for that. So we are gonna use an oil blend called Breathe. And Breathe is, is my boo because this was my very first oil that I ever got. Cause at that time, I was having some mystery breathing issues, and I had gone to my doctor, I got albuterol. It didn't really work. And then they just looked at me with a blank stare, like they didn't have any more answers for me. They just said, well, nothing. They didn't gimme any more answers.
And so I, that week I was invited to a doTERRA party and I went rolling my eyes thinking I'm not buying another stuff. Like, you're not gonna get me, they're not gonna trap me with their whatever. And so these women were presenting as my friends now, Kristen and Sarah, their twin sisters, and they kept passing these oils around. And I, despite myself, I just couldn't help it. I loved everyone, everyone went through and I got to smell it and I was like, putting extra drops, like, just couldn't help myself.
MICHELLE: I want more. Gimme more.
ANDREA: I really loved it. And so I, you know, that night I went home and did so much research and, and just needed to reassure myself, and I've honestly never looked back. Now I'm, I'm very proud to represent this company because of all the good they do in the world and how I'm able to help people and help myself. Um,
MICHELLE: Yes, so I've known you've been one with oils. It's been so beautiful to watch your progress cuz you've been taking that knowledge that you've learned and, and you've been sharing it with us and teaching us. So thank you for that.
ANDREA: You're welcome. I feel like people deserve to know, you know, they just didn't…
MICHELLE: Absolutely.
ANDREA: know that there's options. I didn't know and I thought I was doing fine. I thought I was doing the right things. I didn't realize that I was putting things on my body and, and using things in my, in my house, whether my, my family that was hurting them and hurting us. And now I know. And so now I share.
So here's how we're gonna use breathe. Breathe is an oil blend. It has Laurel, eucalyptus, peppermint, tea tree, lemon, cardimum, Ravintsara, and Ravensara sound almost the same.
MICHELLE: Awesome antiviral.Nice.
ANDREA: Yeah. Right? Yeah. So you know about this.
MICHELLE: Love it.
ANDREA: And so how we're gonna use it is we're gonna just put one drop in the middle of your palm. I know that might be a bit tricky. I think you got it. Yep. And then try not to get it on your fingertips, cuz you don't wanna later rub your eyes and get essential oil in your eyes. It doesn't feel comfortable. Yeah, it's not comfortable. If that ever happens, just use a vegetable oil in your eyes. So a coconut oil or a olive oil. And so cup your hands.
Another deep breath. And if you want to, you can take whatever's left and rub it on the back of your neck or on your chest. How does that feel?
MICHELLE: Amazing. That was like an instantaneous grounding. Like, come back, Michelle. We're we're right here. We're in the chair. Like, it's a smell sensory, but it even felt like more of a spiritual cause now, like the room feels a little bit brighter. I'm like, I just feel I'm like, good. I feel good right now, Andrea.
ANDREA: Mm-hmm.
MICHELLE: What are you doing to me?
ANDREA: I love it. I, I love it because it's so simple and it's so quick. It's basically instantaneous and, you know, even just the simple act, even if you didn't have oils in your home, if you just took the time to take some deep breaths, that would really help. Right? So we know that just stopping and taking a moment, taking a breath is really helpful. But when you combine that smell that is so primal and connected to that sense of memory and emotion, it is, it just, it's like splashing cold water on your face. You know? It's just this, this sensory experience that, that brings you back to your body mm-hmm instead of the racing thoughts. Right. And we actually, I was surprised to learn that we have olfactory receptors all over our body. It's not just in our nose. So it just is a full sensory, full body experience. So quick and so easy.
MICHELLE: This has been amazing and I had a feeling that this time would fly by, but before we wrap up, is there anything else you wanna share with us?
ANDREA: Just the gratitude for being here and for all the work that you're doing. I feel like it, one person at a time, if you can help people to take control of their health through the simple act of what they eat, you know, on a daily basis. I know I'm taking a hard look at some of the things I've been eating recently and the meat industry and the dairy industry, and just again, you know better and you do better and you're really helping people to do better every day. So thanks for letting me be here and, and have some fun with you and play.
MICHELLE: My pleasure. Where can my community come get more juicy goodness from you?
ANDREA: I just launched a new website and I'm thrilled about it. It's called shareoilswithus.com. I would recommend heading over there and especially if you click on Learn, you're gonna find all kinds of good information about how to use oils. So there you can just play to your heart's content and uh, yeah, if people have questions, I'd love to hear from them.
MICHELLE: Wonderful. Well, I will put all of the information and the knowledge you dropped in the show notes, so thank you for that. And I am so thrilled we get to have you to ourselves at the retreat.
And for my friends who did miss the registration, please still head to michellefox.com/retreat and hop on the wait list so that you will be one of the first to know of our future retreats, cuz there are already some bubbling up. And so, Andrea, I just cannot say thank you enough. Thank you for just this moment of bringing me back into my body. Thank you for all of the information you've shared and thank you for continuing to show up and to share the light with the community. I appreciate you.
ANDREA: Likewise, Michelle. Thank you.
MICHELLE: Thanks so much for listening to Healthy Sexy Nutrition. Have you been driving, doing laundry or walking around the neighborhood? Sweet. I've got show notes for you at michellefox.com/podcast. Click over there when you are ready. I will let you know that on the page you will find resources to support what you just learned on today's show.
And of course, you can grab some health supportive freebies as well. If you enjoyed this episode, I would be so honored if you would leave a review on whichever podcast platform you are listening on. It will help me with my mission to build healthier communities one person at a time.
Big love from your favorite culinary nutritionist and health coach. And until next week, keep showing up for yourself and know that you and your health matter. You deserve to live in a body and have a life that you love.
