Hey guys. Welcome back. This is Becky Williams and today I have a really exciting topic to explain to you and that is about Stress. Oh my goodness. If you are a mom, if you are a woman, if you are a human, you have stress. And today, I want to talk about five different essential oils that I love to use to help me to reduce stress. Now, I have three kids, I'm working from home. We've got one of my children, she's eight months and so she's still waking up in the middle of the night and all that kind of thing. And so I understand stress and I want to give you some tangible ways to be able to reduce your stress and not just these generic over all things that you can just Google, okay? Because let's get real here, we are dealing with different things day to day and we really, really need something that's going to work to help to reduce our stress. So that we are able to be the best for our families, be the best for ourselves.

Basically, let's talk about stress just a little bit and really dig down deep to what stress can do to your body if it is chronic. Now, we all have stress, right? That's how our bodies have been built. If you are being chased by a lion, you need to run. All right? Your body is going to go into this adrenaline motion and it's going to have the surge of energy. You're going to be able to run away. It is a fight or flight type response. But the problem is it’s going to cause issues, okay?

So the first thing that could happen to your body when it's under chronic stress, is going to be increased risk of heart disease and diabetes. Anything that's going to increase the risk of these things are something to pay attention to. Stress promotes chronic inflammation in your body, that's going to affect your blood thickness. It's going to affect your responses to insulin. Have you ever heard of somebody say they’re insulin resistant? Okay, this was part of that process. 

Number two, decreased immunity. Think about during the holiday time people are saying oh it's the flu season. Well, is it really the flu season? Or is it just ever taking in a lot of sugars in our body. Our immunities’ down because you're stressed or not getting very much sleep. Most of the time, we're not respecting boundaries with other people, okay? So you're going to get sick more often whenever you are stressed. That's just kind of correlates, okay? Stress hormones are going to also affect the chemical messenger secreted  by immune cells. So they're less able to do their job. Right? 

Number three, thing number three of what could happen if you are in chronic stress is leaky gut. Now, a lot of people have talked about leaky gut but you may not understand what it does. So, I want to give you a little example, think about whenever you were in elementary school and you played Red Rover.  Everybody had their hands together, right? When they say Red Rover, Red Rover, send Becky right over. Well, whenever you would run you try to break through. If you have a healthy gut then you're not able to break through. If it's a weak link, like let's say you're going to be, you know you did the same thing. You pick the two kids who look like they're not going to be very strong and so you try to break through that. That's the same thing with leaky gut. Whenever your gut becomes more permeable, you're going to be like two of the weak kids on the elementary school playground to where your hands are not going to, I mean you're an example, your hands. Yes. But your gut lining is not going to be secure. And so it's going to be able to have stuff permeate through it and that's where you get leaky gut. So cortisol is a stress hormone, and it can actually open up those tiny holes. It loosens the grips of your digestive cells and that's how stuff gets in. That's how you get leaky gut. Okay, so food particles, other stuff will get in. It gets absorbed in your body, it's like sticking stuff. My kids do this all the time. They stick stuff down the wrong side of the sink that doesn't have the garbage disposal and it gets all stopped up. Okay, same thing with leaky gut.

Alright, then the fourth thing, there's a ton but I just picked 4. The 4th thing is sleep disturbance and so if you're a mom you're probably already not getting a lot of sleep, but if you are as stressed, it's actually going to be worse. It's often difficult to rest with stressful things on your mind, okay? Lack of sleep is going to affect your mood, it's going to affect your energy levels. It's going to affect your ability to think, and also, it does affect your weight loss. 

Let's talk about ways to reduce stress, right? We already know that we have it. Now we know what could happen if we let it continue, let's talk about how to get rid of it or at least how to reduce it. So reduce stressors in your life. Ask yourself these questions. Can you put less pressure on yourself?. Are you making a huge to-do list every single day of all these things that you think you're super mom and can accomplish, maybe you can, maybe you can do it for one or two days. Maybe you can do it for a week, but overall, you're going to get burnt out. You're putting extra stressor on your body. Can you ask for help? Are you trying to do everything on your own? I know I do. I try to do that. Can you ask for help? Is there something that you can delegate to someone else? Also, do you have a decision that's weighing you down? When you think about the apps on your phone, how it's got to run your battery down when you have that app in the background that you're not using, this is the same thing if you have a decision that you need to make. Let's say, it’s where to send your kids to school next year or something at work, okay? If you have it running constantly in the background of your mind that's going to help to wear you out, and it's going to also increase your stress.

I understand that you're not going to get rid of stress but let's talk about reducing it, right? So these are some hints that you already had. Let’s talk about the five oils. I love these oils. 

Now, the first one, most of you have probably heard of it, and it’s lavender. It is the Swiss army knife of oils. It can be used for so many different things, but for the purposes of this video, of course we're talking about stress, right? So it does have relaxing properties. It's going to help to relax your body and your emotions. This is really, really good for nighttime, but it's also good for during the day. If you feel like your moods are up and down during the day, put on a little bit of lavender, especially around times where you notice you know each day that it seems to be happening at the same time around that time go ahead and put some lavender.

The second one is orange oil or Citrus oils. I love all the Citrus oils. My favorite thing to do with the Citrus oil is to stick it in the diffuser. It helps to make my kitchen smell fresh, and it's just very uplifting. It's hard to explain. It truly lifts the air whenever I have it diffused. My favorite is doing a blend of orange and lemon and lime together- very fresh, very uplifting really, really good for helping emotions.

The third one is Roman chamomile. Now they have German chamomile and they have Roman chamomile, they're very similar. The difference is that Roman chamomile is going to be really good at helping with anxious nerves and it's also really good with the mental part of stress. So whereas German chamomile is good for just soothing overall. The Roman chamomile is going to be really good for stressors like anxiety, mental fatigue, things like that. That's going on more than just an emotional thing.

Cedarwood this one is really, really good. So Cedarwood. What I do is I just put a little drop (1 to 2 drops) right here on the nape of my neck, on the back of my neck. You can also diffuse this of course, but it's been used for a long, long, long, long time. Right? This is one of the oldest oils that I have used. Personally, I've been using this oil since 2014. Okay, so using cedar wood for focus and concentration is really good. It's also really good for relieving your stress at night time, helping you to calm down. I don't know if you're like I am, but as soon as I lay my head on the pillow, it's like this to-do list just opens up in front of me. And I think of all the things I have to do the next day, all the things I didn't accomplish that day and it's difficult for me to wind down. So, I use cedarwood to help to wind down at the end of the night. 

The last oil that I want to talk about is Ylang-ylang. People say it in different ways? Hey, it's YLANG, say it however you like. Someone asked me, what is the best oil for balancing? And this is the best oil. If you have days where you just feel like something's off but you're not sure what it is, this would be a really good oil to grab. It just helps in balancing energies. Maybe you have something going on, on a subconscious level and you're not able to put your finger on what it is that’s frustrating you or what it is that’s keeping you from accomplishing everything you need to do that day or from feeling your best. It might be some kind of emotional thing that you don't realize is going on. So grabbing Ylang-ylang is really really good to help you to feel more balanced. 

So those are my tips. Those are the five essential oils. So, until next time, this is Becky Williams and I hope you have a fabulous week and get some relaxation.