Essential oils against CoV, also quality control & MLM direct marketing companies

and a video presentation that I made, with audio.

NOW brand has a line of 90 essential oils in addition to their more typical supplement products. The company have quality control testing and CoAs - Certificates of Analysis - available on their website.

NOW: Essential oil certificates of analysis available, 17-Feb-2023 (https://nutraceuticalbusinessreview.com/news/article_page/NOW_Essential_oil_certificates_of_analysis_available/206895)

Young Living and doTerra are essential oil companies with a larger range of essential oils which are sold through direct marketing, or Multi-Level Marketing. Their products may be very good, very high quality, but that doesn’t mean other products might not also be high quality. Look for information about purity and safety guidelines for use of the product. Some essential oils can be edible but they would have to have been extracted without use of inedible solvents and be pure, not thinned with other oils or inedible solvents.

Safe wildcrafting practices are also important - safe for the ecosystem, and wildcrafted/grown in a place that is native to the plant. On the other hand, some very medicinal plants grow so well, they may be considered invasive plants around the world, like dandelions and the prickly Barberry shrub (little red berries that are medicinal and very tangy, can be purchased dried at an Indian grocery store). A good cold pressed product made from a plant gathered at the right time of its growth cycle and using the proper part of the plant - can be potent even if not from the wilds of some tropical or hard to reach place.

You can also make citrus peel products for household cleaning or edible use fairly easily too. High quality products with a pricy tag may be well worth their price - but other lower price options may also be beneficial and nice. Try not to take price as a reason to not increase use of aromatic phytonutrients in your life.

Essential oils are very concentrated and while the bottles look tiny, they last a long time depending on how often/how much you use. So the price even for the NOW brand might seem extravagant based on the size of the bottle (~$15) compared to most other products we are familiar with. The direct marketing company products include some lower cost oils but the price range extends from $20-40 up to ~ $100 for rare oils. Join and get a discount of 25% for a year - roughly. The quality is exceptional, the quantity is less. The typical NOW product for a pure essential oil is a 30 ml bottle, the typical doTerra or Young Living product is either 15 ml or 5 ml.

The advantage of the direct marketing approach for this sort of product is the education with something kind of unfamiliar - how to use these things around your home and topically or in foods. Essential oils only seem unfamiliar - many are very commonly used in our daily cleaning products and shampoos and other products to add fragrance or to boost the cleaning power of a product - citrus oil for degreasing as an example, and linalool or geranial containing essential oils to add a floral fragrance to your laundry products.

Easy ways to diffuse essential oils: add drops to a cotton ball or used dryer sheet and paperclip it or tie it to a fan or air filter. The dryer sheet holds the scent well and could also be easy to use for simple sachet for a drawer or closet.

Caution: Do not add essential oils to standard humidifiers.

Caution against diffusing strong scents for long - it can linger on everything in the room for a while and may lead to headaches.

One ounce/30 ml bottles of NOW brand and a 15 ml bottle of a doTerra blend for cleaning or diffusing. Cotton or a dryer sheet on a paperclip attached to a fan or air filter is an inexpensive way to diffuse essential oils.

Topical use with essential oils that are safe for topical use: Add some drops to a good quality body cream. I use an unscented coconut body cream that is thick and add two drops to a teaspoon for a quick hand cream/aroma burst. Eucalyptus is nice for clearing the nose and can feel invigorating. I have used oregano oil in massage oil medicinally on the soles and palms - very absorptive. Oregano oil is a strong antimicrobial and iron chelator and seems to help with improving circulation to the extremities <anecdotal>.

Roller bottle DIY recipes: Roller bottles contain essential oil and fractionated coconut oil to dilute it safely for topical use. Ten milliliter (ml) bottles with a stainless steel roller ball may cost about 54 cents each if bought in bulk (48). Organic fractionated coconut oil may cost about 3 cents per ml if bought in a 16 ounce bottle (it is also used as a massage oil base). A 5 ml bottle of essential oil contains about 83 drops and a 15 ml bottle ~ 250 drops. Depending on cost of the essential oils you use and the strength of the dilution, making your own roller bottles might cost between 3 dollars each up to 8 dollars or more when using more expensive oils or premade blends or are making a stronger concentration.

• The Ultimate Guide to Essential Oil Roller Bottles, Lenny Ulanoski, Oct 06, 2019, (woopdiy.com) This article is referring to doTerra blends within its recipes in addition to single ingredient oils that might be included within the NOW brand line of essential oils.

DoTerra essential oils at wholesale price might be $28.50-42 (or more) for 15 ml which would be 11.4-16.8 cents per drop. Smaller 5 ml bottles of a blend might cost $28 each and be about 34 cents per drop. Their medicinal blends for internal use are recommended to use one drop in four ounces of water each day. One 15 ml bottle would last 250 days then, which is not a bad deal if effective for you. If citrus sensitive/histamine sensitive, be aware that citrus oil is used in quite a few of the medicinal blends (it is potent and effective for respiratory health and for digestive use). They have a Pom/Yarrow blend that would likely be very medicinal, however it has been out-of-stock both times I’ve looked.

Edible use with essential oils that are labeled safe for edible use: These are very potent and might include rosemary, basil, oregano, for use in a spaghetti sauce or lemongrass in a Thai noodle soup. Only one drop is needed for a batch making 2-4 servings. Too much can ruin a dish as an excess of a bitter herbal will taste way too bitter. For a larger 2 quart batch of spaghetti sauce, one drop each of rosemary, basil and oregano might work. Making a dilution in olive oil in a different bottle might help with using a tasty amount of an essential oil in cooking without risking accidently dripping in too many drops. I drip into a spoon so if I get too much it wasn’t too much straight into the cooking pot.

• doTerra Cuisine blends cookbook pdf (Dropbox)

Start low, go slow is good advice in general for adding herbs and spices to a soup or sauce. Cooks will use a pile of tasting spoons as the dip in a fresh spoon each time they adjusted the seasoning and re-tasted. Using a big spoon to add some to a bowl with one spoon would make sense too.

“Start low, go slow” was advice I heard about trying new supplements. If you aren’t sure if you will tolerate something, only try a tiny amount and wait a day or two to see if you feel worse somehow. It is good advice in general with starting something new. Don’t get too burned out by an overeager start and then just stop.

• I made an educational video about essential oils and aromatherapy, viewable here: (canva.com) My slides got out of order I realize on viewing it. Done is done for now though.

• (Pdf of the slides in my Dropbox)

Excerpt regarding which essential oils might be most effective for use against SARS-CoV2 risk.

The review team’s goal was to identify oils that might be useful as a dental rinse, for better protection of dental workers. “Cuminal, myrtanol, carvacrol, caryophyllene, pinocarveol, and sylvestrene” were among the most potent candidates.

“Recent literature suggests numerous mouth rinses that can effectively reduce the viral load in the oral cavity. Povidone-iodine (PVP-I) oral rinse has been found to be effective in various studies conducted by Tessema et al., 2020; Bidra et al., 2020; and Pelletier et al., 2021. Mouth rinses containing 1% PVP-I exhibited a virucidal activity higher than 99.99%, which corresponds to a reduction of viral load greater than 4 log₁₀. The use of PVP-I has been contraindicated in patients with an allergy to iodine, thyroid disease, and pregnancy. Chlorhexidine (CHX) is a broad-spectrum antiseptic that has long been known to be effective against herpes simplex virus (HSV), human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and hepatitis B virus (HBV) (Brookes et al., 2020). The effectiveness of CHX specifically against SARS-CoV-2 has not been well established yet. In comparison with PVP-I, hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) has been found to be less effective by a study conducted by Ather et al., 2020. Certain essential oil (EO) components such as thymol, eugenol, menthol, methyl salicylate, and eucalyptol are common major ingredients in mouth rinses recommended by the American Dental Association (ADA) (Alshehri, 2018). The activity of these components has been well established by several studies against a wide array of microbes, including viruses. The main aim of this study was to explore other components with comparable or better activity than the existing ones by in silico methods. Moreover, EO components are safe since they fall under the generally regarded as safe (GRAS) category. Cuminal, myrtanol, carvacrol, caryophyllene, pinocarveol, and sylvestrene were found to have inhibitory effects against SARS-CoV-2. A number of recent in silico studies have predicted the anitiviral activity of EO components against SARS-CoV-2. Kulkarni et al., 2020, performed a similar study with the same target protein and found that cinnamaldehyde, anethole, thymol, and carvacrol were highly active. Similar results were obtained by Asif et al., 2020, and Senthil Kumar et al., 2020. Boukhatem, 2020, have discussed how EOs could have an inhibitory effect on SARS-CoV-2, similar to the effect they have had on other viruses. Thuy et al., 2020, predicted that 17 compounds of garlic oil interacted with the viral main protease (Mpro) of SARS-CoV-2. Da Silva et al., 2020, predicted that (E,E)-α-farnesene, (E,E)-farnesol, and (E)-nerolidol interacted with SARS-CoV-2 Mpro, thereby inhibiting viral replication, out of 171 EO components.

[…] Through this study, we conclude that EO components such as cuminal, carvacrol, myrtanol, caryophyllene, pinocarveol, and sylvestrene are good inhibitors of the S1 glycoprotein of coronavirus by in silico methods. Hence, these components can be proposed to be effective antiviral ingredients of pre-procedural mouth rinses recommended to be administered to patients for effective reduction of viral load in the oropharyngeal cavity. The futurology of this study indicates in vitro and in vivo testing of the same to confirm the antiviral efficiency of the proposed EO components, specifically against SARS-CoV-2.” (Yadalam, et al., 2021)

• Carvacrol is found in the essential oils of oregano, thyme, bergamot, pepperwort and other plants. (Sharifi-Rad, et al., 2018)

• Caryophyllene is found in Copaiba and Helichrysum oils.

• Sylvestrene is found in Daisy Damianita (EO available here: borneotradingpost.com/web/product/daisy-damianita-essential-oil-10ml/)

• Myrtanol is found in “Myrtus communis, Eucalyptus globulus, and Melaleuca alternifolia” and other plants. (evitachem.com)

Walter Chesnut has a lengthy post about the benefits of Eucalyptus globulus against SARS-CoV2/chimeric spike. Eucalyptus helps open our airways so we can breathe better.

Thanksgiving Hope: Eucalyptus Essential Oil

Disclaimer: This information is being provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of Fair Use and is not intended to provide individual health care guidance.

Reference List

(Al-Shuhaib, et al., 2022) Al-Shuhaib MB, & Hashim H, Al-Shuhaib J, & Obayes D. (2022). Artecanin of Laurus nobilis is a novel inhibitor of SARS-CoV-2 main protease with highly desirable druglikeness. J Biomolecular Structure and Dynamics. 1-13. 10.1080/07391102.2022.2030801. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358038162_Artecanin_of_Laurus_nobilis_is_a_novel_inhibitor_of_SARS-CoV-2_main_protease_with_highly_desirable_druglikeness

(Sharifi-Rad, et al., 2018) Sharifi-Rad M, Varoni EM, Iriti M, Martorell M, Setzer WN, Del Mar Contreras M, Salehi B, Soltani-Nejad A, Rajabi S, Tajbakhsh M, Sharifi-Rad J. Carvacrol and human health: A comprehensive review. Phytother Res. 2018 Sep;32(9):1675-1687. doi: 10.1002/ptr.6103. Epub 2018 May 9. PMID: 29744941. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29744941/

(Ulasli, et al., 2014) Ulasli M, Gurses SA, Bayraktar R, et al. The effects of Nigella sativa (Ns), Anthemis hyalina (Ah) and Citrus sinensis (Cs) extracts on the replication of coronavirus and the expression of TRP genes family. Mol Biol Rep. 2014;41(3):1703–1711. doi:10.1007/s11033-014-3019-7 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3933739/

(Yadalam, et al., 2021) Yadalam PK, Varatharajan K, Rajapandian K, Chopra P, Arumuganainar D, Nagarathnam T, Sohn H, Madhavan T. Antiviral Essential Oil Components Against SARS-CoV-2 in Pre-procedural Mouth Rinses for Dental Settings During COVID-19: A Computational Study. Front Chem. 2021 Mar 29;9:642026. doi: 10.3389/fchem.2021.642026. PMID: 33855010; PMCID: PMC8039451. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fchem.2021.642026/full