All humans are magnificent beings that deserve a healthy life. Improving your health and wellness can be simple, free, and accessible to everyone. It just takes self-discipline, self-love, and making choices that benefit your body. From supplements and essential oils to walks outside and social connection, reducing stress levels is one of the key components to living a healthy life.
In this episode, I am talking to Dr. Lindsey Elmore, a clinical pharmacist who focuses on natural wellness and functional medicine to help her clients find empowerment in their healing journey. Today, we are talking all about health, wellness, stress, and how you can start taking steps to find true healing.
Dr. Lindsey is sharing her knowledgeable insight on how to take control of your health, why you need to reduce the stress in your lives, the importance of essential oils in wellness, ways to support your immune system, and why stress has everything to do with your modern ailments and diseases. Plus so much more!
What we covered:
- Merging herbal medicine with pharmaceuticals
- How essential oils mitigate stress
- Why functional medicine is so important
- The impact that stress can have on your body
- How to support your immune system
“I want every person in the world to be thinking individuals and empowered owners of their own health and recognize that ultimately, you are your best doctor. No one can tell you more accurately what is going on in your own body.” – Dr. Lindsey Elmore
Links Mentioned:
Thanks for tuning into this episode of the Whimsy & Wellness Podcast. If you liked this episode, screenshot and share it on social! Every share matters and helps us reach and inspire more people you!
Subscribe to the Whimsy & Wellness Podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify or wherever else you listen to podcasts!
Love essential oils? Check out Whimsy & Wellness for all of your oil accessories or follow them on Instagram @whimsyandwellness
Use the code: PODCAST on your next Whimsy & Wellness order for 10% off!
Meg: https://www.instagram.com/sincerelymegryan/
Music by: Taylor Ryan
Find him on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/taylorryandrs/
Oils Mentioned:
Bergamot Essential Oil
Lavender Essential Oil
Frankincense Essential Oil
Rose Essential Oil
Tea Tree Essential Oil
Oregano Essential Oil
Cinnamon Essential Oil
Rosemary Essential Oil
Copaiba Essential Oil
Clove Essential Oil
Connect with Lindsey:
Every single person in the world is deserving of a healthy life. Whether it’s reducing stress levels or supporting the immune system, wellness can be accessible and achievable for everyone. All we need to do is find empowerment in informed choices that benefit our bodies and our mind. Today’s guest is sharing all of her insight and knowledge on how we can do just that.
Meg: Okay, welcome Lindsey Elmore, to the Whimsy and Wellness podcast. This is such an honor to talk to you and learn from you.
Lindsey: You are too kind. Thank you so much for having me, Meg. I’m excited to talk with you.
Meg: Yes. I’m so excited and trying not to fangirl you guys, if you don’t know, Lindsey, this is amazing.
Lindsey: Well, thank you. It’s always one of those things, I think that one of the things that I just love is just remembering every single day that I put my pants on, like everybody else does. So even if I’m popular and have all the followers and all this other stuff, it’s still just me. It’s just me, and we’re still just people doing the best things that we can in the world, so no need to fangirl we’re just gonna have station.
Meg: I love that so much. I’ve already learned that with the podcast, these are humans who have zoom accounts that have technical difficulties. It’s just so nice and refreshing. So I’m excited.
Lindsey: Exactly. I mean, even on my podcast, there have been people that we have reached out to that we just thought there’s no way that they will say yes. And sometimes they don’t. And sometimes they do, they say yes. And so it again. Yeah, doesn’t matter who it is. Everybody has zoom counts, and we’re just chatting on the show.
Meg: Yeah, for sure. Okay, so I’d love to get started by talking about your background because I find it so interesting. And I think listeners will too. Even when I just started using oils, I was like wait, there’s this pharmacist who uses essential oils. Because you’re a pharmacist, I think when people hear that, at least I think antibiotics and modern medicine. And that’s not your only approach. So can you kind of tell us a little bit about how you got into oils and holistic wellness as a whole and how they kind of were combined when you were traditionally trained?
An Unusual Pharmacy Background
Lindsey: Sure. So when I practiced pharmacy in the traditional sense, number one, nobody has a clue what a pharmacist does. When people think of a pharmacist, they’re like, Oh, they handed me my prescriptions from over a counter. But pharmacists do way, way more than that. So I was a clinical pharmacist trained in family medicine. So I managed the medications of people with diabetes and heart disease and high blood pressure and asthma and COPD and, and tons of just metabolic disease in general. And I started to get increasingly frustrated with the practice of medicine because it was so obvious that if medications worked to actually heal, I wouldn’t keep having the same people in my clinic every single week or talk about managing their chronic diseases. And I started to understand somewhere in my heart of hearts, that this was not the way to help people. It was not the way to help people heal.
So I also way back down in pharmacy school tore my ACL And long story short, tearing my ACL eventually landed me in the chiropractor’s office, which eventually landed me in the acupuncturist office. And the acupuncturist really opened my eyes that there are multiple ways to view health.
There’s multiple ways to think through how do you actually help someone healed. So even during pharmacy school, I was kind of that like wacky pharmacy student who was really intrigued by the supplements that people brought in, and really intrigued by doing herbal medicine research. And so I started learning more about supplements and herbs long before I got very frustrated with the practice of pharmacy.
At a moment where I was really frustrated with the practice of pharmacy, where I’d had several years of studying herbs and supplements and vitamins and the impact of diet on our health in the impact of loneliness on our health – I kept seeing a friend post on Facebook that essential oils will change your life and I was like This girl is because I had a couple of essential oils. And none of them had changed my life.
How Essential Oils Changed Her Life
So I ended up going to her and saying, What are you using? What brands? If you say that these things can change your life, I’m intrigued. And I ended up getting a kit of essential oils. And the day that those essential oils arrived, I knew my life had changed. And it was so weird as a pharmacist to be sitting in my living room floor. Essential Oils made me instantly fearless. They shifted emotions in me that had not been shifted before.
I just sat there and I was putting Frankincense on my head, and I was putting peppermint on my tongue and I was diffusing. I was diffusing blends and just loving the immersive experience of using essential oils. And from that day forward, I started reading every book I could. And so in, I had a Master Hand analysis, and part of my personality is I do what’s called learn and spew. So as soon as I learn it, I’m going to spew it back out to someone else. That led me to start teaching online. And the very first class that I taught about essential oils online, people went crazy and just loved it. There were like you’ve got to do this for every single essential oil. Teach us more about supplements teach us more about personal care products and the toxins that are in there. And so fast forward several years, and here I am.
Merging Essential Oils With Her Pharmaceutical Brain
I have spent years investigating and researching and really trying to make essential oil education, reasonable and rational and put it into terms of how I would talk about products as a pharmacist. I think that people try to make essential oil education very woowoo. And so it’s either like very woowoo or it’s so esoteric, and they’re gonna sit around and talk about the fill and drain and yeah. I just wanted to break it down into how do I use this in my pharmacist’s brain? It’s well, what’s the route of administration? How much do I use in my pharmacist’s brain? It’s the dose, what side effects Do I need to look out for? That’s adverse drug reactions in my pharmacist’s brain? How do I mitigate those adverse effects. Which is basically a lot of the practice of pharmacy where you get one medicine and then get put on another medicine to manage the side effects of the first medicine instead of getting down and actually healing? Well, yeah, I hated that. First play. So I just wanted to bring essential oil and natural product education down to earth and make it easy to understand and fun for people, even if they were beginners or extremely advanced and skilled, essential oil users. I wanted to create easy education that anyone could understand.
Meg: Yeah, that is incredible. And you for sure have I when I first got started, I grabbed your book, It’s called Essentials 75.
Lindsey: Answers to questions that I just got asked all the time.
Meg: Yes. And that book is such a good resource. Someone will ask me something. And I’m Oh, yeah, of course. And then I’m flipping through the book to find it because it can be kind of intimidating or overwhelming when you’re first getting started. So I’ve always loved how you just answer the question. It’s exactly what you said. It’s so, so good. So thank you for sharing your story.
I think people sometimes assume and I used to assume this also, because for my own story, I have a laundry list of past chronic health issues. I had like this pillbox of three times a day, at 19 years old. And I remember someone being like, have you tried essential oils? And I was offended. How could you recommend plants to me? So I think people think it’s very like one side or the other. You’re either holistic and hippie and essential oils or you trust doctors and you’re against that. You can use both. There’s places for both. And so can you kind of talk about the blend of both like traditional and holistic medicine? And how it is very possible for people to do both?
Blending Traditional & Holistic Medicine
Lindsey: Yeah, absolutely. So as a functional medicine pharmacist, I think about this a lot, because one thing is for sure, the American Medical system is bar none. When it comes to emergency care, if you are having a heart attack, you want to be in an American Hospital. If you have a broken leg, you want an orthopedic surgeon in an American Hospital to be working on you. And I’m sure your listeners abroad are like wait, we have great medicine, too. But the way that America just gives instant access to all levels of care is relatively unheard of throughout the rest of the world.
But where Western medicine fails, where allopathic medicine fails. We treat disorders, we don’t treat patients. We don’t treat patients from the ground up. And we don’t spend time working with people about all the preventative stuff that will avoid the need. For a heart surgeon that’s going to avoid the need for three times a day medication usage. We don’t address diet, we don’t address nutrients, we don’t address stress. We don’t address social connection, which is critically important for health. And we have seen the manifestations of lack of social connection as a part of some of the problems that have occurred within 2020.
https://podcast.whimsyandwellness.com/podcast/immune-system-essential-oils-dr-lindsey-elmore/https://podcast.whimsyandwellness.com/podcast/immune-system-essential-oils-dr-lindsey-elmore/
All Disease Begins With Stress
So when I think about essential oils, and where do they kind of fit in to the whole spectrum of health and wellness practices. Essential oils are so far upstream, they are there to help reduce stress levels which y’all I know this sounds crazy, but Hippocrates said all disease begins in the gut. All disease begins with stress.
If you are in a state of chronic stress, you basically obliterate your thyroid, which obliterates your metabolism, which obliterates your ability to stay at a healthy body weight and to manage the metabolism of your entire body. Excessive stress destroys your immune system, it destroys your sex hormones, leading to problems like infertility or the inability to connect on amazing levels with people.
So if you don’t manage stress, you’re gonna end up with the physical manifestations that can affect every single body system. And so if using essential oils is a quick and simple way to reset your stress response. Why would you not do that as a part of your overall health and wellness practices?
Additionally, essential oils are excellent on the skin, they are excellent to help reduce your toxic burden from skincare products. If you’ve got a spot on your face, applying a drop of tea tree oil versus applying a drop of a really highly concentrated benzoyl peroxide solution that’s going to bleach all of your clothing has the risk of causing discolorations on the skin. And also you might be using products that contain salicylates and BPA. There’s a lot of people who say you are what you eat or you are what you eat.
I heard somebody the other day say you are what you can’t detoxify. And so if your personal care routine if your cleaning routine is bombarding you with toxins on the regular, you become less equipped to live an overall healthy life. So, if I am having a seizure, I’m not going to be reaching for my lavender.
But if I can work on what I eat, how much I exercise, what kind of social connectivity that I have, as well as listeners, every single one of you, we simply must be focused on stress reduction. Whatever is going on in your life, reducing your stress level will help. Stress a lot of times is a reaction. People are exposed to the same stressful situations all day every day. Person A has a screaming panic attack, Person B sits back and has a mindful moment, that then doesn’t engage with the sympathetic nervous system. Instead, we spend more of our life in that parasympathetic setup.
How Essential Oils Mitigate Stress
So if essential oils can help reduce your stress levels can help reduce your toxic burden in personal care products can help reduce your toxic burden when it comes to cleaning products. It’s one simple step along the journey that helps you to be overall healthy. So when we think about health, and being healthy, it’s not something that just poof happens.
It took you how many years to get into the shape that you’re in? Why do you think you’re going to change that instantly? So if inhaling some essential oils encourages you to do a little bit of meditation, or if dropping in an essential oil into your green juice encourages you to do that behavior every day. One good behavior leads to the next and leads to the next. And that’s why I personally love essential oils.
It’s also why I love supplements. I’m a huge advocate of supplements, especially now when our food is just so devoid of nutrition. So use one simple step to create the next healthy step. That’s where I think essential oils are their most valuable is in wellness routines that prevent you needing that strong, assertive allopathic approach. You may end up needing that at some point in time. And that’s not a personal failure.
I think that there’s too much dogma around –it’s like you said, you can either be earthy, crunchy granola, or you can do everything your doctor says without questioning it. No, I want every person in the world to be thinking individuals empowered owners of their own health and recognize that ultimately, you are your best doctor. You are your best doctor, no one can tell you more accurately what is going on in your own body.
Meg: Yeah, so good. And so, so interesting. I think that is like the perfect transition into we wanted the whole show to be really about. How to be proactive because you guys were hearing all the awful, awful scary facts and stories and these things about COVID on repeat. Whether it’s on the news or scrolling social media, and it’s terrifying. But we’re not being told anything about what we can be doing to protect our bodies to be taking care of our bodies. We’re just seeing death numbers and hospital bed numbers and these scary things. And it just makes us feel very doomed like this feeling of doom and this feeling of wow, I literally have no control. And that’s not good for stress.
What Humans Need To Do To Stay Healthy
Lindsey: Of course, I completely agree. I mean in your questionnaire that we filled out before we did the show, you asked me like what’s the number one thing you want people to take away from this? And I said turn off the news. I mean, everybody just go back in your brain into March. Imagine if Fauci had come on the news, when the President had come on the news, when the CDC. Imagine of instead of coming on the news and saying we’re going to lock down everything, we’re going to restrict people’s ability to earn a living, we’re going to need you all to stay separate from each other, which increases loneliness. Which – did you know that loneliness increases your risk of death by 23%? Compared to not reporting to be lonely?
I just got chills. It’s so critically important. Humans are social animals in the amount of research about the critical nature of social interaction for humans. There’s paper after paper after paper. Imagine if instead, we had gone on the news and said, Okay, first and foremost, we’re just going to need everybody to remain calm. We have a new virus coming our way. We don’t know how infectious it is, we don’t know the risk of death. We don’t know what is going to happen. But we do know that washing your hands regularly with soap and water helps to improve your ability to fight infections. We do know that regular exercise reduces the risk of infections. We know that deep breathing exercises can expel bacteria and virus from your body. We know that proper hydration improves the function of the immune system. We know that supplements such as vitamin C, vitamin D, probiotics, glutathione supplements, consistently help to bolster your immune system, we know that sleeping at least eight hours a night helps to you to be able to fight off all kinds of infections, because the immune system becomes more active at night. We know that diets rich in plants and vegetables and fruits of all different colors is going to provide antioxidant action which is going to reduce inflammation. We know that staying away from sick people is critically important to reduce the risk of transmission.
If we had gone on to the news, and told people Hey guys, right now, I know you got some vitamin C in the back of your cupboard. Now might be some time that you would want to use that. If we had also gone on the news and said, Alright, everyone, we know that people who are metabolically unhealthy, which is 88% of Americans. 88% of Americans are metabolically unstable.
They either have syndrome, x metabolic syndrome, or their central adiposity, around the center of the body increased triglycerides. And we know that some of it is metabolic disorders, such as syndrome x. But we also know that people suffer from mitochondrial dysfunction, that cellular dysfunction. If we had said, Now is the absolute best time in your entire life, to eat right exercise, sleep more, drink more water, wash your hands regularly. And we’re gonna see how this goes. And I think that that messaging could have prevented the stress that came from the world just changing in an instant and there being so much divisiveness among people about how to best manage this.
I think the flip-flopping narrative of don’t wear a mask. Oh, no. Now we need you to wear a mask. Well, you don’t have to wear a mask here, but you have to wear a mask there. What if we actually took a step back and said what are the things that we know that are preventative for every single disease known to man? Eating right, exercising, sleeping, social connection, water. That’s it that is the key to staying healthy on every single level and it is one of the key principles of functional medicine.
Why Functional Medicine Is So Important
So functional medicine really takes a step and goes, what is the cause of this? What is the reason that you have an autoimmune disease? Not hey, here’s your drugs. Here’s your $10,000 a month monoclonal antibody. It says What are you eating that might be causing inflammation? What are you doing or drinking that may be causing inflammation? Do you have a really stressful environment that can be causing inflammation? The problem with stress is that like I said, it disrupts every part of the body. And stress and anxiety are also self-perpetuating systems because of a process called cortisol. What happens in cortisol? Cortisol is one hormone, but it is related to thyroid hormone. And it’s related most especially to estrogens and testosterone, as well as your hormones that govern your mineral and water balance. So cortisol, if you have too much of it, your body is not smart. And it’s like, I need to make more of that. And so it steals all of the body’s ability to make estrogens and trick and testosterone. And it really, really starts to produce more and more and more cortisol.
So once you get into a stressed out frame of mind, it becomes very easy for it to get worse and worse and worse. Simply stop and take a mindful moment. And if the news stresses you out, turn off the news. If being on Instagram stresses you out. Don’t turn on Instagram, uninstall it from your phone will be the greatest decision. I uninstalled Facebook from my phone this year. Greatest decision I’ve ever made. And it’s because you’re not bombarded with stress signals all day long.
So I think that had we taken a better approach from a media messaging perspective, we could have prevented a lot of stress and anxiety. And I think we also could have prevented a lot of the division. Yeah. And we also should have been more strategic about our response. I mean, come on, guys. It’s not like we didn’t have a pandemic preparedness plan. We just didn’t put it into action fast enough. And it led to so much confusion and so much excessive stress that is not necessary.
Meg: Right. And I mean, when you were listing those things, I was feeling empowered. And you’re saying what if we talked about these things and recommended these things? As you’re saying it, I’m like, Yeah, like feeling so empowered, I can do that. I can drink more water, I can get more sleep. Instead of panic and doom. If you really get quiet and feel what your body feels with panic, and doom, and empowerment, it really is such a game changer. That is a really just powerful, powerful thing. So what are the top things that we can be doing to support our immune system?
How To Support Your Immune System
Lindsey: Yeah, absolutely. So when it comes to your immune system, the best thing for you to do is to ensure that you have a healthy metabolic system. So if you’re overweight, now’s a great time to eat a little bit better. Switch from sugary beverages over to water, get a little bit more exercise and heal the underlying metabolic issues. And the great news is, is that doing that will help on every level.
It’s not just going to help you protect your immune system, but it’s also going to help you to not have the need for long-term chronic disease care. I think it’s a shame that w, in America especially, think that having chronic disease is normal. Disease is not normal, and it does not need to be normalized. You were not designed to live your life half broken.
So really getting down to what can we do that’s going to help on every single level? Dealing with metabolic issues is at the absolute top of the list. And so the immune system really gets out of whack when it comes to dealing with stress when it comes to nutrient imbalances. If you don’t have adequate sleep, if you’re not washing your hands, if your gut is not healthy –you know if your gut is not healthy, it is very, very difficult.
People say skin is the barrier to the outside world. Nope, that is a lie, friends. The barrier to the outside world is your intestines and your gut. So if your gut is not healthy, if you don’t have good probiotics and prebiotics, you’re not going to be making post biotics. So keeping the gut healthy, regularly exercising all of that.
How Supplements Can Help
Then we also do know that we have some good information about herbs and supplements that have been used to treat Coronavirus as well as to prevent Coronavirus. So, if you are someone that knows that you have either been exposed to someone who is not feeling well or if you work in a high-risk environment, considering adding in vitamin C, zinc, vitamin D, vitamin B3 is also really important because vitamin B3 can help reduce long inflammation.
As we’ve seen, it’s not the actual infection that can be so bad with SARS COVID. What is more challenging with SARS COVID is that it impacts every body system. People have cardiovascular complications, people have musculoskeletal complications, people have problems with losing their sense of smell. And so part of it is we’ve got to tone down the inflammatory response throughout the entire body, ensuring that you have plenty of glutathione or n acetyl. Cysteine helps to build the immune system Melatonin is been studied in its effects of helping you to sleep more which thereby increases the immune system.
One of my favorites for SARS COVID is Claire Sutton. And so Claire Sutton is a flavonoid that has powerful antioxidant effects all throughout the body. It not only reduces inflammation, some people say that it can help to alleviate allergy symptoms. And it has antiviral action directly by inhibiting viral entry into the cells. PEA is a fatty acid body needs that one to fight pain and inflammation.
There are also supplements called specializing pro resolving mediators that are similar to omega three fatty acids. And they’re critical in turning off the body’s inflammatory response. I mean, we could go on and on I think something insane like 150,000 papers or 100,000 papers have been written this year, researching SARS COVID. And so whether you’ve got Kirkman or EC, EC g c resveratrol, or if you’re just simple with zinc and vitamin C, there’s a lot of information out there.
Love Yourself Enough To Make Healthy Choices
But really, when you break it down, if you think about what is the best thing that I can do? Eat a healthy diet, sleep a lot, drink plenty of water, exercise regularly, and do the self work to reduce your stress levels. If you don’t reduce your stress levels, every body system is out of alignment. So it’s the stuff that we all know that we need to be doing. But we don’t do for some reason. And I think some of the reason is that we don’t do what we need to do and what we know will make us feel better.
I mean come on, it’s undeniable that if you sit down and eat three donuts, you’re gonna have a sugar high and then a sugar crash and then you’re gonna feel like crap. And you’re gonna look back and go Why did I do that? Why these things. Love yourself enough to eat right, to exercise, to sleep, to drink more water, and to reduce your stress levels. Love yourself enough listeners.
Meg: It’s so good. It can sound overwhelming to hear like oh, all these supplements and all these things. But let it empower you to know that there are so many things we can be doing to be preventative with our body and our health. Instead of letting it overwhelm you, let it empower you. Wow, there’s so much I can do without going to the store. Without going to a health food store. Like I can drink more water, I can get more sleep. Just super simple things that’s empowering. Yeah. So good love.
Health & Wellness Can Be Free & Simple
Lindsey: I love the free health stuff. I love when things are free, because part of what is broken with Western medicine is that the interventions that make the most money are the most expensive consumers. And that I think, has also been a confusing thing this year. Does hydroxychloroquine work? Or does it not? Does ivermectin work or does it not? And why is every drug that’s coming out like, $30,000? It’s ridiculous.
So I love when you really can take a step back and go, meditating is free. Actually having the discipline to get in bed at nine o’clock at night and going to sleep and getting really restful sleep is free. And you can get bells and whistles and sound machines and blackout curtains, and blah, blah, blah, but you don’t have to. Wellness can be very simple.
I know a ton of people are like you’re telling me to eat fresh fruits and vegetables and this and that. And it’s so expensive. Well remember your dirty dozen and your clean 15. Put your strategic emphasis on buying foods that are on that clean 15 list. Where it’s not as critically important for you to buy organic. Even if you say, look, I can’t do this all at once. Because that’s not the way that we’re built. We’re built to maintain our habits that have gotten us to where we are. So if you can’t do it all at once, don’t stress out. What can you do today? What’s the one thing that’s going to lead to the next thing?
Meg: Yes. So what are like three to five free things people can do?
What Can People Do Today To Improve Their Health For Free
Lindsey: Let’s think, go outside and take a walk, get exposure to sunlight. That is free for you. Drink water. Throughout most of America, sorry, Flint, Michigan, we are so blessed to have water that freely flows out of our faucets. And of course, you can upgrade and get the amazing Berkey filter so that you can avoid the fluorides and this and that. But really and truly the water is there. Take access and like do it.
Calling a friend and keeping social connections with people. Also free meditating. Seriously, friends, spend three minutes a day meditating. And if three minutes sounds like a lot, try one minute, pause and breathe for one minute. Most of us have lost the art of breathing. And it’s very important that we breathe correctly. So breathing in through the nose and out through the nose is free. And what does that do for you? It reduces your cortisol levels, it expands your hippocampus, which is like your emotional resilience center, it shrinks the size of your amygdala making you less likely to feel stressed out. It also helps to clear toxins out of the lungs. It also helps to maintain your pH in your body because a lot of the times when we breathe, we are balancing out our pH by the expulsion of carbonic acid throughout our nose or our mouths. It has such broad reaching effects. It’s going to improve your heart rate variability, lower your blood pressure, the list just goes on and on and on. Because you took one minute to breathe in through your nose and out through your nose. Find an app. There’s tons of free apps that can help to empower your practices. So those are just a few things that come to mind as free ways that you can take care of yourself that’s not going to break the bank.
Supplements To Help Improve Our Health
Meg: So good. Okay, so what are some supplements like three to five supplements I told you guys to have a pen and paper for the subset. So what are some supplements?
Lindsey: I think number one if you are breeding, take a vitamin d3 supplement. It is important that you take d3 cola calciforall instead of D2, which is ergocalciferol and I won’t get into the why, but just trust me. So we have an epidemic of vitamin D deficiencies and vitamin D deficiencies basically shows that you’re at risk for more adverse outcomes than people who do not have vitamin D deficiency. So I’m a huge advocate of vitamin D3.
I also love an MSM supplement, a methyl sulphonyl methane supplement that equips your body to build Bluetooth ion which is your master antioxidant, and a Master detoxifier. I also personally think that everyone should be using a prebiotic and a probiotic. Now the best place for you to get pre and post probiotics is from your food. So probiotic supplements are placeholders. They are not something necessarily that you need every single day. But if you’re unwilling to eat prebiotic foods, you are going to need a pre and a probiotic supplement. But if you really focus on your prebiotic foods, your probiotic levels in your gut are going to naturally balance out.
Another thing that you can do for your gut, that is also a cost savings. Reduce the amount of meat that you eat. Now don’t throw stones at me, I know that meat, I mean, come on friends, meat is undeniably delicious. But when you eat diets that are highly concentrated in meat, you shift your gut flora and your gut flora end up becoming more likely to produce through a long chain of metabolism. They ultimately produce something called TMA, which is one of the most proinflammatory substances that you can have in the whole world.
Sso your gut basically becomes this inflammatory generator when you over consume meat. And ultimately, I don’t know what that cutoff is. But especially red meat really drives these inflammatory processes and makes us overall less healthy. So reduce the amount of meat that you’re eating so that your gut bacteria can do what they need to do to provide the anti-inflammatory effects. So MSM supplement vitamin D supplement, I personally take a B vitamin supplement each day because B vitamins are water-soluble, so we’re constantly eliminating them from our bodies, especially if you drink alcohol. Alcohol rapidly depletes vitamin B. And so you want to take some B vitamins, supplements and then ensuring that you’re getting a good mix of prebiotics and probiotics in the diet.
And there’s nothing wrong with just taking a really nice old school multiple vitamin. I also am a huge fan of ashwagandha and many of the Ayurvedic adaptogens. And so in Ayurvedic there are a lot of a lot of adaptogenic herbs that help to provide the support that you need. So ashwagandha, toolsy, licorice, maringa shatavari are all adaptogenic herbs that when you take them, they only exert what your body needs at that moment.
So whereas like with vitamin E and vitamin A, you can overdose on those and they can become rapidly toxic adaptogenic herbs or a more gentle way to balance out the body. So I mean, I could talk all day, it really depends on what’s going on inside the person or what you’re facing. If you’re facing hormone deficiencies, perhaps you do need some pregnenolone supplementation or da da but really when you get to the basics, I think about vitamin D, perhaps a multiple vitamin that’s going to be sure that you’re getting plenty of vitamin C etc. An MSM supplement probiotics, prebiotics, and then some of the adaptogenic herbs
If that’s all is overwhelming and confusing, I do accept functional medicine patients. And so come and let’s just chat it out. Let’s figure out what’s going on in your life and how we can help you to help yourself feel better because I tell you what to do, but until you love yourself enough to do it, it’s just falling on deaf ears.
Loving Yourself Enough To Listen To Your Body
Meg: Yes, for sure. This took me a while to learn, but investing in our health, it seems like oh, yeah, but I want to buy a couch or I want to go on vacation. But when we invest in our health, we are investing in every other area. It’s just so important. Using those supplements or hopping on a call with Lindsey.
Lindsey: Come and we’ll do some functional medicine. And we’ll go down to what’s causing these problems in your life. When you go to a normal medicine doctor, you say, Oh, my hair’s falling out, instead of taking a step back to say, what is the cause of it? What is making it happen? They may take a step back and go, Oh, it’s thyroid problems. But instead of saying Well, can we ensure that we have enough iodine in the diet? Can we ensure that we don’t have goitrogens in the diet, etc. It becomes, Okay, well, we blame your thyroid, and here’s something to tame it and to make it work the way that you want it to.
You can’t manipulate the body in that way. If you’re experiencing discomfort, or have a disease in your body, it’s your body telling you something, it’s your body saying to you, hey, I need a tension in this area for these reasons. And we have to love ourselves enough to listen.
Meg: Yeah, love ourselves enough to listen. I think the first instance for me where a medical professional had asked those questions was this past year. I had a baby in 2020 and I had a home birth midwife. And she asked me, so you’re gonna fill out this chart on your diet, and I’m just like, what this is? Now thinking back, how crazy is it that having a baby, she was the first medical professional who asked me what I ate.?
Lindsey: Well, and it’s so crazy too, because one of my colleagues is a women’s health provider. And when I started asking them about their infertility, they wanted to know, how do I have a baby, but I have infertility problems? When she starts talking to them about how much they poop. They think that she has three heads. But the body and your uterus are not broken, which is leading to infertility. The whole body’s function is disturbed on some level. And you have to fix that disturbance in order to fix the ultimate problem that you’re trying to fix.
But you have to take a step back and realize that you are not your problems. You are not defined by having hypothyroidism or having autoimmune disorder or having infertility. I think so many women put blame on themselves. Especially within the essential oil community. How many of you have heard like the womb, if you use just essential oils, you wouldn’t be sick? That is so uncompassionate and unsympathetic, because the fact of the matter is, we all get sick this year.
Oh, my goodness. It has just boggled my mind. We as a collective do not understand that it is perfectly normal for an adult to run a fever, experience an illness to have short term problems. That is totally normal. This idea that we are supposed to live chronically ill is a lie. It is also a lie that we are never supposed to have acute health care challenges. It does not make you a bad person.
Treat The Person Not The Diagnosis
You have to take a step back and ask yourself a question that a pharmacist asked me. It changed my life forever. When I tore my ACL, she asked me, Why did you need this injury? Why did you need this injury? Why did you need other years of infertility to ultimately end up with a perfect child? Why did you need an autoimmune disease to help inspire you to eat better and exercise, take a step back and recognize that you have the answers to help inside of you? you simply have to love yourself enough to do it, you have to have enough care for yourself.
And you also have to break away from the idea that women are supposed to be caregivers all of the time. And recognize also that if one part of your body is at a place of discomfort, it is simply a signal that you have an opportunity to feel better to take better care of yourself, and to find a practitioner who sees you not as infertility patient a or hypothyroid patient – but who sees you as an entire person.
Treat the person, not the diagnosis. I think that so often, it’s like, I don’t feel good. And I go to the doctor, and I get told that I have lupus and it’s oh, congrats. We named it now. We know what it is. But no, you didn’t figure it out. What is the cause of the reason that you have lupus? Is it stress? Is it a stealth infection? There’s so many things that you can uncover about yourself, but you have to be willing to be quiet and to listen internally, so that you end up being your best doctor.
Meg: Yes. And oddly enough, I was diagnosed with lupus. I remember finally being like, okay, I have an answer and I go home and look up lupus. And it’s literally that your body is attacking itself. And I’m just overcome with shame. Why is my body attacking itself? If I loved myself enough, just like what Lindsey is telling us, enough to not accept that our bodies don’t attack themselves. That is crazy. And so why is this happening? I’m in remission because I loved myself enough to not accept that I was broken at 20 years old.
Lindsey: Right? The fact that you, I’m sure had doctors that were Okay, well, here’s our treatment plan, we’re going to put you on steroids, we’re going to put you on some sort of anti inflammatory drug, blah, blah, blah. But we don’t take a step back to say, have we addressed leaky gut? Do you maybe have gluten intolerance? Do you live in a house that is so covered up in mold, or heavy metals? Do you have epstein barr virus? Do you have stress?
I mean, one of the absolute root causes of lupus is stress. So if we don’t take a step back and say, Okay, we’re calling this lupus, but instead of saying and now we’re just going to throw a bunch of medications, and a bunch of this, add in that. If we take a step back and say, Hmm, I wonder if he went off gluten for a month, if your symptoms would get better? I wonder if we tested for gluten sensitivity if it would come back positive? That is actually the goal of my practice is not to name blame and tame.
Why We Are Magnificent Beings & Deserve A Healthy Life
But what I really want people to do is understand that you are a magnificent being designed to be well. You deserve to go through life, feeling able to do the things that you want to do. I mean, I’m going to tell them my dad, and he won’t listen to the show. So it doesn’t matter. Hey, my dad drives me crazy, because he has the mindset that it is inevitable that as you get older, you will feel bad.
Part of being healthy, is the belief that you are healthy. So if meditating on a mantra, such as every cell in my body is happy, healthy and functioning exactly the way that it is supposed to. I mean, imagine that transition from the mindset of your body is attacking itself. You say, every cell of my body is happy, healthy and functioning exactly like it’s supposed to. That is really a different mindset.
I sit on the floor all the time, I’m a floor sitter. My dad is sitting there, he’s like, well give it a few years, you won’t be sitting on the floor anymore, because you won’t be able to get up. And I’m like, Dad, I sit on the floor every single day. And my body will continue to know how to do that, as long as I don’t stop. And so just take a step back, and recognize that you deserve to be healthy, you deserve to be loved, most of all, by yourself in this world. Otherwise, why are you here? Why, say I want to come and be a part of this earthly experience, because I do think you can call me crazy if you want to.
I do think energetically we choose to be here during the times that we are here on earth. And if you’re not going to make the best of it, and not live the best life that you possibly can. To me, that doesn’t fulfill your destiny, that doesn’t whip you to graduate from Earth School when we die, and go like I learned as many life lessons as I possibly could. You can call it Dharma, if you want to, if you could put it into Eastern philosophy. Or if you want a more Judeo Christian approach, God says I laid a path for you. If you’re not there joyfully, and just with meaning and passion and gusto, walking through life, why? What is stopping you from being able to do that amazing thing?
Meg: Yes, so good. came into this conversation thinking I would learn something, but I’m just so empowered. So thank you for all of that. Thanks. Let’s go into essential oils, and what essential oils we can be using to care for our immune system.
How To Use Essential Oils For Your Immune System
Lindsey: Oh, my goodness, I mean, really, and truly, it’s the basis of the immune system is really governed by stress. And so whatever essential oil that you’re using, just use it to help reduce your stress levels. Of course, we do have powerful essential oils that have properties that can help to combat foreign invaders that might be a threat to you.
So considering things like oregano, and thyme and lemongrass are options there as well. But keep it simple. Inhale some lavender, some bergamont. That going to help to calm and center the immune system. You can also think about things like copaiba, which have some really powerful immune modulating effects to where you can help to keep the immune system calm throughout the entire day.
Honestly, I think people get so hung up on what’s the right oil, how much do I use, what is the exact way to do things, but that’s not the way essential oils are. That’s not the way that they work. You can think about using essential oils to support your immune system. But really and truly, I could tell you, you gotta have rose oil. If you don’t have rose oil in your house.
Don’t be stuck. Recognize that drain smells almost like rose oil and perhaps maybe it can have the same effects. I also think about things like tea tree oil, which has the terpene for all which activates the production of leukocytes. There’s frankincense, which also positively affects leukocytosis, or sorry, leukocyte production, cadaver crawl thymol.
Oregano essential oil and thyme essential oil can help to aid against foreign invaders. Lemon essential oil is just so powerfully concentrated in Lima Nene, which helps to balance the immune system. And then thinking also about things like cinnamon and rosemary, you’re gonna have one eight cineole inside of those, which helps to have really good immune balancing abilities. And then clove activates the immune response. Clove can be one of those that can help you to say whoo, I just got exposed to something. Let me take care of that. And so those are some of the essential oils that come to mind. But if you don’t have those, use the one in your hand.
Meg: Yes, we get so caught up in how many drops? And how do we use it? And that it’s like this analysis paralysis. And I was the same way when I first started with oils, but it definitely is, use what you have. That’s all. And so I’m sure people listening are writing down the names of the oils you listed, and they’re saying, Okay, how do we use those? How? So can you kind of talk about how they go about using it, whether they have all of those or just one?
How To Use Your Essential Oils
Lindsey: Absolutely. So there’s some basic primary ways that you use essential oils. Number one, don’t make essential oils complicated. I’m going to teach you what someone taught me. Essential oils, I think we try to make them so complicated. But really, if you get down to how to use an essential oil. You open the bottle, so you can inhale them directly from the bottle. You can pour them out into your hands and inhale them off of your hands. I love applying essential oils to my chest.
You can use them in a diffuser. So using them aromatically is one way, you can also apply them topically on your skin with or without the use of a fatty carrier oil. You can also ingest essential oils. This is what a lot of people consider to be the most aggressive way to use essential oils. When you inhale that, does it go directly into your brain? Yeah. Oh, I think my guts got a little bit. I consider my brain a little bit more sacred space than my intestines. But that’s just me, people throughout the years there is published literature of using essential oils rectally using them back generally, but I tend to stick to just those primary three: aromatically, topically and ingestion.
Meg: How do you know which one to do?
Lindsey: Well think about what you want the oil to do. If you want to shift your mood, you better be using them aromatically because that is how they get into your brain, get into those emotion centers, etc. If you want your skin to look better, you’re gonna apply it on your skin. If you want to support your digestive system or your internal systems, taking them by mouth may be the best approach for you.
I think I think one of the myths about essential oils is that they are all universally safe, No matter how much you use. This is not true. If you pour cinnamon in your eye, it’s going to really, really hurt. And so be reasonable and rational with how much of the oil that you’re using. I think a lot of times people say oh, if one drop is good 10 must be better because that’s the American mindset. Not true. This is not true. When it comes to essential oils. One drop will do just fine in many, many situations. So think about what you want the oil to do for you, and then decide how you’re going to use it.
Meg: Yes. That simplifies it. Because we are smart, so just ask what do I want it to do? And if you’re still overwhelmed, open the bottle.
So let’s go to rapid fire questions. So, just real quick, whatever comes to mind. What is a book that changed your life?
Lindsey: I’m currently reading The Power of Now and there are some amazing nuggets in there that are just so profound so that’s the one that immediately came to mind.
Meg: I’ve heard of that so I’m gonna look that up. What is heavily played on your music playlist right now?
Lindsey: Oh, loud y’all. I listened to the music though. I just got my list of my top songs of 2020 and my number one song that I listened to on repeat more than anyone was ot Genesis. Everybody mad? Yeah, don’t listen to it around little kids.
Meg: I love that. Okay, what’s your go to essential oil roller blend right now since we’re Whimsy and Wellness after all?
Lindsey: Oh, wow. Well Whimsy and Wellness and I collaborated on some absolutely beautiful crystals boxes for the holidays. So I’ve been all those holiday rollers. If I think about what I put in my immune blend, I put tea tree, lemon, oregano, frankincense, cinnamon, rosemary, eucalyptus, clove and lemon in there.
So that’s another one that I love. And that recipe is over on my blog. Just a DIY immune booster. And that has a link to the recommended bottle that I recommend from Whimsy and Wellness which is the pyrite roller because it helps to remove negative energies from the environment.
Meg: Okay, cool. We will put that in the show notes you guys and then you can just click right over there because that sounds amazing. Okay, so what are some resources that people can get through you and how can they follow along with you and keep learning from you moving forward?
Lindsey: Absolutely. Well, you can head to LindseyElmore.com if you would like to book an appointment or peruse our very extensive blog that is there. If you decide that now’s your moment where you want to take that step and get more metabolically healthy, I host a plant based cleanse and that is available at cleanslatecleanse.com.
And if you’re interested specifically on essential oil and supplement education related to Young Living essential oils, I have a website called while Ed Club, which is where I provide Young Living education and listeners for the show can head over and use the code whimsy to get two weeks free in the while Ed club.
Meg: Amazing. Thank you. How can we follow along with you on socials?
Lindsey: Oh, you can find me at Lindsey Elmore on Facebook and Instagram and I am at Dr. Dr. Lindsey Elmore on Pinterest. And I’m also on LinkedIn. Just find Lindsey Elmore. I’m not hard to find online and I would love for you guys to come and follow.
I’m such a fan of Whimsy. And so if you are a fan of Whimsy and Wellness, and you’re looking for a resource to provide many more DIY blends, come and follow my blog, join the mailing list. And if you head over to Lindseyelmore.com. And you go to oh my goodness, I gotta tell you, I gotta give you the right URL. I actually have a handout, a free download on chakra roller blends that you can use if you’re just starting your Whimsy and Wellness journey and you’ve got some roller balls. If you head to Lindsey Elmore.com/chakras, there’s a free download that you can use that will give you seven different DIY blends to use with your Whimsy and Wellness rollers.
Meg: Amazing. Okay, so like I said, I went into this thinking I would just learn a lot but I not only learned a lot, but feel just so empowered.
