How I Use: Essential Oils Post Car Accident
You’ve all undoubtedly heard about my car accident in November 2013. Here’s how I use essential oils to relax muscles and support healthy joint and cartilage function.
Yup, that’s me! I fell asleep behind the wheel of my car after working an overnight shift and rolled my car about 6 times. I say about 6 because while I woke up during the crash and remember my car rolling I obviously wasn’t counting how many times I was inverted. I was a little busy yelling “No, no, no” (that’s the best I could come up with at the time).
I broke my arm, fractured two vertebrae in my back, and fractured my manubrium (above the sternum). I also had lung contusions and my eyes were a fun reddish color from bursting some blood vessels. I got to hang out in the hospital for 9 days and then spent 5 months at home recovering. My arm took the longest to heal if you check out that X-Ray above you can see it was a clean break and luckily it did not require surgery. However the bone had to completely regrow!
I had little to no discomfort during recovery. I was pretty well medicated however once the painkillers were discontinued and my activity levels increased I was feeling it. I really didn’t want to continue taking pain killers, and being a nurse I realized the amount of ibuprofen and acetaminophen I was taking every day to keep my pain manageable would be toxic.
I hit the Internet in search of natural ways to support healthy joint and cartilage function, and to alleviate my sore muscles. I tried some herbal products from Amazon that claimed to relieve pain, used heating pads, and tried Valerian root capsules. The herbal products did little to no good. The valerian worked wonders for helping me sleep and the heating pads only worked for a couple hours at the most. I was back on the Internet searching and found info on essential oils.
A Natural Remedy
I had heard about essential oils before. Who hasn’t? There was a ton of conflicting information out there. Different schools of thought, different essential oil companies, and different combinations to try for relief. After spending a lot of money on products that didn’t work I took my time from February/March-July to research essential oils. You can read more about my research here and here.
As you know by now I had picked Young Living as the essential oils to use in my home. It took a little bit of experimentation with their products but I found solutions for my specific situation.
What I use:
Valor, Panaway, & Peppermint
Deep Relief Roll-On
I have my discomfort under control for the most part. I use Valor daily as stated above which helps a TON. When it gets bad I use the Deep Relief roll-on on the sore muscles. I carry Deep Relief in my purse/on me at all times. Working as a nurse I can get flare-ups during my routine shift so having this available in an easy to use roll-on is great news for me! If it’s really terrible I will layer the body butter with essential oils over the Deep Relief which pretty much knocks it out of the park.
Do you want to learn more about essential oils and Young Living? Poke around my blog and read my posts. You can also learn more via a Facebook group run by my upline. Email me for details on how to get added.
