5 Steps to Superhuman Energy with Jodi Cohen, NTD

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Content By: Ari Whitten

In this episode, I am speaking with Jodi Sternoff Cohen, who is a bestselling author, award-winning journalist, functional practitioner, and founder of Vibrant Blue Oils. We will talk about the 5 keys to superhuman energy.

Table of Contents

In this podcast, Jodi and I will discuss:

  • The 5 steps to superhuman energy 
  • The vagus nerve and how it works in your body
  • 6 powerful tips to stimulate the vagus nerve
  • Why sleep is critical for high energy 
  • The best essential oils for superhuman energy

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Transcript

Ari: Hey there. Welcome back to the Energy Blueprint Podcast. I am Ari Whitten, your host. And today I have with me, Jodi Sternoff Cohen, who is a bestselling author, award winning journalist, functional practitioner and founder of Vibrant Blue Oils, where she’s combined her training in nutritional therapy and aroma therapy to create unique proprietary blends of organic and wild crafted essential oils. She’s supported over 50,000 people with related challenges, including anxiety, insomnia, and autoimmunity. And for the past 10 years, she’s lectured at wellness centers, conferences and corporations on brain health, essential oils, stress and detoxification. She’s been seen in the New York Times, Wellness Mama, elephant journal and numerous publications. Her website, Vibrant Blue Oils is visited by over 300,000 natural health seekers every year. And she’s rapidly become a top resource for essential oils education on the internet today. So welcome my friend. It’s a pleasure to have you.

Jodi: Thank you, my friend. I know. It’s great to see you.

The 5 steps to superhuman energy

Ari: Likewise. So I know you have a great presentation lined up for us today. You’re going to be talking about the parasympathetic nervous system, the vagus nerve and essential oils and how that ties into energy levels. So I’m super excited to get into this with you. I know you have five steps to superhuman energy. So I will let you take it from here and get into it.

Jodi: Perfect. So basically what I’ve noticed, if you have too many tabs open on your device, it drains the battery and it functions less optimally. And I think so many of us have too many tabs open in our life. There are some pretty low hanging fruit, meaning the fruit that’s the easiest to grab off the tree. Things that we can do that just help give us more energy because every distraction, every tab you close out of allows your computer to really use the energy that it has more efficiently. And so, what I’ve identified are the five easiest things that most people don’t even think about. They’re totally eating, right. They’re exercising and maybe they’re still forgetful. They walk in the pantry and they’re like, why did I get here? Or they’re carrying extra weight or they just don’t have the energy. They get tired. At four o’clock they either need some kind of coffee or they just can’t focus. So they have to go on a quick run or do something so that they can sustain through the day. It’s nine o’clock and they’re ready to go to bed. 

So the things I’ll just share, spoiler alert, it’s really switching gears into the right state of your nervous system and that’s the most important thing. It’s making that you’re really getting restorative sleep, so that you’re sleeping through the night. It’s making sure that things are flowing in your body. So the oxygen and glucose are getting into your brain. All of the toxins are draining from your brain and actually leaving your body. It’s kind of supporting the organ systems and regions of the brain that help with your energy, your endocrine system, so your hypothalamus, pituitary and adrenals. Then finally, it’s modulating your immune system. Often your immune system is either overreacting, so you have food sensitivities, auto-immunity all these things. Or it’s under-reacting so you have this heavy viral load that’s building up and it’s really not being dealt with. So let’s start with your parasympathetic state. 

So for those of you who aren’t familiar with your nervous system, there are really two states and you might think about it like shifting gears on your bike. There’s the state of, gosh, it’s an emergency and that could be the Tiger’s chasing me and I’m about to die. Or it could be I’m driving in traffic and the person one lane over is changing lanes and doesn’t see me. And so, what you do, your body automatically jumps into like, let’s keep you alive mode. So it mobilizes all of the energy in the form of adrenaline or cortisol so that you can run really quickly, either fight back if you can, you flee, run really quickly, or you freeze, you’ll mobilize and hopefully the predator doesn’t see you or thinks you’re dead and goes on by their merry way. 

And then you’re supposed to kind of toggle back into your rest, repair and recovery state known as your parasympathetic state of your nervous system. And what’s interesting is when survival is prioritized, anything not critical to survival really shuts down. So that includes your ability to digest your food, your ability to detoxify, your ability to anti-inflame. It’s interesting because if you’re twisting your ankle when you’re running, that could make you killed.

So in the moment it’s basically short-term, it helps with inflammation. If it goes on chronically, then inflammation starts to go rampant. And then also your immune system. So ideally we’re supposed to deal with our stress and then flip back into the state of repair and heal known as the parasympathetic state. But what happens is that a lot of people get stuck in that stress state and they can’t switch lanes back into the parasympathetic state. And so one of the easiest, low hanging fruit tools to help them get into the parasympathetic state is to activate your vagus nerve.

Your vagus nerve is cranial nerve number 10. And a spoiler alert, it serves as the gear shift between your sympathetic fight or flight state and your parasympathetic rest and digest state. And I’m going to give you a quick anatomy overview, because that will kind help you understand how you can stimulate it and how you can switch from those two states. So it starts at the very back of your head at your brainstem and kind of wanders around by both sides behind your ear lobe. Then kind of innervates your throat, your lungs, your heart, all of your organs of digestion, your whole motility wave, through your bowels. If you’re constipated, that’s often a really telling sign that your you’re stuck in the sympathetic state and you’re not actually moving food through your body. And so really easy ways to activate it are anything that innervates the vagus nerve. It goes both ways. So it sends a signal from the brain to the body and the body to the brain. It’s your information highway. And this is one thing that’s really important to how it functions. 

So if your brain isn’t communicating, say for example, hunger signals to your body or fullness signals to your brain, things get out of whack. It’s almost like if you think about an accident on a freeway, it means that cars can’t get through. And so the more you can clear up any miscommunication between the brain and the body, the easier it is for you to heal. Your brain is sending a signal, you’re exercising and you’re lifting a weight. The faster that brain signal gets to your muscle, the stronger you get, and the more able you are to have the energy to sustain the workout. So what can impede that it can be chronic stress. The other thing that most people aren’t talking about is toxicity. It can be a big impediment to this communication channel. And if you think about what happens, your mouth is kind of where the most toxins occur, because it’s one of the key barriers to entry into your body. And so. things like pathogens, viruses, if you have a root canal, that’s a little infected or metal amalgams, all of those things are in the mouth and they drain along your trigeminal nerve, your jaw, and they can intersect with your vagus nerve right here. 

So it’s interesting. We know that root canals are correlated with heart attacks. Here’s kind of the back-end to the story, what happens. You have toxins from your root canals that are infected. They drain along the trigeminal nerve, and then they intersect with the vagus nerve right here. And nerves are our big receptors for toxins. And it’s your vagus nerve that actually sends your antiinflammatory hormone acetylcholine down and tells your heart rate to slow down. Your vagus nerve is highly correlated with your heart rate variability. So if the vagus nerve is now toxic and suddenly those signals aren’t being sent, then your heart rate doesn’t know when to slow down. So it’s overworking, over pumping and you’re more likely to have a heart attack. So it’s really important that we try to activate this vagus nerve.

Any time you’re doing meditation or gargling or doing deep breathing like you do in yoga, or even digesting your food or a coffee enemas really good way to stimulate your gallbladder, which is innervated by the vagus nerve. All of these things send a signal to your vagus nerve and start to stimulate it so that it shifts into that parasympathetic, rest, digest, recovery state. Another really easy way, I created a blend of clove and lime oil. You could do it yourself and you can just apply it right behind the ear lobe on the mastoid bone. This is a really big acupuncture point. And what they’re doing in acupuncture is, they’re stimulating reflex points. You can use oils to stimulate reflex points too. You can even just run your finger, like trace behind your ear. You can use your tongue like a paint brush to paint the roof of your mouth. The main point I want to make is, if you’re feeling anxious or overwhelmed or low energy, sometimes just helping your body shift gears into that parasympathetic state will really up your energy. 

It’s almost like if you’ve ever biked up a big hill, we’ve got tons of them where I live in Seattle and don’t shift gears into the lower gear. You’re just working a lot harder and it doesn’t need to be so intense. So just downshifting, shifting gears into the right gear, all of a sudden, it’s a lot easier for your body. It doesn’t pedal the bike for you. It just enhances what you’re already doing.

Ari: Got it. Quick question on essential oils. You mentioned applying that blend directly behind the ear. There’s mixed information that I’ve heard around applying essential oils directly to the skin. Do they need to be diluted? We have carrier oils and specific dilutions. What’s your take on that?

Jodi: I think there are certain oils, like lavender that can be applied directly to the skin. Also different parts of the skin get into the bloodstream faster. Pulse points like the wrists, behind the ears, get into the system faster. If you have any kind of cut or abrasion on your body, that’s going to get into the bloodstream faster, if your skin is warm. I just started doing the keto diet and they say always rub your finger before you do the prick test because it allows increased blood flow. So if you just got out of the shower, you just got done exercising, if you apply oils, then it’s more likely to get into your system. For clove and lime, I do recommend diluting. I just recommend using equal parts and then diluting with at least a tablespoon or two. Dilution doesn’t decrease the effect. It’s not like more is more. All you’re doing is just really using something that’s super stimulatory and super small. 

What I especially like about the clove and lime combination, if you think about before we had all of these modern medicines, clove was used in dentistry to really clean out the bacteria in the mouth. And so, what’s great is it gets in this area and you almost might think of like a on a freeway, say a truck is jackknifed in the middle. If the repair crew can get in there and start clearing things out, then things can flow a lot better. Did I answer your question? 

Vagus nerve toxicity

Ari: Yeah, absolutely. 

Jodi: Okay. The other thing I wanted to share about vagus nerve toxicity, there’s a doctor out of Harvard, Michael Van VanElzakker, who’s talking about vagus nerve infection hypothesis. And his premise that has been getting a lot of momentum is that, when the vagus nerve is infected, because the vagus nerve is signaling the rest of the body, it’s almost over activating your sickness response. And what happens in sickness response, if you’re sick, you want to kind of down-regulate everything. So you feel fatigued. You might get inflamed. You might have pain. So you’re forced to really heal. But what happens is if this nerve is infected and it’s sending out the signal that you’re sick, when you’re actually not sick, it can be an overreaction. So that can present as chronic fatigue syndrome or multi-chemical sensitivity or fibromyalgia. So sometimes people who have been having those symptoms find that if they can stimulate their vagus nerve and calm their reaction to that infection, or even heal that infection the other symptoms dissipate.

The best strategies to stimulate the vagus nerve

Ari: Got it. So, can you recap the main strategies that you listed off there as far as activating the vagus?

Jodi: Yes. The free and easy ones are use your tongue like a paintbrush on the roof of your mouth. Do anything you can to kind of rub behind your ears or rub along the side of your ears. Splashing your face with freezing water. Using a tongue depressor to gag yourself. Any kind of deep breathing, yoga, meditation, coffee enema, or essential oils.

Ari: Beautiful. And on the subject of essential oils, you mentioned a few, clove, lime, you mentioned lavender. Those are the ones you feel are best for activating the vagus?

Jodi: Yeah. It’s really interesting because we work with a lot of practitioners and I’ve tested a variety of things. And actually here’s something that I will share. Originally, I thought, because the parasympathetic state is the rest and digest state, I thought that calming it was the right strategy. And so we were testing a lot of calming oils like lavender and chamomile. What we realized is the opposite is true. You actually have to stimulate it. So I would recommend the more stimulatory oils. Those are like the hot oils. Clove is very stimulatory and has a property called eugenol that has been found to test the highest for antiviral, antibacterial function. Thyme and Thymenol is also one that tests really well for that, but that’s a little bit hotter. And for some reason, clove and lime seem to get more people into that Zen parasympathetic state. So people can try cinnamon as a hot oil. Oregano is a very hot oil. Just be careful with the hot oils, always dilute. And I don’t love taking them internally unless you’re working with a practitioner. 

Ari: Got it. So I know you had five steps to superhuman energy. The first one was activate the vagus. What’s number two?

Jodi: Number two is sleep. Making sure that you’re getting restful sleep because sleep is when the brain actually detoxifies and heals. So many of the symptoms that we see presenting as brain fog and fatigue are really mental fatigue. It’s really that the brain has too many toxins. And so, it’s almost like it can’t function as quickly because there’s pollution in there. So the more you can really allow yourself to get eight hours of restful sleep a night, that’s when the brain … there’s this system called the glymphatic system that was discovered fairly recently. And they realized that when your brain is awake, it has to function. But when you’re sleeping, it can shrink. And it’s almost like a little mini carwash. It’s called your glymphatic system. Glymph or lymphatic combined with your glial cells, which are brain cells. And the cerebral spinal fluid goes through the brain and through the crevices in the brain and gets rid of any environmental toxins along with your own metabolic toxicity. Then it drains down the side of your neck and ideally leaves your body. 

So drainage is the next step, but sleeping, making sure you’re in a dark space. If you can get your bed a little bit away from the wall, then the electric circuitry of the wall, won’t interact with you. If you can sleep with your cell phone or device at least six feet from your head. If you can avoid interaction with devices and computers and any kind of artificial light. What triggers the release of melatonin, which is not only detoxifying and sign for sleep, is natural darkness. So anything that impedes your exposure to darkness can impede the ability of the body to release melatonin. Melatonin is your sleep hormone and cortisol is your stress hormone. And so, it makes sense that if you’re worried about something or if you think you’re in danger, that’s not the optimal time to fall asleep, because if you fall asleep on the watch, you’re going to die. So what is interesting is that the body perceives any kind of anticipatory stress. So say that you’re worried about something at work the next day, or a relationship or finances or anything. It triggers the same hormonal cascade in your body for stress that a physical stressor would. So it’s almost like a teeter-totter. 

If cortisol is high that forces melatonin low. If you can bring melatonin up or cortisol down, that calms the body and lets you go to sleep. So you can use essential oils to help activate the pineal gland, the part of your brain that releases melatonin to release melatonin. And we have a combination, but lavender is actually a good one for that. The thing that’s really key that I want to share is that, your pineal gland is in the exact center of your brain, so that it can kind of measure right between your eyes, the degree of light and impact it. So just applying things on the top of the head, above the ears, in the back of the ears, that really helps it get into the pineal gland in the center of the brain. So that melatonin is released, you naturally fall asleep. Night waking is a different issue.

Ari: Just quick question on that. So obviously a skeptic, someone who’s very evidence-based would say, by applying essential oils on the skin, at the top of the head or behind the ears, nothing is traveling directly into the brain.

Jodi: It’s getting into the blood.

Ari: So it’s either infusing into the bloodstream or there is a pathway through the nasal passageways that’s somewhat of a direct route to the brain, but through inhaling the vapors. What’s the-

Jodi: Mechanism?

Ari: Yeah, like how would you say to a skeptic or someone who would doubt that applying it here and here is more effective than, let’s say, just inhaling it or applying it on your wrist or something like that?

Jodi: That’s a great question. It’s very hard to get remedies into the brain because of the blood-brain barrier, which acts like the intestinal barrier. It only lets really small fat soluble molecules through to begin with. So one of the reasons that I actually think oils are more effective than supplements or food, well food is a different category. I think food can be very effective, but I think it’s hard to get remedies into the brain. So let’s talk about olfactory first. It’s really interesting because of the five senses which go into the brain that get channeled through your thalamus and then go to your amygdala. It’s a big intake process where it’s basically perceiving your environment to make sure that you stay safe. But what’s interesting is your sense of smell goes immediately to the amygdala. It’s the only one of the five senses that has that direct access. And what’s also interesting is that your nose, your olfactory cells are brain cells. I’ll get into this later, but for mental energy, your prefrontal cortex is what helps you focus. And your olfactory channel, cranial nerve number I, goes directly to the prefrontal cortex. 

In most cases, it’s the right part of the brain that controls the left side of the body. Your olfactory nerve goes directly, right nostril goes to right brain. So if you’re trying to balance right left brain, that’s a good way to go. In terms of getting into the bloodstream, what I’ve found and what we’ve been finding in clinical practice, which is interesting is that, if you apply, say, oils over the adrenals, so in that part of the body, it gets into the blood stream in that area of the body and gets to that organ more quickly. So even though you’re totally right, we have the cranium, but it gets into the system and blood does flow. We have hair and things that grow on the outside of the skull. So there is blood that flows through it. Beyond that, it’s a good question for skeptics. I guess what I would encourage them to do is try it and see if it works for themselves. And when it does, then they can find all the science and research to back it up. 

But there is a lot of science about the olfactory channel. This is my favorite science fan fact. There’s a Nobel Prize researcher out of Seattle named Linda Buck. And she was noticing a fear-based odor stimulant. She was really looking at the olfactory receptors in the nose and she identified the ones that smell predator odor, the fear sensors. And then she took it one step further and she was looking at what cancels that out. And it’s the smell of rose essential oil. So that whole idea of stop and smell the roses. There’s a lot of science behind that. Did that answer your question? 

Ari: Yes, absolutely. And on a personal note, rose essential oil is actually my favorite one. Maybe that’s a little feminine to say that, but I’ll admit it. I really like the smell of roses.

Jodi: It’s amazing. I lost my son in a car accident and that was my touchstone for survival. If you ever have like those horrible grief waves or if anxiety plagues, you smelling rose or applying it over your heart, it works better than anything else.

Ari: Number three, what’s the third step to superhuman energy?

Jodi: Number three is drainage. If you think about it any toxins that are lingering in our body that require our body to spend their energy on it, it becomes a physiological stressor. So the more we can help toxins leave our body, the more energy we free up in our body. So when you think about how the toxins are supposed to flow, they go from the cell, to the lymph, to the blood, to the liver, to the gallbladder, to the gut, to the toilet. At any step in that process it can get blocked and stagnant. The most obvious place that it gets stagnant is the lymph, because unless you’re moving, which I’m sure a lot of the people that are listening in do, you really have to move your body to move your lymph. It’s not like your heart that just pumps your blood. If you think about what oils do in the plants, they really are their immune system. They help to move fluids. They help to repel predators, but they’re really great. They’re what help move the water from the roots into the leaves that can be hundreds of feet in the air.

Especially mint, mint seems to be the most effective. So spearmint is actually better than peppermint, which surprised me. But anything that you can apply along your lymph channels. So main areas are the sides of your neck over your left clavicle. Lymph actually does not flow equally. It flows 75% more on the left side. So even just helping the left side move, even just massaging over the left clavicle can help your lymph carry toxins, especially from your brain, which if they hang out too long in your brain, it can cause inflammation and that can lead to a lot of energy issues. So anything you can do to help your body move toxins out, anything you can do to activate the parasympathetic state moves motility. So constipation is a really big challenge if you’re trying to eliminate things because it just recycles things. So even if that’s your issue and you can start getting your system moving, that frees up a lot of energy.

Ari: Beautiful. So as far as practical tips for detoxing, for getting those bad things out.

Jodi: Practical tips for lymph. Moving number one, rebounding, jumping on a trampoline, dry brushing and there’s an interesting technique to dry brushing. What you want to do, you want to kind of start close to the skin and like just do small movements and then slowly move away. Dry brushing helps to get the lymph moving. Essential oils, spearmint is a great one. You can do a combination. Spearmint you should dilute at least by half. Anything hot, like getting into the sauna or a red light therapy. All of these things are really great strategies for moving your lymph.

Ari: Now you’re speaking my language with sauna and red light therapy.

Jodi: You know, that’s what you’re doing. You’re freeing up energy because you’re letting your body get rid of the stuff that it doesn’t need.

Ari: I mean, this is a bit of a digression, but I’m sure you’re familiar with Gerald Pollack’s work.

Jodi: He’s a friend. He’s in Seattle.

Ari: Yes. And how light, especially in the infrared part of the spectrum interacts with membranes and the water near membranes to actually facilitate water flow. So the lining of the vessels interacts with the water in such a way that it creates what he’d call, easy water, structured water. And light interacts with that such that it grows this layer of easy water and facilitates the flow more efficiently. So things like red light therapy and infrared sauna in particular, are things that we would expect to massively enhance lymph flow for sure.

Ari: And it’s interesting, there’s this layering technic. I bet you notice this too, when you’re eating right and taking the right supplements and exercising, it’s better than just doing one in isolation. So I would really encourage people to think about activate your vagus nerve while you’re in your red light sauna. Just try layering some other techniques on top, because I bet your results will amplify.

Ari: Absolutely. What’s step forward to superhuman energy?

Jodi: Step four is really looking at your endocrine system, especially your hypothalamus and your adrenals, because those are the organs that if you think about your energy hormones, adrenaline, epinephrine, cortisol, I’m sure most people know this, but your hypothalamus-pituitary axis, it’s a little bit of a you’re passing the baton system. So your hypothalamus is the controller of your endocrine system. It also works with your autonomic nervous system. It’s really the CEO of the brain. It’s assessing, what are the blood levels of this? What do I need? And it’s always taking in information and responding to information. So when something stressful is going on, it triggers the hypothalamus to then trigger your pituitary gland. And all of these signals are sent through hormones to tell your adrenals release more cortisol. We need more energy. 

Then what happens, it’s called a negative feedback loop. It’s like a thermos mechanism in the body. So the hypothalamus is monitoring, what is the level of cortisol? What do we need? And at a certain point, it realizes we’re good. We can stop production. And often it’s the hypothalamus that isn’t necessarily getting signals or is overwhelmed by too much information. And so it’s telling the adrenals, keep releasing cortisol, keep releasing cortisol, even though there’s sufficient cortisol in the system. And what happens often, there’s some debate over it, if adrenal fatigue is a real thing or not. But what I do see in the practice is, if the adrenals are chronically releasing cortisol, they over-function until they don’t. It’s like your bank account, you can deficit spend until you’ve taken out too much money and sorry, there’s no much money there anymore. So what you want to do is, you want to both support your adrenal glands and also support upstream your hypothalamus.

This is where oils and plants in general, I think are really great. One thing that we know from supplements and glandulars, you can do things to either raise up, okay, we want more cortisol in the system or down-regulate, we want less.

And it’s almost like pick one or the other. But anyone who’s ever looked at their cortisol level, you can do a simple saliva test and measure levels throughout the day. I’ve never seen anyone who’s flat-lined. They’re usually too high in the wrong places and too low in the right places. And so, you can try to guess with supplements, take this in the morning, take this in the afternoon. Most people struggle with compliance because life is busy and they forget. Or you can use adaptogenic herbs. And what adaptogenic herbs mean is that, if you’re too low, they bring you up to the right level. If you’re too high, they bring you down to the right level. They just help you stay in balance no matter where you’re at. And so you don’t need to be so careful about or meticulous about the timing of day and things like that because they just bring you back into balance. 

I found that essential oils do the same thing. You can use your oils on your low back, over your adrenals to help you get back into balance. You can also use oils, especially the hypothalamus, if you smell something, the amygdala and the hypothalamus are pretty closely connected. And so it’s almost like your phone glitches and you need to reboot it. I’ve noticed that you can use oils to help reboot your endocrine system so that it goes back to normal. It’s not that oils are hormones. They don’t pretend to be hormones, but they seem to help the hormonal system return to balance, so then it can then release the right hormones into your body.

Ari: What oils do you think are most effective in doing that?

Jodi: I’s interesting, blends do different things than single oils. So we found for the adrenals themselves, I’m going to mispronounce this, I always do. Galbanum, G-A-L-B-A-N-U-M. That is a really good one. It seems to work better.

Ari: I’ve never heard of that one.

Jodi: It’s amazing. It’s like one of the hidden secrets. I can send you more research. Actually. there’s a lot of that in my book. But it works nicely with cinnamon. Then for the hypothalamus, it’s a combination of like bayrum and frankincense. Frankincense is good for most of the brain. It has this quality called sequestrants, that basically the end result is it brings more oxygen into the brain. How it does that is kind of misunderstood, but it does help carry oxygen to the brain. One other point I should back up, black pepper you would always dilute it, but that one is really great for vascular expansions. If you think about how fluids travel in our body, they travel mostly through our veins. And if we can kind of increase the surface area, that they get to go through, we can carry more of the oxygen and nutrients into our system and more of the toxins out. 

Datis Kharrazian always puts black pepper into his supplements because he finds that they amplify the assimilation between 2% and 400%. So that’s a really good one, especially if your nose is always cold or your hands and feet are cold. Just using black pepper oil diluted, but that can help a lot with movement in the body.

Ari: And what’s number five?

Jodi: Number five is immune modulation. And this is a really big issue today with autoimmune issues and things like that. Our immune system almost get stuck in the wrong gear. Again, it’s overreacting or it’s underreacting. And so just returning it to balance helps your body work with you, not against you. And oils are great for this. People who know nothing about oils know that they’re antiviral, antibacterial, antifungal, antimicrobial, because that’s what they perform in the plants. Like they talk about frankincense all the time for being really good for wounds. It’s a resin and what resins are, it’s like a scab almost on the plant. And so it makes sense that it performs the same function in humans. Hot oils in particular, getting back to red light saunas, anything that you can do to heat your body helps with the healing process.

So some oils like peppermint’s hot, eucalyptus is hot, clove, cinnamon, nutmeg, oregano, thyme. There’s this great story that people like to tell about thieves during the bubonic plague. They were stealing the teeth out of dead people’s mouths, and yet they never got sick. And so when they were apprehended, they were offered a plea bargain in exchange for telling them how they didn’t die. And it turned out they were wearing scarves with a combination of these hot oils over the respiratory system. This actually helps. The coronavirus is spread through the respiratory system. So these hot oils can help. It’s not that they heal you, they just amplify, they turn up the ability of your body to actually function in the immune function. Just like red light therapy really optimizes your body’s own ability. Putting these hot oils either on the bottom of your feet, where you don’t necessarily need to dilute because the skin is so much thicker, or if you’re feeling a scratchy throat, you can dilute with even cooking oil, coconut oil, olive oil, castor oil, and put over the throat. Or just kind of smelling it or putting it, if you’re going to wear a mask, on the inside of the mask.

It just helps to put your immune system in the right gear, so that it doesn’t overreact or under react. If you think about the first line of defense in your immune system, it’s your barriers, your sinus barrier. So a blue tansy is an amazing oil to really modulating your sinuses. You can put a little bit of a Qtip in there and use it as like nasal irrigation or just to help modulate your response to mold or environmental toxins. Eucalyptus is a great one for your lung barrier. Anything you can do to really support your lungs. For a digestive function, fennel, ginger, peppermint, all the ones that we have known forever, that really helps your gut. It’s just one other tool that you can use.

Ari: Beautiful. So let’s recap. You’ve got five strategies for superhuman energy just quickly go through and list them all out.

Jodi: Yeah. It’s just five things that you can add to what you’re already doing.

So stimulating your vagus nerve. Helping to ensure that you get restful sleep. Ensuring that you have good flow drainage of toxins from your brain and oxygen and glucose into your brain. Supporting your endocrine system to really boost your energy hormones. And then finally modulating your immune system.

Ari: Beautiful. Jodi, thank you so much for coming on. This has been excellent. I’ve loved to hear this connection, especially with the vagus nerve stuff, I think is fascinating and how that interacts with essential oils. And I think you’ve put the pieces together there in a really fascinating way. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your wisdom. 

Jodi: Thank you for having me. 

Ari: To everyone listening, hope you enjoyed this interview and I will see you in the next one.

Show Notes

The 5 steps to superhuman energy (05:57)
The best strategies to stimulate the vagus nerve (17:57)

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