I haven’t posted much in my health cat­e­gory. I have to admit I’m a bit  ner­vous about it. Peo­ple come to their con­vic­tions pretty strongly in this area, I have found.

And I don’t want this to be a strong divid­ing line between friends.

Per­son­ally, I see great advan­tage to using a mul­ti­tude of approaches to health. It’s not one size fits all for us.

For our fam­ily, we start by striv­ing to main­tain our health. We eat real food, pre­pared mostly from scratch. I don’t say that to brag or bind any­one to my way of doing things. I just think it tastes bet­ter com­ing from real food rather than a box. And, let’s face it. It’s cheaper when you are cook­ing for many peo­ple to grab your own ingre­di­ents rather than a small amount that might come in an expen­sive pack­age. So, I have learned to cook this way. And, I do think it is health­ier for our bod­ies to elim­i­nate as many chemical-sounding things from our diet. I hon­estly can’t imag­ine doing the box thing any­more. It isn’t appeal­ing, and I don’t think it could pos­si­bly be much faster than cook­ing from scratch once you have the tech­nique down, but I sup­pose it might be. One caveat: two of my chil­dren like boxed Mac & Cheese. I don’t fight it. I used to like it, too.

And, by and large, we don’t drink sodas. We sel­dom have any juice in the house unless we are hav­ing guests, and I remem­ber to buy some. We are water drinkers. Almost exclu­sively, except for the tea and cof­fee, of course.

So, we tend not to get sick very often. We live post-fall, so we do get sick on occa­sion. What I do in those sit­u­a­tions depends on what is going around and what I think we have caught.

I have exper­i­mented with var­i­ous herbal tinc­tures, home­opa­thy, essen­tial oils, and chi­ro­prac­tic care. I have found vary­ing degrees of suc­cess with each of these meth­ods. I have a cou­ple of desk ref­er­ences that I turn to for advice on our med­ical care. I always seek that advice when we are first fac­ing an ill­ness. I love how thor­ough they are. And I seek out peo­ple I know are knowl­edge­able in this area if I am stumped.

Lately, I have been con­cen­trat­ing on learn­ing more about how to use ther­a­peu­tic grade essen­tial oils. What I love about them is that they are made from the plants that God cre­ated. We read ref­er­ences in scrip­ture about their use in bib­li­cal times. They are not chem­i­cally cre­ated. They are not going to come with a long list of adverse reac­tions and com­pli­cated dis­or­ders result­ing from their use like phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals. Nor do they come with a long list of ingre­di­ents. I like that.

What bugs me about them is how the new age move­ment uses them with­out glo­ri­fy­ing God in the process. That can tend to make them look like they should be off-limits for the Chris­t­ian in some people’s minds. I get that. But, so many other gifts from God have been abused by non-Christians (and Chris­tians alike, sadly). Like food. And sex. And money. And alco­hol. None of those things are con­demned in scrip­ture when used prop­erly, with thank­ful­ness to God, in the con­text of which they are given (ie, sex within the bounds of mar­riage). It’s when we start idol­iz­ing them that we get in trouble.

So, can Chris­tians use essen­tial oils, while glo­ri­fy­ing Him for His beau­ti­ful gift to us in heal­ing? I think so. I am so thank­ful for what I have learned about them, and how my fam­ily has ben­e­fited so much from their use. They have become my pri­mary go-to resource for our health needs. From a cough to vom­it­ing to sleep­less nights, I have found essen­tial oils to be an incred­i­ble aid to our family.

I have also just dipped my toes into the world of Juice Plus+. My mom has begun tak­ing the Fruit, Veg­etable, and Vine­yard blend cap­sules to see if it will help her body dur­ing her fight with can­cer and the chemother­apy that goes with it. My prayer is that she will find great aid on a cel­lu­lar level. I have heard so many amaz­ing tes­ti­monies about how Juice Plus+ has helped peo­ple in their dif­fi­cult can­cer bat­tles. Sto­ries about putting it in the feed­ing tube of a patient who just couldn’t eat any­more.  Another story of a woman with non-Hodgkin Lym­phoma who was told fif­teen years ago that she would have to have chemo for the rest of her life to keep the can­cer at bay, who dur­ing her sec­ond round of chemo started tak­ing Juice Plus+ and has never had to have chemo again.

And not only that, more than 20 Juice Plus+ research stud­ies have been con­ducted in lead­ing hos­pi­tals and uni­ver­si­ties around the world. So, we’re not just talk­ing anec­do­tal sto­ries, which I’m glad about.

I have heard how excel­lent juic­ing is for a body. Get­ting good qual­ity, organic fruit and veg­eta­bles in the quan­tity needed for juic­ing is extremely expen­sive. Juice Plus+ appears to be an alter­na­tive way to get those nutri­ents in our bod­ies with less mess, less expense, but with all the ben­e­fits. So, we will see how it goes. One ben­e­fit is that when I bought the Juice Plus+ cap­sules for my mom, they gave me a free sup­ply for one of my chil­dren. So, I have one of my chil­dren on the Juice Plus+ for free. As long as my mom is on them, my daugh­ter will have them. And, if we decide to put any­one else in our fam­ily on them, we get another sup­ply for a sec­ond child, and so on. Not a bad perk!

I’d love to hear any sto­ries you might have about Juice Plus+. Have you used it before? What are your thoughts? I was telling my hair styl­ist about it, and she said she used to take the Gum­mies they sell. She said they were so good that she would want to eat them like candy. So, that’s good news for the kid­dos. You know how some gummy vit­a­mins aren’t very tasty? Appar­ently that isn’t the case for these!

What are you doing to keep your fam­ily healthy? I am con­stantly desir­ing to learn more, research more, and learn how to bet­ter care for my fam­ily. I will say that most of my chil­dren have never been on antibi­otics. Ever. A cou­ple have, but that was before I knew any­thing about how to keep my fam­ily healthy and using more nat­ural means for fight­ing off dis­ease. I’m not say­ing that we would never use them. They are cer­tainly valu­able in some cases. God has obvi­ously spared us those crit­i­cal health crises that require the aid of the big guns. But, the whole idea of tak­ing them for every snif­fle is beyond me. We don’t use Tylenol, Advil, etc., very often either. Very rarely. They can be toxic for your body. Tylenol can cause issues with your liver. Advil can cause issues with your kid­neys. And more. Google side effects if you haven’t before. I used to think that we could take as much as we want, as often as we want, that it was just free for my body to use as I wanted. Of course, that was MY faulty think­ing. They don’t say that on the bot­tle. They give dosage rec­om­men­da­tions and cau­tions. But, I never much thought about that.

So, I’m learn­ing. Hope­fully, I will con­tinue to learn. My desire is that my chil­dren will know the things I am strug­gling to learn and mem­o­rize as more of a sec­ond nature kind of thing. They already know which essen­tial oils to go to for many things they might encounter: burns, bug bites, stuffy noses, coughs, sore throats. They don’t even have to ask me any­more. They just go to the oils and apply them as needed, or dif­fuse them beside their chairs or beds. I love it. And they are learn­ing how to look things up in the desk ref­er­ence. They come to me for a sec­ond opin­ion, or for coun­sel on how to specif­i­cally use an oil if they haven’ t used it before. We’re learn­ing together, which is pretty neat.

*Note: In our home, we choose to use Young Liv­ing Ther­a­peu­tic Grade Essen­tial Oils because we believe they are the best on the mar­ket. When look­ing for essen­tial oils, be sure to use only ther­a­peu­tic grade, which are safe for inter­nal use. If you would like more infor­ma­tion about Young Liv­ing Essen­tial Oils, please feel free to con­tact me either through a com­ment on this post, or through my con­tact form.