Debra Muth  0:02  
Welcome to Let's Talk Wellness Now. I'm your host, Dr. Deb. This is where we talk about everything wellness, and learn to defy aging, and live our lives on our own terms. 

Debra Muth  0:15  
Everyone, it is a great, beautiful fall day I think we are in our third day of fall. And it is absolutely gorgeous today, where I'm from, and I can't wait to bring to you today, my guest Jody Cohen. Jody is a best selling author, award winning journalist, functional practitioner and the founder of vibrant blue oils, where she has combined her training of nutritional therapy and aroma therapy to create a unique proprietary blend of organic and well crafted essential oils. She has helped over 50,000 clients heal from brain related challenges, including anxiety, insomnia, and autoimmunity. What a great way of healing people. And today with what's going on in our world more than ever, we need to be calmed. And we need our immune systems to be strong. So Jody is going to talk with us today about the parasympathetic nervous system, and this state of the parasympathetic, how your body can heal itself, and what kinds of things happen when you're out of balance. And she's also going to share with us some of her favorite tips on how oils can bring balance back to your health, and how she's recommending this for people today. So I don't want to wait any longer. We need to bring God in, we need to start having this powerful conversation. So let me welcome Jody to the show. Thank you for joining us, my dear. 

Debra Muth  2:02  
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Debra Muth  3:28  
Well, Welcome back, everybody. This is Dr. Deb from let's talk wellness. Now I have Jody with me and I'm so excited to talk to her. We were talking a little bit on our break here and she is going to be a fabulous guest for you guys. So Jody, welcome.

Jodi Cohen  3:41  
Oh my gosh, thanks. Thanks for having me.

Debra Muth  3:43  
So Jody, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Jodi Cohen  3:47  
Yeah, so I my journey into health was really driven by my own personal experiences. I, I bought I was healthy, and I had my first kid who was easy. And then I had my second kid who was not. And I was reading every parenting book I could find. And one day we were at a birthday party and a friend complimented me that my son was being well behaved. And then some other mom passed out for snack, I think it was Ritz crackers. And he chucklehead and took off in the other direction. And after I retrieved him she said I've never seen him flipped so quickly after food. My brother was on Ritalin his whole life. And it turned out he was just allergic to weird foods, you should take them to nutritionist. So I did. And it was life altering. You know, my kid went from not being able to look at my nose to being able to focus being calm, and it was so mind blowing to me that I went back and got a degree in nutrition and was trying to help other mothers. And then my bottom fell out my then husband attempted suicide and we needed to move him into a residential treatment facility and the moment that I I knew he was safe and it wasn't his job to do my job to keep him alive It was like my adrenals could finally relax and so I really shut down it was slightly inconvenient because I was suddenly a single mom, the kids were five and seven, I had a full time job I was class parent and I could barely get out of bed. I would wake up with them, make them breakfast, pack their lunch, take them to school, come back home, crawl back into bed and set the alarm for pickup which was not sustainable and none of the nutritional remedies that I knew would support my adrenals really seem to be helping but luckily a good friend I had just helped her with a fundraiser and her thank you gift was a big box of essential oils so she came over and said these will help you you know you've been chronically stressed, which means chronically inflamed, and when your guts inflamed it's really hard to be able to digest absorb and assimilate any kind of remedy through the digestive channel these work through the skin you know kind of like nicotine patches or hormone creams they when you smell them they work immediately and I thought why not you know I've got nothing to lose. So I had picked up this technique called muscle testing that it's just an efficient way to ask questions of the body you know when you're trying to help wiggly kids it was more efficient. So muscle tested boxes anything going to help my adrenals I got a good yes and I was like alright, that's encouraging. And normally I'm able to narrow things down to one remedy but I kept getting the same five oils which confused me until it occurred to me Oh wait, they're liquid I can combine them. So then I shifted gears and started asking me how many drops you know neutral oils grabbed a shot glass in my kitchen mixed my first blend knew that the adrenals were the most accessible on the low back. So put the blend on the low back and it was like a light switch was flipped and I was like oh, I could go reading I can go to the supermarket I could clean the house. I got more done in that day than I probably had in the previous month. And so once I kind of figured out oh this this works for me. I just started playing around you know I'd been practicing nutrition for a couple years at that point. I knew you know like if someone's deficient in vitamin D that's easy you supplement with vitamin D if someone is if their nervous system the autonomic nervous system has kind of which controls your automatic functions it has kind of two gears the I'm safe you know the body can heal or I'm in danger and I need to allocate resources towards survival and so many of us are stuck in that survival state which means that you know, there's a lot of delayed maintenance going on so I started playing around with how do I shift people out of this sympathetic branch of the nervous system into the rest digest and heal parasympathetic branch and I basically just made things up that worked for me that my friends were like, Oh, we want to try it work for them, then they were think gosh, this is really interesting, you should do something with this. And at that point, I felt a bit more like myself you know, I had enough mental clarity to go online and Google oils and I was super surprised by two things The first being that no one was really looking at blends through the lens of balancing organ systems and regions of the brain. And the second was how complicated everyone made it I was almost grateful that my mental capacity was like Zilch because if I had started with the research I would have felt completely unqualified and never would have tried it.

Jodi Cohen  8:42  
And so I just kind of you know, I had a background in journalism I like to research I throw it up online and it just kind of grew organically and and my my favorite thing, I really love the clinical practitioners that you know, are seeing things in their practice and then go into the research to be like, Oh, that's so interesting. I wonder why this is happening and then the research completely backs it up. So that's kind of the way I roll I either see things or I work with other practitioners that are noticing trends and you know, something seems to work every time and oh lo and behold, there's all this research that you know, this oil helps in this way.

Debra Muth  9:22  
That's awesome. I love how how realistic you make it and simplistic because you're right. So many times we get bogged down in the research and like I have a huge thick oils book and we don't trust our own instincts to what we're drawn to. We have to validate everything before we do it and then we get nervous and then we get I don't have time and well I'm not qualified, I'm not good enough. I'm not this. And so then we don't do it at all instead of maybe trying something and just seeing if it works. So I'm so grateful that you share that with us because you know that feminine intuition is so powerful and we discounted so much. But in what I've learned with oils too is you're kind of drawn to a particular oil or a particular blend when you need it the most even though you may not understand why

Jodi Cohen  10:15  
Yes, well no, it's funny Frankincense for me, it really goes up and down. Either it smells like delicious, or it's just not my thing. You know, kind of like how you need chocolate when you're having your period because yeah, magnesium, but then other times in the month, you can pass it's, you know,

Debra Muth  10:34  
it's such a great thing. So tell us a little bit about in this journey of yours. I mean, I think we all can relate to being burnt out at some degree or another in our lives. How did you figure out the parasympathetic aspect of this and and how to balance that because right now, I think that's so necessary and what we're dealing with anywhere in the world and the craziness.

Jodi Cohen  10:57  
Yeah, I've always been an athlete and I've never been able to meditate. So I used to always joke like I was a long distance runner and you know, the runner's high, I would feel great or yoga I would always feel better in Shavasana then I would at the beginning of class and I was slightly obsessed, like what's going on and then I realized it's the the parasympathetic nervous system so super quick anatomy lesson. Your sympathetic is the fight or flight branch of the nervous system your parasympathetic is the rest of the just the toggle between the two is the longest nerve in your body that most people have never heard of. It's called the Vegas nerve. Not what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but vag us. And it starts at the very base of the brain connects the brain to the body body and the brain splits winds around both sides behind the ear lobe. If you go and feel behind your ear, right now you'll feel bone, that is your mastoid bone. That is where the vagus nerve is actually the thickest and the most accessible to the surface. And then was through your throat, your heart, your lungs, your stomach, your liver, your gallbladder, your pancreas, your large intestine, your small intestine, it is kind of the moving walkway that moves nutrients through your body. And at any point that it innervates touches, you can activate it. So breathing, you know, it goes through your lungs, when you do deep breathing, you're activating your Vegas nerve and it's a bit of a domino effect, right? you activate your vagus nerve and that kind of shifts you into the parasympathetic branch of your nervous system. That's what happens. You know, in yoga, it's the combination of the twists that are kind of activating the vagus nerve and the breathing that are activating the vagus nerve. So I was playing around with how do I do this and I knew that the point behind the ear lobe was the most accessible it's a really popular acupuncture point. But early on, I was very trapped with the idea of Oh, I want to activate rest and digest so I should use calming oils like lavender kameel. And a really good base for determining if you're activating the vagus nerve or not, is heart rate variability. They've got different wearables, you know, like there's an aura ring that you can wear, where you can see just this calm me down, this is me, you know, just kind of moved me in the direction I want. And the common oils weren't really cutting it. And then I discovered some research by this man named Kevin Tracy in New York neuroscientist, who was literally doing a surgical implant of a pacemaker like device behind the earlobe on the master oven to stimulate the vagus nerve. And when I heard stimulate, it was like the light bulb went off because there are several oils that are known for being stimulatory or hot, you know, peppermint, rosemary, clove, lime, nutmeg, and what that oregano typically means is that if you were to say put a drop on your arm, your arm might turn red, or it might feel hot. And if that happens, dilute it with a different oil, not water because water and oil don't mix but I started to test stimulatory oils and this is where the blends really came in handy. Because it's just like, you know, cooking right? Like an apple in isolation tastes one way but if you add certain spices and other ingredients, you can completely modify what that tastes like. If you take clove which is super stimulatory and has tons of other really helpful constituents and combine it with line which has super small molecules. All of a sudden you get something that can be used almost like an acupuncture needle. It's our parasympathetic blend, you just literally flip the bottle, put a drop right behind your ear lobe on that master bone, and it serves like a gearshift. It shifts your body out of that stress, overwhelm anxiety state and kind of into that space where all of a sudden, you feel calmer, things aren't just black and white. You know? It's not like you're gonna die or you know, this bad thing is gonna happen, but like, Oh wait, well, maybe that might that might be the outcome, that's totally possible. Or maybe some other things will happen. Maybe I need more information. Let me go look at this, maybe this person, you know, could help me. It just it shifts you out of kind of like, Dire Straits and, you know, hopelessness into possibility. It allows you to live in curiosity.

Debra Muth  15:25  
I love that, that that is so helpful, because I think so many times we're stuck in that fight or flight response. And we're like, Okay, what do I do to get this out? You know, we're looking for medications, or we're looking for supplements, or we're looking for something else to ingest, where it would be so nice to just be able to put something on.

Jodi Cohen  15:47  
Yeah, it works better than the bottle of wine. Yeah.

Debra Muth  15:52  
Darn. But that's okay. You could use them together, right? Yeah. little glass of wine, a little dab, and you won't drink the whole thing, which is good or better for your waistline anyway, so yeah, yeah. So when you're talking about small dabs of oils like this, I mean, this is amazing. Because so many times the oil world is huge, and it can be very overwhelming. And having to mix blends together or carry a rollerball of something with you. But this is a blend that someone can use they can carry with them and just dab it when they need it.

Jodi Cohen  16:28  
Exactly, exactly. Or even. I mean, one of I guess the benefits of COVID is we're not driving as much, but my goodness traffic in my area is panic attack waiting to happen. So I leave one in my car, because I find to get really anxious sometimes,

Debra Muth  16:45  
Yeah, I use a diffuser in my car too. And I put different oil blends in there to diffuse in the car just because for the same reason, you know, either I am tired now and I need to re energize my long drive. Or I want to calm down because it's been a stressful day. And sometimes it's it's nice to have them diffused in the air versus using them. I have a little bit of a sensitivity to some of the oils, I'll use them and I'll get like immediate hot flash and my skin kind of get red and I'm opening the window like oh my god, it's like a hot flash beyond hot flashes. And it's only a couple of particular blends that do that. Cleanse. Past tense is the biggest one for me that does that. And I love the smell. I love the idea of what it does. But boy, it does not like me very much at all. Interesting. Yeah, yeah. So it's nice to be able to diffuse some of those then it just, it smells nice. And you know, we all like to have things that smell nice. And that's so. So can you give us some recommendations about? Like, how can people use herbs or essential oils? What essential oils would they look for with different situations? I mean, there's a lot of stress, there's a lot of anxiety going on right now. There's a lot of trauma for people losing family members for one reason or another. Whether it's to the illness or the vaccine, or just because they have different points of views. How can people choose an essential oil that can help them on some of these traumatic things they're going through right now?

Jodi Cohen  18:24  
Sorry, I'm looking at the ingredients of past tense. I think its the winter green, that's upsetting for you. So what I'll just share, you know, story. So, um, my, I am the mother of two, I lost my son in a car accident three years ago, his dad was the driver. There were four boys in the car, one survived. And so, so there was that. And then there were, there were legal things. So one of the legal things was a wrongful death suit. And I, prior to this, like, I basically used attorneys to write my will and incorporate my company like I didn't, I didn't really have problems that required lawyers. So this friend of the family is like trying to quote unquote, help. But I didn't know how these attorneys worked. So anyway, my dad is now dying and in hospice, and I'm visiting him at the home I grew up in, and this attorney is calling me and kind of presenting this, you know, black and white, Dire Straits horrible version case, and I can feel like I almost felt like I was gonna have a heart attack the guy. I'm prone to anxiety anyway, but I literally was like this. I'm just flooded. I can't. So I got off the phone and my dad was drugged. So I was talking to him a little bit and he took a nap and I'm like, I just need to take a walk. So I was kind of doubting myself with parasympathetic because he's telling me like this is going to happen, then it's this horrible thing that you know, no one would ever want to happen. I'm like I can't even what's interesting about your survival branch of your nervous system your sympathetic is it allocates resources towards survival including your ability to focus it's called selective attention so when you're kind of in fear of fight or flight your pupils the black part of your eyes get really big and that allows you to take in more light but it really hyper focuses your attention on either How am I going to fight back or how am I going to flee so like you can't really contemplate you know, the nature of the universe when you're in this state you just can't take it and you can't process it you know if you are trying to have a significant conversation with someone in your life and you see their pupils are really big just know they can't hear you because they're so stressed so I knew that intuitively I'm like I need to calm down before I can even process this like this is you know, when your child is having a panic attack or you're just feeling like everything is too much you're probably in the sympathetic branch of your nervous system. So the way I calm down you can walk outside in nature you can apply this parasympathetic oil actually for my book, have a bonus chapter you can just go to boost the brain book comm backslash gift it will give you 25 ways to kind of calm your nervous system and shift into parasympathetic So anyway, it should kind of you know I went on the walk I used to walk on when I was a kid with the intention of like, I can't even think about this right now I just need to calm myself down. So you know, I walk out and as I'm walking back I'm like, Okay, I'm calm now it's okay, I can revisit this and all of a sudden I realized this is not black and white at all. Like he's he's making all of these assumptions, I have all these questions and maybe this person can answer my question, I need more information. And so it shifts it from this like, devastating, you know, doom and gloom future to like, well, maybe that that's possibility that possible that will happen. But you know, there are all these other possibilities that could happen and, and it could go really well and I just need more information. And, um, you know, to kind of spoiler alert, I didn't use that person and it did go really well and nothing that he forecasted happened. But when you're when your nervous system is so jacked on, like, of course, you're gonna think everyone's gonna die. And it's gonna be the worst case scenario. But the minute you're able to, literally gearshift, calm yourself down, kind of feel yourself in your body and not so much in your head, then you can live in curiosity you can meet or maybe you can hold space for that possibility. And you can hold that space for a best case possibility. And you can see, like, what's the gap, like, what additional information is very empowering, because it kind of pulls you out, it pulls you out of someone else's projection of what might happen might not happen and kind of allows you to step into your own curiosity and potential. So that's kind of my favorite one. And also, there's a lot of research, you know,

Jodi Cohen  23:04  
when you're prioritizing survival, immediate survival, you're down regulating everything that's not in immediate survival, and that includes turning on your immune system, like the people that never get colds and then suddenly get cancer, that's because their, their system is kind of stuck in the sympathetic branch. And so there are all these kind of, you know, infections and things that are festering under the surface that you don't experience and then suddenly it's a bigger problem. So the best thing you can do for your immune system and your immune health is to try to calm your nervous system to try to laugh every day. You know, movement is great anything you can do with breathing oils are great, anything that you just kind of like have a reset you know, we all know if our phone is glitching What do we do we turn it off and reboot. So we just need to remember to kind of allow ourselves to have that daily reboot. The other thing that I really love you know, a lot of oils especially oils and kind of the pine family are really good for our respiratory systems. You know, if you think about the story of the three little pigs is it that the big bad wolf was able to blow everything down? Or is it that some houses are made of straw you know, the more we can build our house out of bricks the more we're slightly impervious to the little problems you know, like the respiratory illnesses You know, it starts it has to pass through our lung barrier first. It's only if it you know, if the thick of a castle it's got a big moat, the drawbridge is up there alligators, the invading army comes, if they can't get to pass the moat into the castle, they're not going to win the war, you know, right? Only if the drawbridge is down or the alligators aren't there that day, you know, so think of kind of our moat is our, you know, your innate immune system, your physical barriers, your skin, your lungs, your sinuses, your gut. those barriers are really solid, yet the pathogens won't get past them and they won't cause stomach inflammation, cytokine storm, so the more you can do to kind of support your barriers and you know those those pine oils, that pine, Cypress, all of these other things, Cypress is really good. You can just kind of rub it a little bit on your chest on your clavicle bones. It's just preventative. If you feel that tickle in your throat, you know, you can put a little bit of Cypress on there are some other hot oils, there's this whole lore about the the thieves blend you know, during the bubonic plague thieves were stealing the gold teeth out of dead people's mouths, and they never got sick. And so when they were finally apprehended, the authorities wanted to know what how did you keep yourself from getting sick. And it turned out to be these hot oils like clove and thyme and oregano. We have it as an immune support plan. But you can just put it on the bottom of your feet or your family's feet before bed. There's something about heat with the immune system, you know, that's why we spike a fever. It just allows more blood flow and circulation so that things get cleaned up faster. So there's a lot you can do to be proactive and kind of make sure that if the big bad wolf comes calling your house is just made of

Debra Muth  26:15  
bricks. Mm hmm. I love that because that gives us power. Yeah, that gives us control instead of saying, Oh my god, there's nothing I can do, like you said until the cancer comes knocking. And now it's a bigger issue. No, we have things that we can do every single day as a preventative to keep us from developing those terrible illnesses that now require so much more to get us better, and so many more toxins and things like that. So that is phenomenal. I love that. Thank you for sharing that. So, Jody, this has been great. And you formulate your own essential oils, correct? Yeah, yeah. So tell us a little bit about your formulation and your company.

Jodi Cohen  27:00  
Yeah, so my company is vibrant blue oils. I love the color, cobalt blue. I love blue bottles. And it turns out a lot of the blue oils are really kind of exceptionally powerful for the brain. You know, like the Egyptians use Blue Lotus, I love blue Tansy that's also really good for kind of modulating the immune response. But yeah, I really look at it through the lens of physiology. And this idea that when organs and the body are imbalanced, then the symptoms kind of fall away. You know, like my kids used to like to make marble ramps, and if it was slightly askew, the marble wouldn't flow. But once you line it up, it works properly. So the whole kind of point is how do we get the body in balance, and where does the body fall out of balance. And my recent book, essential oils to boost the brain and heal the body really tries to hone in on that it kind of comes from the fact that so many of the practitioners I work with would say, you know, people show up with like huge manila folders of all their test results. And they're like, oh, my goodness, I'm so complicated, no one can help me. And just kind of repositioning that as those are data points. Often when people have symptoms, it's that certain things are out of balance. And then there are five things that are usually out of balance. Usually, sleep is compromised, it's very hard to heal when you're not sleeping for a number of reasons. That's when the brain cleans house and the body resets asleep is kind of foundation, one, you really need to be sleeping and oils are really fabulous tools to help with sleep, there's so much research to back this up that you can find either in the book or on my site. The other foundation that we kind of talked about is just allowing your nervous system to be in the right gear, like think of if you're biking, you know if you're if you're biking uphill, and it's really hard, and you realize, oh my goodness, I'm in the highest gear. And then you downshift and it's manageable. Like we can gear shift throughout our life, if we're, you know, sitting down for a meal with our family. And we're stressed and our mind is racing. And maybe we're watching the news. And it's saying something that makes us feel unsafe, that we're not going to be able to digest, absorb and assimilate our nutrients. digestion is kind of a parasympathetic event. So let's turn off the news. Let's focus on our family, let's maybe have a moment of gratitude or kind of share, you know our highs and lows for the day. Let's be in our body. And let's turn on our parasympathetic nervous system so that we can actually get the value out of the nutrients that we're adjusting instead. So like being in the parasympathetic state is another one, making sure that the garbage leaves our body. Mm hmm. You know, so many of the detox protocols that I see are like, you know, juice and all these things, and that's it's kind of like yelling fire in the movie theater. Like it gets everything mobilized. But if the emergency doors aren't open, if people are just gonna bump into each other toxins are mobilized, but they're not leaving. So making sure that your lymph is flowing, that there isn't a bottleneck. In your liver or your gallbladder or your gut, that the garbage is actually leaving the body and oils are really good at kind of cleaning up stagnation and enhancing movement and circulation in the body. They're great for circulation, making sure that the good things get in and the bad things get out. The other two issues are kind of energy, making sure you have the energy to heal, and that your immune system is modulating and working with you, not against you. And so what I what I'm really trying to do, back when I was a kid, there was this brand called Garanimals, and it has labels that you know, if you're colorblind, you can mix and match. I'm really trying to just, it's a little bit like that, like here are organs that support you know, your body, your adrenals, your pancreas, your liver, your gallbladder, here are oils that support your brain, your hypothalamus, your pineal gland, and just kind of helping people understand like if these are the symptoms, or that are presenting this might be the underlying issue. And these might be blends that you can use to kind of get your body back in balance so that you know it cleans itself up.

Debra Muth  31:09  
I love that concept. Because you're right. It's all about us knowing when to use things, how to use things, and which blends go the best together. And I remember those Garanimals when I was a kid, too. Yeah, they were kind of fun. Absolutely. Yeah, but it made

Jodi Cohen  31:25  
I mean, you know, getting dressed for the day. It's like what goes with what sometimes it's just easier to have Garanimals like

Debra Muth  31:30  
to know yes, this goes with this and this matches and yeah, exactly, exactly. Well, Tony, this was a fantastic conversation to have with you. I love this. But if people are interested in learning more about your company and your oils and how to use them, how do they get in touch with you?

Jodi Cohen  31:49  
The companies Vibrant Blue Oils you can email us at info at Vibrant Blue Oils. If you want to learn more about the parasympathetic nervous system, just go to boost the brain book.com backslash gift, and you'll get a download that really explains it more and also gives you 25 strategies. Something as simple as like sleep on your right side, you know, use your tongue like a paintbrush to paint the roof of your mouth. Just things that are actionable. You don't need to do all 25 just pick one, you know and try it and see if it makes a difference.

Debra Muth  32:19  
That's fantastic. Thank you so much for being with us today.

Jodi Cohen  32:23  
Oh, thank you for having me.

Debra Muth  32:25  
Hey, it has been really great sharing this time with you guys on the let's talk wellness now podcast. If this episode has helped you or you feel as though this episode would help someone else we'd love for you to leave us a review. Share this podcast and if you don't want to miss the most exciting episodes we have coming. We'd love for you to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes or Google Play. Until next time, live every day to the fullest