Why I Switched to Spark Naturals

In my last post, I talked about why I started using essential oils for my family. Long story short, my dog has severe allergies. The essential oils we began to use helped us find a more natural way to combat the itching he experienced on a day to day basis.

When I got into essential oils in April, I researched Pinterest, blogs, and Facebook groups to find ideas for how to use essential oils for allergies. The most common theme I found was a combination of lemon, lavender, and peppermint. Guys, this combo works!

However, as with many things in the holistic world, it was high in price and taking a pretty hard hit to our budget. As an extremely frugal family, this was hard for us to handle or justify. By buying our oils through Young Living, a 15ml bottle each of lavender, lemon, and peppermint  was lasting us about two months and costing us $56.25 BEFORE taxes and shipping. Ouch! This was more than we were spending on Darty's food! We had to find another solution or Darty might have had to go back taking Benadryl, which was the last thing we wanted to do.

A childhood friend, Lacey Foster over at Haute Mess Mama, had been using another company for her essential oils, Spark Naturals. She had been using them almost 8 months and seemed very pleased with the company. I looked up their prices preparing myself for the worst, and I was amazed! So much cheaper than Young Living! But, I needed to be sure they were still pure and safe for ingestion since that is the way Darty gets his oils. I messaged Lacey back and forth that night, and after having many discussions with Mr. James, we decided we needed to make sure that Spark Naturals were the way we wanted to go before making the leap.

If you are new to the essential oil world, it can sometimes be very confusing. The reality is, there are currently no regulations on essential oils. And the certified ones? They create their own certifications, which is why every company has a different certification! You can read more about that here and here.

Another big push with Young Living is that you truly know where your oils come from and can even go visit the farms. That's honestly pretty cool, but is it a necessity? When was the last time most of the families in America visited the farms that produced their fruits, vegetables, and meats? The answer is, probably not as many as actually use essential oils. Therefore, it's an amazing feat, but not a necessity unless I put forth the same dedication to EVERYTHING I put on or in my body.

So I began a hunt for unbiased, third-party testing. Not the "third-party testing" claimed by many of the companies, but a true test of the essential oils by someone who would not gain to have them altered. And I finally found it. Some donations were made for third party testing to occur for many different oil companies. There was only one occurrence that had both Young Living and Spark Naturals testing with the same oil. Other tests were conducted in which Young Living scored well and Spark Naturals did not, but for the sake of science, I cannot use those for an accurate comparison since they were not the same oil. Who knows if the results would be switched if the oils were switched?

On the peppermint essential oil, Spark Naturals oil was closer to the ISO standard than Young Living was. However, both were not close enough according to the third party tester, yet the results also proved that neither company are using any artificial ingredients. That means that both oil companies are true to their word, they don't have any artificial fillers, and are safe for ingestion. That was all I needed to know.

Truly pure oils that are at cheaper price point? Sign me up!!

Also, Spark Naturals already has their own allergy LLP blend. The means I won't have to continue to buy three separate oils every time I need more. I can just buy one 15mL bottle of the LLP for all of Darty's needs. Double score!

If you are already an avid EO user or are considering making the jump, I think you should really give Spark Naturals a strong consideration. You can find the oils you are looking for here.

Be sure to use the coupon code: jamesplace to receive 10% off your entire order!

Let me know if I can answer any questions or concerns!

Sincerely,

Mylie James