One of my famous personal essential oil testimonies is how I got rid of my shingles using ravensara essential oil.

Shingles, aka Herpes Zoster, is a severe and short lived viral infection caused by the same virus that causes chicken pox.

It's an infection of the nervous system that affects certain areas of the skin.

Shingles originates from having chicken pox as a child.

During a childhood bout of chicken pox, not all of the viral organisms are destroyed. They hang out and stay quiet - "dormant" - in the nerves in the skin for many years.

When there is severe emotional stress, severe illness, or things that severely affect the immune system, these "dormant" critters wake up and get active again, and cause an infection.

The pain is severe and sometimes long lived, and the medical approach is anti-viral medications, steroids, pain meds, and antibiotics for potential skin infection - and not everyone wants to take this approach (although if the outbreak is near the eyes you should definitely seek medical attention!) So once again we say Thank God for the oils!

I had a shingles outbreak a few years ago when my mother, who had been diagnosed with kidney cancer, had surgery to have her kidney removed.

I was so stressed out that I wasn't paying attention to my body. It's interesting how that happens, isn't it?

Our bodies have to tell us the degree of how much stress we are under if we're not paying attention.

When I found out I had shingles I ran to my two favorite resource books - the Essential Desk Reference and The Alternative Medicine Definitive Guide by the Burton Goldberg Group.

Both of these books mentioned ravensara - which I had in my oil collection and loved for sinus issues.

I immediately took some internally (I had taken ravensara internally before for bronchitis so I was comfortable taking it internally again).

I put 7 drops in an empty gel cap and I took one capsule in the morning and one at night. Within one day my pain and symptoms went away.

I decided to keep myself on this regime for 21 days because that is the normal life span of a virus. My symptoms stayed away for the whole time except for one day I did forget to take my dose.

I said to myself "oh, I probably don't have shingles - I don't have symptoms so I'll stop taking the capsules." Well, within one day the symptoms came back, so I resumed to completion.

Now not everyone will feel comfortable taking oils internally, so here are ways you can use essential oils topically for the discomfort of shingles:

Blend together:

-- 10 drops sandalwood
-- 5 drops blue cypress
-- 4 drops peppermint
-- 2 drops ravensara

Dilute 50:50 with massage oil and apply 6 - 10 drops on the affected area, back of neck, and down the spine 1 - 3 times daily. (from Essential Desk Reference)

____ A case study was done of six hospice patients with shingles. It was found that three essential oils combined together and placed in distilled water and used as a spritz improved the symptoms of the shingles.

The three oils used were:

--ravensara
--bergamot
--niaouli

Aromatherapist Noel Gilligan ran this study. Mr Gilligan reported that after 48 hours:

--there was a significant reduction in the pain from the shingles
--scabbing and healing of the pustules took place and in one
instance there was a disappearance of the pustules