Oil pulling sounds as useful as ear candling.
:dubious:
AMSOil anyone? Not nearly the thing it was in the motorhead late 60s / early 70s, but its pure MLM woo.
I just ran across a post on TMZ that mentioned that the Young Living people are suggesting that some of their oils will prevent Ebola and Cancer.
How they got to Cancer, I don’t know, but as for Ebola, my WAG is that the company probably hinted that some of their oils have antiviral or antibacterial properties and the individual sellers/agents ran with it…ran right to Ebola. I’d be surprised if the company used the word Ebola in any of their literature or on their website.
Either way, the FDA told them to knock it off.
I’m not surprised that these companies are claiming cures for cancer. I’ve already heard people hocking DoTerra say as much. Well, they claim they prevent cancer, but I’m sure they’d say if you took a swig of peppermint oil or whatever it would cure you too.
I vacillate between furious and pitying with these suckers. On the one hand, I understand being afraid and skeptical about medical science, which is nearly impossible to understand for the layman, and the ignorant won’t do much about their own ignorance after all (Dunning-Kruger effect), but at the same time I see my friends on facebook giving their innocent children doses of God-Knows-What and burning it for aromatherapy to treat flu when there’s a perfectly safe and effective vaccine available. But that’s a whole other tangent.
Point is, people are skeptical of medical science, which is tested and regulated pretty vigorously, but they will buy in–with a religious devotion, no less–to made in China woo which is completely obviously a money making scheme. As WhyNot noted, this stuff has been tested and it contains synthetic chemicals. And I know if I tell these nuts this, they won’t believe it, because it’s above reproach cause so-and-so used it to cure her bronchitis.
Ugh, WHY!!!
While the Dunning-Kruger effect is certainly in play, it’s worth remembering part 4 of that theory:
Recognizing and achknowleging their own previous lack of skill when exposed to training (or accurate information) for that skill is where the MLM essential oil pushers veer away from simple Dunning-Kruger and into dangerous territory. As you note, even if you expose them to actual information and training, they are very resistant, defensive and downright hostile. That’s not Dunning-Kruger. That’s…something else. I spent quite some time thinking about this recently, and came up with the following hypothesis (forgive me if you’ve already seen it; it got passed around Facebook some in the previous two weeks.):
Dunning-Kruger allows for growth and development, as well as humility and a little bit of (appropriate) shame. The exploitation of friendships that happens with MLM “parties” does not. It inhibits it, in fact. And so injuries happen.
And just to add the icing to this bullshit cake, there’s no good way to report adverse events with essential oils. No one’s tracking this stuff. The industry (read: a couple of reputable, ethical aromatherapists from the Atlantic Institute of Aromatherapy) have responded by creating an Injury Reporting website, where adverse events can be reported and data gathered. It of course fails to be inclusive, because it’s not mandatory, and it’s of limited use thus far, because hardly anyone knows about it. But here’s the link: http://www.atlanticinstitute.com/injury-reporting Please do use it if you have experienced or witnessed an adverse event from essential oil use. We’re trying to self-police so we don’t end up regulated out of existence.
Ironically, given the OP, there is new evidence showing that some essential oils may possibly fight cancer.
http://personalliberty.com/essential-oils-shown-kill-breast-cancer-cells/
nm
Ummmm, who are these ‘Chinese researchers’ and why does the first link go to another article on their website (that I didn’t read) entitled “Chemo Makes Cancer Worse”
How about something with some real research and some real data and some real cites, otherwise I’m calling bullshit.
Just doing some quick poking around, all the information I can find is just that same pubmed article over and over. IIRC, pubmed isn’t anything ‘official’ it’s just a place to publish findings, it doesn’t mean they’ve actually been verified or peer reviewed. I’d imagine any doctor (even one that was paid by a company who had an interest in something) can get something on pubmed.
If what they’re saying is actually true, that essential oils work and Chemo makes things worse, there should have been a huge shift in how we treat cancer patients (or at least where we spend our research dollars) since that was published 4 years ago, but instead we have people hawking it on facebook.
That’s such awesome news for everyone who keeps their cancer cells in a test tube!!! 
(If you’re not familiar with XKCD, make sure after you read the comic that you hover you’re mouse over it for the rest of the ‘joke’.)
Let’s face it. At sometime in our life most of us will be suckered into a MLM scheme. Live, learn, and move on.
Juice Plus+ and Arbonne Cosmetics seem to have taken over my local working-from-home moms groups 
I don’t think that’s the case, I’m sorry you have a houseful of MarketAmerica lotion and hair products that your friends are sick of hearing about, but I’m pretty sure I’m never going to ‘set my own hours’ or ‘work from home’ or whatever else they say to entice people these days.
In fact, I’m willing to bet “most of us” will never be suckered into an MLM scheme. That’s half the reason why MLMs collapse. The people on the bottom eventually can’t find A)more people to sell to and B)anyone to work under them.
Yes, but at some point in your life if you are a woman you will definitely find yourself at a party where you kind of feel you have to buy a candle.
When I go on OKCupid or Match and someone says “I own my own business so that takes up a ton of my time”, I’d bet that better than 70% of the time that means that in addition to their actual job they either make jewelry and sell it on Etsy or do Surprise Parties. (“Surprise Party” is a candle/tupperware party where they sell sex toys, it’s an actual thing, you can go to surpiseparties dot com, it’s the same as all the other MLM stuff).
I’m sorry, selling your crap on Etsy or sex toys or hauling around a suitcase full of dildos to make $100 a month is not ‘owning your own business’.
My boss does doTERRA. She says it “changed her life.”