Simple Homemade Vapor Rub

There are tons of recipes out there on the internet for homemade vapor rub, I am sure most of them work great. This is a simple, quick one that works well for us. It was one of the first things I made with essential oils and helped to convince me of the benefits of essential oils. :) To read the long version of the story you can read here Essential Oils. The short version is, it was late at night, my son had a chest cold and was having bad asthma attacks before we knew he had asthma, my hubby was out of town and well you get the picture. My friend told me to make some vapor rub with essential oils, rub it on his chest and his feet and put socks on. It helped a lot to soothe and support his respiratory system and I have used it several times since.  There are other recipes that are more complicated and some that call for beeswax but since this works for us, I saw no need to do something different. We keep this in our room where the A/C stays on most of the time and so the coconut oil stays pretty well solidified. Again because this is being rubbed into the skin I would suggest a higher end essential oil like doTerra, Native American Nutritionals, Young Living or Mountain Rose Herbs

Ingredients for kids and elderly
1/2 cup coconut oil
8 drops peppermint essential oil
8 drops eucalyptus essential oil
8 drops lavender essential oil

Ingredients for older kids and adults
1/2 cup coconut oil
15 drops peppermint essential oil
15 drops eucalyptus essential oil
15 drops lavender essential oil

Mix all the ingredient together and you are ready to go.

If you want it thicker consistency you can whip the coconut butter with some shea butter or you can melt some beeswax and mix it in. I do not find it necessary but some do.

You can use other essential oils as well, like lemon, tea tree, rosemary, pine, basil, chamomile, orange and others. If you do add more EOs however, you will need to adjust the number of drops you put in as it needs to stay safely diluted. There is a good chart / print out for diluting here Dilution Chart.