Orange is very gentle natural oil. I like to compare orange to a mother because it is a warming oil; it's a relaxing oil; and it's one of the few oils that pregnant woman should have no difficulty with even from the earliest stages of pregnancy. So for digestive upset, nausea or vomiting, it would be the one I would recommend to a pregnant woman who had those problems. Peppermint might be my first choice, but orange is much gentler for anybody, especially pregnant women. It is a good aromatherapy used for diarrhea or constipation because it's spasmolytic. It stops spasms in an irritable bowel. Peppermint is also excellent for irritable bowels, but for pregnant woman I would start with orange because it's gentler. It's also very relaxing; it's good for colds and the flu; it is excellent for environmental disinfections and it's very hydrating to the skin. I do a lot of teaching and I always tell people this is not only what I do for a living, it's how I live my life. I use oils for everything. We don't even have the normal medications in our medicine cabinet that most people have; I just use the oils. I have a little tray in my bedroom with all my oils. That's the nice thing about working with them; once you understand what each one does, then you also know how to combine them together to do what you're trying to do. So if you have some carrier oils and you have your essential oils, then you can make anything. You just know that this oil and that oil combined together work for a certain problem. Whether it's something in your mouth or on the gums, or you have a headache, or sore throat, or something that hurts, you can use essential oils. I usually try to trace things back to what the cause is. One of my complaints with allopathic medicine is not that we don't need it, but they usually want to just work on the symptom and not address the problem. I always feel if you keep the immune system strong and you try to keep the liver detoxed, your body will fight off everything. So, keeping a positive attitude in mind and then keeping your body strong enough will take care of a lot of things. That's my philosophy.
