Homemade Vapor Rub

It's cold and flu season again and we've already had our first round of colds for the year. I hate having a cold and we've always seemed to use a lot of Vicks. However, lately I'm concerned with a lot of ingredients in many of the things we use rather it's food items or medicines.

There's a product called Winter Breeze vapor rub that is made with natural things like beeswax, oil and essential oils but it's rather costly. I've found some instructions to make my own "vapor rub" so I thought I'd share.

Here are the instructions I used:

Vapor rub

1/2 cup non-petroleum gel

1/2 Tbsp sweet almond or olive oil

1/2 tsp essential oil of Eucalyptus

2 - 3 drops of tea tree oil

Combine the non-petroleum gel and the almond/olive oil in a double boiler. Melt together, blending well, then remove from the heat. Add in the eucalyptus oil and tea tree oil and mix well. Pour into container and allow cooling and setting.

How to make "non-petroleum gel"

Using a double boiler melt together 1 ounce of beeswax per 1/2 cup of oil. Pour into container and allow to set.

You can use baby oil, mineral oil, almond oil or olive oil. I used olive oil because mineral oil is a by product of petroleum (like what is used to make gasoline!) and baby oil is usually made of mineral oil. Almond oil is ok but might be more costly...I haven't compared the cost of it to olive oil but I also just like the properties of olive oil.

Have a great day!

Mavis D.