Recently, I was pet and house sitting for someone with a cat for about a week. First night, I was lounging on the sofa working on my laptop for a while. And I started feeling itchy around my ankles. I kept working and when I got up, I saw this black spec on the white sofa. I thought it was a lint or something so I tried to pick it up and it jumped. Then I saw few more. That’s how I realized I was getting flea bites.
The owner happened to have a huge collection of doTERRA essential oils and generously offered to let me use any of them. So I looked up which essential oils would help repel fleas and heal flea bites naturally.
I selected these essential oils to try to repel fleas on myself and not on the couch or on the animal because you have to be very careful using the essential oils on your pet.
- Lavender
- Rosemary
- Eucalyptus
- Lemongrass
- Citronella
- TerraShield – TerraShield is doTerra’s blended essential oils to repel insects.
To apply, I didn’t have a spray bottle so I would drop the essential oil on my hand, rub it and smear it on my legs especially the top of the foot and around the ankle on both sides. I guess they must like those areas because I got bit a lot around there.
I’ve read Peppermint oil is also good but I didn’t try it this time because it was cooler that week with even rain which is miraculous for Southern California and I was afraid I would get very cold if I had peppermint on my skin.
First, I tried TerraShield because it’s designed to repel insects. And I still got bit.
Then I tried Eucalyptus. And I still got bit.
Then I tried Rosemary. And I got bit.
Then I tried Lemongrass. I wanted it to work because I love the lemongrass scent. But I still got bit.
When I say I got bit, I got bit multiple times.
Then as a last hope, I tried Citronella. And I only got bit once. So from then on I just used Citronella.
For flea bites after the fact, lavender was the one to use. Whenever I got bit and started feeling itchy, I would apply lavender oil on the bite site and the itchiness would go away pretty quickly. But the itchiness from the flea bites can come back inflamed any time after that so whenever that happened I would re-apply lavender oil on the itchy area. So basically, I was smelling like Lavender the whole time.
By the way, I also tried Lavender to repel but it didn’t work. I still got bit.
This is strictly my experience with doTerra oils in my desperate attempt to repel the fleas. I don’t know if different brands work differently against the fleas or if the essential oils work differently on different types of fleas because now I know there are cat fleas, dog fleas, chicken fleas, rabbit fleas and human fleas. And rat fleas. I’m assuming it was cat fleas but who knows. All I know is it was much smaller than the fleas that I had seen when I used to have my dogs.
I’ve been told that as you age the scars remain on your skin because of the slower skin turn over. I’m just hoping that they won’t look too bad on my legs.
I have no plan or desire to experiment any further on this issue.
Anyway, I hope you never have this problem.
Massage Monday #576 Essential Oils for Fleas https://bit.ly/mm-576