Sarah Nakamura

I grew up in Asheville, North Carolina, where half the neighbors seemed to keep rosemary by the front steps and a jar of something steeping on the kitchen counter. I was the kid who wanted to know why the jar was supposed to work, and I still am.

For eleven years I worked behind the counter of a small herb and apothecary shop in a mountain town outside Asheville. Most days brought the same handful of questions in different clothes. Which carrier oil should I put this in? How many drops is too many? Can I use this around my baby, my dog or my cat? I kept a dog-eared notebook under the register and did dilution math on the backs of receipts, because people deserved a real number instead of a shrug.

The counter also taught me to be skeptical. I met people with red, angry patches of skin where they had dabbed undiluted oregano oil, and people holding printouts that promised one oil could fix nearly anything. So I started asking one question about every claim: why should this be true? Sometimes the answer was a decent clinical trial. Sometimes it was a single study in a petri dish, and sometimes there was nothing behind it at all.

These days my favorite place is out among my raised herb beds, where the lavender, lemon balm and rosemary make the case for plants better than any label could. Call Me Oil is where I write down the answers I used to give across the counter, with the drop counts spelled out, the safety limits up front and the evidence weighed honestly. If an oil is not the right answer for what you are dealing with, I would rather tell you that plainly.

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