A woman had to seek medical attention after eating essential oils for weeks on end, triggering full-body swelling and rashes

• Stacey Haluka, a former essential-oil distributor, developed a full-body, oozing rash after ingesting essential oils several times a day for three weeks.
• She appeared on an episode of "(Un)well," a series on Netflix looking at the possible dangers of the wellness industry.
• "It felt like someone had locked me in a room with fire ants, mosquitoes, wasps, and then poured molten lava on my body," Haluka said.
• Warning: Some images included in this article are graphic and show severe rashes.

Like candles and jade rollers, essential oils are a symbol of the wellness industry.

They can also be hazardous to our health, as "(Un)well," a new series on Netflix looking at the dangers of the wellness industry, explains.

Stacey Haluka, a former essential-oil distributor, said she began selling essential oils in 2015 from an unspecified multilevel-marketing company after a friend spoke about their health benefits.

After eating the essential oils several times a day for a few weeks, Haluka developed a severe full-body rash with fluid-filled blisters.

"I was brainwashed, I drank the Kool-Aid," Haluka said in the episode. "I trusted the teachings that I was getting from this multilevel-marketing company. It doesn't matter what brand of essential oil you're using because this can happen with any essential oil."

Haluka was using essential oils up to 7 times a day and developed a rash weeks after starting

According to Haluka, the MLM company had said the oils could be used up to seven times a day topically, internally, and in a diffuser (you should never eat essential oils).

"My friend had done a ton of research on the company and the oils and she told that they were the of the highest quality, that you could take them internally," she said. "I've never known that you can take essential oils internally, but it was so pure that you could, and I thought, 'Wow, this is a game changer.'"

A few weeks into consuming the essential oils, Haluka found a red rash on her forearm. Thinking nothing of it, she put a bit of tea tree oil on it. The next day, the rash was even bigger.

Not knowing what to do, Haluka turned to essential-oil-distribution Facebook groups for advice. When she questioned whether the skin irritation could have been caused by the oils, people were quick to defend them.

"The answers were always, 'No, it can't be the oils,'" Haluka said on the Netflix series. "'It's a good thing you have a rash — your body is just detoxing.'"

Trusting her peers, Haluka did not initially seek medical attention and instead continued to use the oils. But her rashes just got more inflamed.

'It felt like someone had locked me in a room with fire ants, mosquitoes, wasps, and then poured molten lava on my body'

Soon, Haluka was covered in red rashes and was so swollen she was unable to bend her limbs.

"It felt like someone had locked me in a room with fire ants, mosquitoes, wasps, and then poured molten lava on my body," Haluka said.

Haluka's face eventually became covered in boils that leaked fluid, prompting her to stop taking the oils. After going to the doctor to get an allergy test, the doctor confirmed she had allergies to tea tree oil and ylang-ylang.

"I inundated my body with these chemical constituents that are in the essential oils that became toxic to my body," Haluka said in the series.

There is little research about the long-term impacts of essential oils on the body

Essential oils are meant to be used topically and in diffusers in small doses, diluted with water, and never ingested, as they can damage your mucus membranes. There are strict federal US guidelines on how food companies can use essential oils to flavor foods in minuscule doses.

Haluka said she received little to no guidance from the company she bought oils from. While some guidelines exist on how to safely use essential oils, there is little research on their long-term impact on the human body, according to the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

"There's no evidence of that being safe for humans," Dr. E. Joy Boyles, a researcher who wrote "The Chemistry of Aromatherapeutic Oils," said in the episode, adding that essential-oil distribution companies, "unbeknownst to them even," were in fact "running the biggest experiment on human use of essential oil that we've ever seen planet-wide."

• Read more:
• A dermatologist told me everything I'm doing wrong in my skincare routine and how to know if a product is worth it
• Dr. Pimple Popper shut down beauty guru Michelle Phan's claim that burning 'antiviral' essential oils can kill off viruses before they enter your system
• There's no strong evidence that essential oils do anything, but a third of Americans believe in them anyway