Undersatanding The Grades Of Essential Oils

When buying essential oils, it is important to understand the difference in grades and quality of essential oils.

The existing problem is that there are no standards the companies are obliged to adhere to. In other words, there is no mandatory testing, and labels are often false.

This is why Gary Young created his own grade - therapeutic grade.

Depending on the essential oil composition, its healing potential is different.

From the personal experience, using other essential oils before Young Living, did not help, if not made it worse.

Following are my notes from Aromatherapy course by Kurt Schnaubelt

Purity - Adulterations

Essential oils may be diluted with alcohol or vegetable oils.

If essential oils are water soluble, then emulsifiers like in hand creams and lotions, or surfactants (as in detergents) are used.

Essential oils may be adulterated, which means, mixed with another cheap essential oil of similar composition, which is hard to detect.

Analysis

Composition of essential oils varies with climate, soil condition, organic cultivation, and time of harvest.

Gas chromatography is used for essential oils used for medical purposes.

Identifies:

  • compounds

  • concentration

Each oil has a "fingerprint", which is unique to that one botanical species.

3 simple tests to detect adulteration

  • greasy feel

  • drop on a plain white sheet of paper will evaporate without a residue (vs. oily stain)

  • If essential oil does not float on top, there could be emulsifies and surfactants, which produce milky or opaque solution

  • rancid odor (veggetable oil)

  • ethyl alcohol - you'll smell it

Essential oil being extended means "added to".

Pure, natural and complete

  • no additives

  • may or may not be re-distilled

Genuine and authentic

  • pure, natural and complete, and never re-distilled

Produced in Australia and Madagascar (water and steam distillation), and France (water and water and steam

distillation)

French Insur. companies pay for essential oils for med. purposes!

When the oil evaporates, complex high quality ess. oil will change its smell.

Natural vs. synthetic

  • Usually, synthetic oils smell very nice, and are sometimes even closer to the fragrance of the actual flower than the true essence.

  • Synthetics do not have the properties of true essential oils - the chemicals used to compose an imitation fragrance are entirely different from those found in the plant of the essential oil.

Eucalyptus is available and is inexpensive. Synthetic is more expensive to make.

However, it takes 2,000 lbs of Rose petals to distill 1 lb of essential oil (same as Melissa).

For John's wort - 4,000 of wild herbs to distill 1 lbs of essential oil

1 oz of Morocco rose (solvent extract) = $300

Optimum environment for every plant.

French Basil is 10 times the price of exotic Basil.

Cistus- ladaniferus from French Esterel mountains, multiple the price of Spanish Cystus

Myrtaceae family - best in Australia (Eucalyptus species) and on the islands of New caledonia (Melaleuca species)

Laurel Species - in Madagascar

Pesticides

Oils from wild or organically grown plants have more valuable composition

Citrus peel oils should always be from organically grown

Production of genuine and authentic (g & a)

Finding g& a is not all that easy

  • not too many distillers who have the knowledge

  • suppliers of healthy wild plants are too costly

A truly g & a guarantee:

  • the plant

  • the distillation

  • the essential oil itself

Harvesting and distillation

Plants need to be harvested at the peak of their ripeness (eg. wild thyme - in the later afternoon)

3.5 ton of petals from 2.5 acres of rose bushes to yield 2 lbs of essential oils

Low distillation temperature protects the essences from being oxidized - takes longer.

Lavender distills fast in the first 25 minutes, accounting for 3/4 of the total yield. However, the bulk of the natural coumarin takes 50-80 minutes.

Common Thyme, which grows wild extensively in Provence, is picked by experienced Moroccan and Spanish laborers at a rate of 100 kg per day (1 ton in 10 days)

1 ton = 700 g (1 1/2 lbs of essence)

vs.

Spanish Thyme (Thymus Zygis) commercially grown:

= 3,500 g (X5)

= 7,000g (14 lbs) extraction

= 15,000g (30 lbs) after readjustment with natural turpentine essence. Result - "White Thyme" oil (natural)

Labeling

100% natural should mean absence of commonly permitted (and mostly safe) substances as synthetic esters, emulsifying agents such as TWEEN and Octoxynol-1 and petroleum-based dilutants such as mineral oil

100% pure should mean absence of similar essential oils.

True Lavender is often extended. Lavandin

Turpentine, called "passe-partart" by commercial manufactures, is found in many commercial essences.

  • Some rare oils are ounly found in "reconstituted form", such as Niaouli, Rose, and especially Melissa

  • Blending, stretching, diluting and extending essential oils is known in the industry as "preparing a sauce"

  • From producer to consumer, essential oils go through so many intermediaries that the assumption of fair amount of adulteration is realistic

100% complete should mean essential oils that are not decolorized, recolored or deterpenated.. In the perfumery and food industries (citrus juice concentrates) the use of deterpenated essences is very common.

Deterpenating Thyme makes it more toxic, and deterpenating Lavender, which is very low in terpenes to begin with, takes away from its catalyst values.

Deterpenating essences for aromatherapy results in lower bioactivity.

“In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations." From The Great Law Of The Iroquois Confederacy