Therapeutic Grade Essential Oils-5

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How to know?? – Part 5

Therapeutic Grade Essential Oils must be grown, harvested, and processed in a certain way.  The fourth part of the process involves properly extracting the oils.  There are several ways to extract oils from plants.  These include:

  1. steam distillation, cold pressing, and solvent-extracted.
  2. The process I usually refer to is low-pressure, low-temperature steam distillation.
  3. I have found that high temperature processing completely changes the chemical property of the oil, and it doesn’t function as a true therapeutic oil.
  4. It actually ‘vibrates’ differently.
  5. If you’re used to truly healing oils, you’ll never want to use one that is inferior.  There ARE different qualities of oil out there!

For instance, let’s look at basil.  How you extract the oils from basil, known as Ocimum basilicum, can give it distinctly different properties.  The Essential Oils Desk Reference has this to say:  “…basil high in linalool or fenchol is primarily used for its antiseptic properties.  However, basil high in methyl chavicol is more anti-inflammatory than antiseptic.  A third type, basil high in eugenol, has both anti-inflammatory and antiseptic effects.”

Based on that information, if you’re looking for a basil high in anti-inflammatory properties, you don’t want to mistakenly be given the one that is antiseptic instead.  I prefer a basil essential oil with both properties.  Basil essential oil, created by Young Living Oils, is helpful with both.  It is high in methyl chavicol (70-75%), and also contains linalol at 12-14%, as well as methyl eugenol.  Here are the tips to help you know if your company is giving you quality oils:

  • They need to ‘feel’ natural
  • The fragrances should vary slightly from bottle to bottle, denoting they were processed carefuly in small batches.
  • Your company should test its oils at independent labs.
  • Your company needs to use low pressure, low temperature distillation.
  • Your company should Never use synthetic chemicals in the process.
  • The company needs to use distillation cookers of stainless steel alloys to reduce any possible reaction with the metal.

And with that said, I wish you a truly wonderful summer!