The problem with the word "Pure"
The word "pure" used in marketing does not necessarily mean that an oil is of clinical quality. A pure oil can be distilled incorrectly or can come from a species that is not ideal. Pure can mean that all the
Don't be misled. "Pure" can be a marketing word, much like the word "natural", with multiple meanings. The purest possible oils that someone in marketing might call "crystal clean" could well by synthetic or of the lowest possible quality where health-care professionals are concerned. Synthetic oils are always consistent in smell and taste. For anyone using oils for clinical use, a "pure" oil should mean one that has no synthetic components at all. It is extracted according to medical, clinical, and scientific standards, and not just fragrance-and-flavoring standards. Don't fall for marketing tactics, as there is no scientific validation of therapeutic grade. Essential oils on the market to be sold as such, are not of the highest quality standards, but far from it. There is however, a true clinical-grade essential oil for the general public to purchase now as of 2014.
Can "Therapeutic grade" also be a marketing term?
As Robert Tisserand says, "Therapeutic grade is only a marketing term". There is no scientific support to this claim.
As natural substances, essential oils are not patented or standardized. Calling a company's oils "certified" or "therapeutic grade" can be misleading. Several companies have promoted this misconception that there is some kind of independent body that certifies oils as "therapeutic grade". There is no such body, at least not a widely recognized one.
This doesn't mean that "therapeutic grade" couldn't have real meaning to health care professionals. But because there is no independent body that certifies the quality of oils, it just means that any certification standard is an internal one that is not recognized across the industry. Many analysts and aromatherapists would be happy to find an independent, trustworthy standard. Highly recommended are the standards mentioned in Part 2 of this Blog series.
Do companies have to own their own farms and extract the oils themselves to guarantee quality?
No single supplier could maintain farms and extract oils from where they are best grown all over the globe. A single supplier may grow and distill a small selection of aromatic plants on large farms and gain a deeper understanding of the farming and distillation process, but most of their oils will come from a large number of growers all over the world. Through brokers that sell oils distilled, the same oils, to several companies. A broad pharmacopeia of therapeutic aromatic plants requires many different types of soils in many different countries and climates. There is a marketing tool of "seed to seal", however, even this company on stage at their own convention, admitted about 80% of their oils were from other sources and not their own farms or distilleries.
Maintaining farms and distillation factories all over the world is costly and does not make economic sense if a company is trying to keep their oils as affordable as possible.
Instead, look for a company who uses qualified independent experts to guarantee the quality of the oils they purchase. Find a company willing to be flexible in purchasing their oils from different parts of the world as climate conditions shift from growing season to growing season. Find a company whose single oils are slightly different from batch to batch, because that signals attention to a complete, natural oil with all its constituents kept intact. Choose a company who's peppermint smells more like a field of plants than a candy store. Choose a company willing to reject a batch of oils, which the broker then sells to other oil companies. But their integrity for a true clinical grade standard will not be compromised.
Must essential oils be certified organic?
Organic certification is certainly important, but it is far from being the only qualification for clinically powerful oils.
There is a test that is essential to be applied for citrus oils to avoid pesticides that could be especially harmful. This is an absolutely critical test for all citrus oils. In addition, we believe a company should choose organic sources whenever possible. Realizing many countries do not have this governing standard to certify organic grown.
It is important to note that the global supply of truly "organic" oils is very liimited. In truth the classification of "organic" is largely misleading. In most countries, companies can still use the "organic" label with products that have been cultivated, grown and harvested while using pesticides, herbicides and other chemical agents. Ultimately, the quality of an essential oil is determined by specific quality control measures, purity tests and complete constituent profiles -- not a nebulous "organic" classification.
Who can you trust?
Choose a company that uses all the points of quality listed earlier in Part 1 & 2 of this Blog series -- botanical accuracy, farming and distilling standards, chemical accuracy using scientific charts, government food-grade certification, sources used by the scientific research community, a test for how the oils react as they actually come in contact with human cells, an expert "nose" and quality delivery standards.
Choose a company committed to science and the research community that supports it. A trustworthy company will use evidence based research to promote those oils with the most well-established clinical track records. It will promote those uses and therapies that science has proven to be most consistently effective.
Essential oils are not cure-all's. They have safety issues that must be addressed. They are highly effective for certain uses but less effective for others. A trustworthy company will work hard to promote what consistently works to keep you healthy. They will not attempt to oversell, and will be transparent about the relative power of each oil and each therapy. They will not have FDA compliance issues.
How can oils be adulterated?
There are many and diverse ways to adulterate essential oils. It's a bit like asking how thieves steal or how forgers forge. The minute you think you have an exhaustive list of ways, someone invents a sneaky new way.
Enterprising suppliers have, from the beginning, looked for ways to cut quality and charge more. The more expensive the oil, and the more money to be made on the oil, the more ways there will be to adulterate and cover up the adulteration. Here are a few:
Early on, suppliers found ways to dilute expensive oils which less expensive ingredients -- synthetic, natural, or mixed. Enterprising suppliers even found ways to modify cheap oils like orange and mix them with expensive oils in ways that would make the gas chromatograms and mass spectrometer readings disqualify the oil. The smell could even be a bit more pleasant, so no uninformed consumer would complain. The oil seemed more "pure" to them. There were the same high prices with more sales and more profits. More oils were being shared and becoming popular. Would it matter if the therapeutic results were a big lower? There is some therapeutic value in all oils if only for the placebo effect. Don't let your mind try to trick your body into believing just because a company, a distributor, a book says an oil should provide these benefits, that it actually can or does.
Deceptive Subtraction
Some suppliers have learned that by subtracting certain slightly disagreeable components from a popular oil, they will sell more. Their peppermint will smell a bit more like candy store and their lavender more like a beauty boutique. The slightly meadow-like aroma is missing, and only an expert can smell the deception. But what about the lost medical value from these less aromatically pleasing components?
Essential oils can have hundreds of constituents, each of which performs its unique medical function in the oil. There is plenty of scientific evidence that when you isolate the individual chemical components you miss the buffering and synergistic effects of the combination nature has given us in having all the components together.
A trustworthy company will not claim to give you all the components of a clinically complex oil and yet subtract ingredients without disclosing the subtractions.
The "Nose" knows
Just as we need experts in forgery to catch the craftiest crooks, we sometimes need experts with significant practical clinical experience to spot the craftiest adulteration's. Dr Penoel has been used for decades to identify fraudulent oils. He knows the "noses" in the industry -- the experts whose experience and integrity can be trusted. He knows when a poor quality oil will not help his patients.
It's interesting to watch his ritual as he evaluates an assortment of oils. He will carefully experience and evaluate the range of constituents in each oil, remembering the vast numbers of oils sent to him from every corner of the world for his evaluation. When he finds a fraudulent oil, he will exclaim like a banker who has spotted a forged check, "Just smell that oil! It is DEAD. Can't you smell it? It is therapeutically dead!" The amazed onlooker attempts without success to smell and feel the difference. But the nose knows. And the nose knows other noses he can trust to know.
So does your nose know? With plenty of clinical experience comparing effective and less effective essential oils, we can all educate our noses. Until then, we will need to trust the trained "noses" on this medical advisory boards of the reliable companies. Those used in clinical studies.
I preformed an experiment during one of my classes I teach at a local college about essential oils. The class of 15 students, participated by taking 2 bottles of oil, putting down the one they did not like, and picking up the next bottle, and repeating to the end. I had covered the labels on 10 different essential oil brands of the same oil. At the end, everyone except 1 lady, picked the same essential oil. They all picked Ameo as what they considered the most authentic. The one lady picked NOW on the Peppermint. However, on Lavender, everyone including her picked Ameo. This was interesting as there was no way to predict the outcome. The top selling companies as well as local less known brands were represented. In the class of 15, and 5 where distributors from 2 major companies, and didn't pick their own brands, quite surprising to them. I look forward to trying this again in the next season of classes.
How to certify to your Health care provider that you are using the highest quality essential oils and following recommendations from trustworthy health care professionals.
We believe in science-based, alternative and complementary medicine. We want you to be knowledgeable enough about essential oils to help identify those medical doctors, naturopatic doctors and other health care professionals who will be happy to take advantage of the amazing benefits of
Here are some questions Dr Penoel suggests that we could ask our health care providers to recognize if they are receptive to working with clinical-quality essential oils. We are not trying to disqualify them, but we want to learn how much experience they have with clinical aromatic therapies and how open they are to integrating them.
- What training or certification, if any, have you had in plant-based medicine, alternative medicine, naturopathic medicine or more specifically essential oils?
- Is your practice integrated with alternative therapies or are these kinds of clinical practices only recommended occasionally?
- Can you refer me to patients who have worked with you in alternative medicine? Obviously with their permission in referrals, due to the Hip-pa-law.
- If you have worked with essential oils, do you recommend them for dermal absorption (topical), olfaction (inhaled) or ingestion; all three or just the first two?
Not all Naturopathic practitioners or medical physicians may be aware of a newly released true clinical grade essential oil available now. A gentle introduction may be in order. Personally, I'd only want to go to a practitioner who was open minded enough to look, as well as having the Integrity of wanting to provide only the best for their patients. I look forward to the day when in the USA, we see an general acceptance of the use of a clinical grade essential oil by medical professionals, clinics, etc. It's unfortunate that Europe is further ahead of America when it comes to integrated and natural therapies.
The challenges of essential oil research
How is research on the medicinal value of essential oils different from research on synthetic pharmaceutical products? The research process as Dr Kurt Schnaubelt describes it is typically The Healing Intelligence of Essential Oils) This type of research woks well for single-component drugs like aspirin. But with essential oils "there is a potentially very large number of components contributing to the curative effect -- this process is elusive, as the same experiment would have to be repeated for each component of the essential oil. While this might then be a proper reductionist procedure, it is neither practically possible nor would it describe a meaningful reality."
"Using lavender as a remedy for burns... highly effective, but only within the aromatherapy community. Pharmacology does not recommend the use of Lavender, since it cannot find an active ingredient that mimics the effect of this whole oil" And because it can't be researched in a traditional way, it isn't typically recommended by the scientific community no matter how effective it is shown to be in actual clinical practice.
Dr Penoel also explains that essential oils are difficult to test using a typical double-blind studies because of the telltale aromas involved. These constraints, along with the obvious lack of funding, keep research on essential oils relatively limited. All pharmaceutical companies are looking to earn huge profits from patent-able, standardized, synthetic ingredients. They can afford expensive tests. Essential oils are natural and do not have huge pharmaceutical profits to promote their research.
Is there solid scientific research on medicinal uses of essential oils?
Yes, absolutely. You only have to type "essential oils" into www.pubmed.gov to see at least 12,891+ items of published research, most of them in well-respected scientific journals.
These products work and are being used in millions of homes all over the world as well as by medical professionals in clinics and hospitals all over the world, they cannot be ignored by the scientific community. Because of the dangers of over prescribing antibiotics, essential oils are also becoming the best alternative for use in veterinary medicine and agriculture.
In the European Union, laws have recently been established to phase out half of the antibiotics in the food given to livestock and replace them with essential oils. This is a huge effort that will require the production of much larger quantities of essential oils. This is encouraging news for the entire essential oil industry.
This is the end of this 3 part Blog series on Essential Oil Quality.
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