What are essentials oils?

Answer 1

Essential oils are liquid volatile organic compounds extracted from plants. Most essential oils are distilled but other extraction methods are used, especially for botanicals that would be chemically altered by the heat produced during distillation. Most essential oils are made from a specific plant part. Sandalwood, for example, is made from the wood of a tree. Angelica, on the other hand is distilled only from the roots of its parent plant. Other essential oils, like lavender, are distilled from flowers; citrus oils are produced by pressing the rinds of ripened fruits.

Answer 2

Essential oil is a liquid that is generally distilled from stems, roots, barks, leaves, flowers, or other elements of a natural plant. Essential oils are highly concentrated and a little goes a long way. It is also different from perfume or fragrance oils.

HOW DO THEY WORK?

The molecules of Essential Oils are very small so they are absorbed through the skin and are carried through the bloodstream throughout your entire body. They have the ability to be absorbed into the cells of your body, something many drugs cannot do. The primary constituents of Essential Oils are terpenoids, (varied classes of hydrocarbons produced by the variety of plants essential oils are made from) three types of which can be found in Essential Oils. One oil can but not necessarily contain all three types. They are Phenylpropanoids (also called Hemiterpenes), Monoterpenes, and Sesquiterpenes.

Phenylpropanoids function as structural components of cell walls, defend against microbial injury, protect against ultraviolet light, and enable molecules to transmit information between cells allowing interaction with another cell's receptors triggering a cell response. Therefore, they are able to accommodate communication between all cells and body systems.

Monoterpenes in essential oils exhibit among other benefits, antitumor activity through several mechanisms of action that include blocking, suppressing and redifferentiation at the cell level, meaning they can correct miswritten information in your DNA, (which is how cancer starts) thus repairing a cell before it can multiply. Specifically, their therapeutic activities for cancer are currently being evaluated in Phase I Clinical Trials.

Sesquiterpenes carry oxygen, delivering it throughout your tissues creating an environment that is detrimental to the life and growth of various pathogens. Because cancer, viruses and other bacteria cannot thrive in an oxygenated rich environment, those pathogens die, effectively erasing rather than just reprogramming the misinformation they brought into the DNA.

These various properties are what makes using Essential Oils so effective. Add to that the additional benefits of touch (when the oils are delivered through massage) and the fact that their aroma triggers our sense of smell, which is the only sense out of the 5 that registers an initial response in the portion of our brain that deals with emotions, (the other 4 senses initially register in the rational portion and only after being deciphered there do we then get an emotional response.) and you can begin to see how powerful they can be both physically and emotionally. Treating both the physical and emotional aspects is vital to obtaining total and complete health in each of our lives.

However, not all Essential Oils are created equal. Therapeutic Grade is necessary for healing purposes. Therapeutic Grade oils contain an electromagnetic frequency* not found in lesser grades. Harvesting plants from their indigenous growth areas also affects the quality as does the extraction method utilized. To be sure you are buying a quality product, look for a label declaring it to be Certified Pure Therapeutic Grade (CPTG). This is an important difference from being declared simply as therapeutic grade or as being labeled 100% pure. CTPG means that it was certified by an independent laboratory to be both therapeutic grade and pure. Because essential oils are not FDA regulated, labels claiming to be 100% pure and of therapeutic grade may or may not be. They might also contain contaminants that may alter the active compounds which could affect their safety and effectiveness. Only those that have been certified by an independent laboratory have been subjected to rigorous testing standards to determine the grade and purity of their chemical composition, and those that have will carry that certification on their label.

*Please Note: The Human Body also has an electromagnetic frequency, the level of which is dependent upon one's health status. A healthy person's electromagnetic frequency should measure around 62 -- 68 MHz. Having a cold can drop one's levels to 58 MHz, cancer begins to multiply rapidly when one's frequency drops below 42 MHz, and the death process begins with a level of 25 MHz. Increasing one's electromagnetic frequency is just one benefit of using Essential Oils.