Browse our essential oils here!
We all know that essential oils smell great and that many people use them in their homes as an alternative to candles. But do you know the benefits of essential oils?
Essential oils can reduce stress, help you sleep, and it’s been believed that the smell of different essential oils can alter the brain chemistry in ways that impact our emotional and mental state, hence their therapeutic potential.
Although there is a wide variety of essential oils available, not all are created equally. If you’ve ever tried some from the drugstore, you may have noticed the prices are lower than if you buy from a smaller company. That is because oils found at grocery stores or drugstores may not be pure and are often adulterated with other, much cheaper ingredients. Unethical manufacturers do this to create a larger supply that they are able to sell at a lower price point. These ingredients can trigger allergies, cause skin irritation, and may have an overwhelming smell. But not all extras are bad. Some added vegetable oil may be normal for certain or more expensive essential oils, which means reading the label is as important as doing your research to ensure you are finding pure essential oils.
It is important to do your own research before you decide to purchase essential oils to see where the company gets their oils and that you are getting the purest oils you possibly can. Pure essential oils should always be packaged in coloured glass bottles. The colour protects the oils from light while the glass does not react with the oil. Pure essential oils should always be labelled with the botanical name of the plant, the extraction method, and the country of origin. Pure essential oils should always be priced differently from one another – for example, peppermint and lavender are easy to get and a small amount of plant matter yields a high amount of oil, whereas something like rose is the opposite and that is reflected in the prices of the oils. Our essential oils have no additives which means you are getting pure essential oils extracted from the plant, not lab-created, synthetic fragrances. Gas chromatography and mass spectrometry reports for all our oils are available upon request.
How are essential oils extracted from plants?
There are many methods to extract oils from plants but one of the oldest and still most common is steam distillation. In this method hot steam is forced through the plant material then travels through a condenser that cools the vapor and causes it to return to a liquid, which is then collected in a large glass bottle along with the hydrosol (the water-soluble parts of the extract). The essential oil is then decanted off and bottled separately.
Nowadays, essential oils are often extracted in a high-pressure system using liquid carbon dioxide, or chemical solvents, such as hexane and acetone. Therefore, it is so important to know where your oils come from and that is why we continue to get our essential oils from reputable suppliers and direct from farms whenever possible.
Fun facts about essential oils
- It takes 4,000 pounds of rose petals to produce one pound of rose essential oil, but only 150 pounds of lavender flowers to produce a pound of lavender oil.
- You’d have to drink 28 cups of peppermint tea to consume the equivalent of one drop of peppermint essential oil.
- Orange trees produce three very different types of essential oil: Neroli oil (from the blossoms); Petitgrain oil (from the leaves); and orange oil (from the peel).