What Are Essential Oils?

Essential Oils are Not a New Trend

While some view essential oils as a new trend, the use of plant extracts and plant-based products is deeply rooted in traditions of the past. Ancient civilisations used plants for things like aromatherapy, personal care, health care practices, religious ceremonies, beauty treatments, and food preparation.

While essential oils and plant extracts have been used for centuries, essential oils still hold relevant applications today. With advancing technology, improved quality, potency, and safety, essential oils are now more accessible and easy to use in everyday life. Although essential oils were often used as a part of cultural practices and traditions of the past, we now have increasing scientific evidence and research to show the effectiveness and safe nature of essential oils in our day and age.

How are Essential Oils Made?

It is important to note that not all essential oils are created equal. The purity of an oil can change depending on geographic location, distillation methods, weather, and other factors. Additionally, no matter how well a plant is selected, cared for, and harvested, the quality of an essential oil can either be preserved or destroyed during the distillation process. Because of the attention to detail and precision necessary in distillation, it becomes less of a process and more of an art form. Distillers must be precise and pay careful attention to harvesting methods, temperatures, time of distillation, the amount of pressure used, etc.

How Does a Plant Become an Essential Oil?

The exact process for producing an essential oil will vary depending on what type of plant the oil comes from. However, the basic idea is that plants go through a specific distillation process using special machinery in order to separate the essential oil from its plant parts. The essential oil hides within different parts of the plant, often in microscopic amounts. During the distillation process, the machinery will separate the essential oil from its original plant part. For example, when citrus oils are produced, machinery is used to separate the essential oil from the rind of the fruit.

Essential Oils for Wellness

In ancient times, people used essential oils and plant parts to improve their health and wellbeing. Because essential oils can be used in a range of application methods, they have long been a popular choice for those who want to maintain a life of wellness.

Essential oils offer a variety of benefits and each individual experiences essential oil use in their own way. Since essential oils are so diverse, they can be helpful in maintaining wellbeing, seeking alternative benefits, or to meet personal needs. Using essential oils to support a wellness lifestyle has become popular because it allows the user to tailor the experience to their specific wants and needs, rather than settling for a generic solution.

Meeting Your Needs with Essential Oils

With unique chemical structures, each essential oil holds a variety of benefits for the user. Some essential oils hold soothing and grounding properties, while others are known as energising or uplifting. As we go through an array of feelings throughout a single day, essential oils can help us manage and maintain wellbeing.

The chemical design of an essential oil gives it specific benefits that are unique to each user. Some essential oils provide a soothing sensation to the skin while the aroma of essential oils can also help to produce uplifting feelings.

Our sense of smell can produce powerful, physiologic, and emotional responses.