Essential oil - friend or foe?

Is your essential oil helping or harming you?

Essential oil usage is trending up lately, thanks to a few prominent mlm companies and the rise of indie natural skin care companies which rely on essential oil for their therapeutic purpose and smell.

Is an essential oil a friend or foe? Decide for yourself after reading this blog post ya.

  1. Essential oil should not be used neat – essential oil is very potent and should be treated with care and respect. Just because it is “natural”, doesn’t mean it cannot be harmful too.

 

Let’s first talk about how essential oils are usually made. Essential oils are obtained from a distillation method – steam is passed through the plant materials, and then later condensed back to water where the oil (essential oil) and water (hydrosol) is then separated.

Only aromatic plants can yield essential oil, some might require extraction using a solvent to get the oil – and these are called an absolute and not essential oil. An example of absolute is Jasmine, frangipani, violet…

 

Next, let’s talk about yield.

3 pounds (~1.36kg) of lavender flower yields 15ml of lavender oil. 15ml is roughly 13g of oil.

Imagine, 1 drop of lavender oil (roughly 0.03g) is equivalent to 3g of flowers

 

 

Rose:

100kg of roses petals yields 10g of rose essential oil – this translates to 1 drop (0.03g oil) = 300g rose petals

holy moly that’s a lot of roses to make one drop of rose oil – no wonder It’s so expensive!

http://www.intermed-one.com/rose-oil/chemical-contents

 

I think you get the point that 1 drop of oil is equivalent to a whole lot more of plant materials which makes them very concentrated and potent; effective yet dangerous at the same time.

 

What is an essential oil really? They are the volatile component of the plant that’s separated during the distillation process. An essential oil is actually made up of a lot of constituents even though we only call them “lavender oil”. Sorry, did I lose you in the science already?

Basically water is H2O right? Well lavender oil is made up of hundreds of chemicals constituents… you can take a look here… https://bkbotanicals.com/blogs/essential-oils-gc-ms-analysis/44286213-lavender-pure-essential-oil-gc-ms-analysis

 

I don’t want to go too technical here, but I do wish to point this out because it leads me to my next point:

  1. Essential oil contains allergens and causes sensitivities when used in high dosages. These are things like linalool, geraniol, citronellol .. you might have seen them on skin care labels, as per European regulations, allergens above a specific range needs to be indicated on the label.

 

So, despite the healing therapeutic benefit of essential oils, they can react negatively. If you feel itchiness, burning sensations and any other negative reaction, do believe that they are a negative response and not your body “detoxing”!!

 

The next point is:

  1. Always research for contraindication to: phototoxicity, medication, pregnancy, respiratory …

Some of the constituents (the smaller molecular weight one) can actually be absorbed into the bloodstream if used in high enough dosage, so this is why it is crucial to understand and research for contraindication.

For example, oils like peppermint, rosemary, eucalyptus contain a constituent called 1,8 cineole which is a good decongestion and expectorant but very dangerous for children under 5 years old as it might cause (especially babies when used directly in high dosage around nostrils), might cause them to have respiratory distress.

Citrus oils like lemon, bergamot, lime contains furanocoumarin which is phototoxic when used in high dosage. How high is high dosage? For lemon it’s above 2%, bergamot is above 0.4% however there are now oils that are molecularly distilled that could leave out the fcf portion that makes your essential oil non phototoxic. Always check with your supplier if your citrus oil is phototoxic or not.

Sometimes the plant material and their oil might work differently – for example fennel. Fennel is a galactagogue which helps to promote lactation, however fennel essential oil is contraindicated for breastfeeding.

Reference: Robert Tisserand and Rodney Young, Essential Oil Safety (Second Edition. United Kingdom: Churchill Livingstone Elsevier, 2014), 277.]

 

 

  1. The volatile constituents of essential oils are excellent organic solvents – meaning that one should never ingest essential oil directly as the oils will dissolve your mucous lining in your throat.

I personally do not practice ingestion, and my only comment regarding this matter is that you should do more research first before taking up this practice.

 

If certain brands teach you that it is okay to ingest because it is “pure” or “therapeutic grade”, do note that all the rules and warnings above do apply regardless of how pure it is.

Yes, there are brands out there that sell adulterated essential oils where perhaps certain synthetic ingredient is added to make the oil cheaper, so do be careful when selecting the essential oils to purchase.

Wow, seems like I’ve only been talking about all the negative aspects of essential oil. There are always two sides of a coin. Essential oils do contain lots of benefits too, and that’s why we love it so much. As my research has always been for topical purposes, there are studies done where essential oils are used to treat wound that are resistant to antibiotics. And of course, I use essential oils in skin care for many skin benefits, such as to treat acne, to hydrate the skin, to soothe inflammation and many more benefits.

 

To sum up, essential can be very beneficial when used properly and at the right dosage, but just because it is natural, doesn’t mean that it can’t be poisonous or harmful. I personally love using essential oil but have only use it for therapeutic purposes.

Is this article helpful? Are there any more information or questions you’d like answered regarding essential oil usage? I’d love to hear from you and would be more than happy to post part 2 of this blog post!