Therapeutic Grade Oils – No Such Grade Exists

  When a company says that the essential oils they are selling are
  'therapeutic grade', what kind of real meaning can be attached to that?

They are either misinformed .. or informed but chose to fib in order to sell
more oils.    It is Marketing Hype.  But .. it works to sell products to the
uninformed.  Likewise, Medicinal Grade works .. but it too is Marketing
Hype.

   I understand that they are talking about the production process, and how
  'clean' that is – but is this term defined by law or can any company make
  this claim? As a newcomer, how do I determine which companies are actually
  producing oils that are of this high quality?

In the U.S.A. .. in Aromatherapy there is no universal or legal meaning of
the term.   Nor am I aware of any commercial distiller who would produce an
oil that was not clean and pure.   There might be some manipulation of the
oil after production but rare it would be that manipulation would be done
by the distiller.   There are some exceptions .. like Ylang Ylang and FCF
Bergamot .. they will be necessarily manipulated at the still.

There is NO WAY to determine exactly what is or is not therapeutic .. man
does NOT have the capability to do this .. its all about natural synergy.
We can know what a particular isolated chemical can do .. and we can
extrapolate the expected therapeutic value of that isolated chemical .. but
we will be no closer to whole truth than we can be if we try to guess the
next number to be selected in a random drawing.  We can NOT extrapolate with
success because we are missing the unknown effects of the whole synergy of
the natural product.

Can an inferior quality oil be therapeutic?    Can a crappy vegetable soup
be nourishing?  Obviously the answer to both questions is YES.  Then we get
into an area that might seem to defeat the purpose of using quality EO ..
like .. Can a placebo be therapeutic?   The answer again would be .. in many
cases .. YES.

There are but a very small handful of studies regarding the therapeutic
value of a particular EO .. nobody is going to spend the money to learn this
info because you can't patent a natural product in the first place .. and
the millions of bucks and years of research needed to meet FDA requirements
are only spent by the major pharmaceutical companies to study products they
can patent.

Additionally .. if we are not medical doctors .. we should avoid the use of
terms like "therapeutic" in the second place .. to use them is to suggest
that we are peddling medicines without a license .. in fact, when we sell EO
.. we are really doing that .. but we can't claim to be doing so.  ;-)

There is a need to have a "trade lingo" in all professions .. and a need for
some classifications in Aromatherapy .. so most sellers recognize two
unofficial grades to determine Quality.  What we call Aromatherapy Grade and
Commercial Grade .. the former being an oil that is as it was when it exited
the still .. the latter being either a manipulated oil .. or a pure ..  but
mediocre oil with a chemical profile that does not fit within the ideal
"footprint" of what fallible man has determined to be optimum for that
botanical.  There are many pure mediocre oils .. this can be caused by
harvesting the plant at the wrong time .. or distilling an oil from an
aromatic that does not grow well in a particular location .. or (though
rare) improper distillation procedures.   One example would be an Oregano
that was harvested too soon and has an extremely low level of Carvacrol ..
another would be distilling an oil from an aromatic grown in a Northern
climate when the aromatic prefers to live in a Southern climate.

Three of the most important factors in determining the quality of an oil are
.. Origin .. Origin .. and Origin.

I am trying to grow some vegetables this year that do NOT do well in
Tennessee .. they will certainly be pure but most likely low in quality.  I
am just experimenting .. I have no hope for great success but it will be
entertaining.
When we introduce AVNP to sellers who are authorized to purchase from our
Wholesale link .. one of the paragraphs states:

QUALITY OF ESSENTIAL OILS OFFERED:   We deal only in Aromatherapy
Grade Essential Oils .. they must be pure and high in quality and from an
origin that is known to produce quality aromatics of that type.  There's a
difference between purity and quality … an EO can be a pure but mediocre
oil .. just as two cooks can start with pure ingredients but one makes a
soup with those pure ingredients that you can't tolerate ..

>   What about the claim made to be organic? How accurate would this claim
> be, especially if the oils are obtained from plants grown in other
> countries, where the laws and definitions of organic may differ from the US?
>
If the oil is not Certified .. then its like ordering a Mail Order Bride ..
you hope you get what they advertised.   If the oil is Certified .. then its
like ordering a Mail Order Bride .. you hope you get what they advertised.

See my old post on Certified oils ..
http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/oils_herbs_etc/message/51909
 

Posted via email from lavender Essential Oils