#39 - Essencial Oils

Real Essential Oils

I decided to create a separate page only about essential oils as there are lots of factors to check before buying. Be aware of cheap synthetic fillers, extenders, or fragrance oils.

• Price - let's be honest you cannot get natural, real essential oil for 2$ for a big bottle. It varies depending on the quality and compound which is used to produce it. From the cheapest (decent quality) orange essential oils for 13 USD per 5ml bottle up to the most expensive essential oil like Frankincense for 80 USD per 5 ml bottle. A very high price might also be a sign that you pay for brand markup. The best way is to compare prices and find out what is the average price. Prices might vary from year to year, as it depends on crops. It's not only about paying for an exclusive perfume brands, it just requires a lot of material to make pure essential oil that is not diluted with some other cheaper oils.

• Strong sense of smell - it requires some experience to be able to recognise high quality of EO, probably basic aromatherapy course might help you, or just simply ask more experienced person for assistance.

• Bottle - usually sold in smaller bottles 5/10/15 ml. Look for dark glass bottles. Commonly used ones are with orifice reducer, which helps meter out one drop at a time. Light and heat can damage essential oil, and volatile compounds don't mix well with plastic so they must be kept in the glass. The plastic bottle is the first thing which tells you - it's fake.

• Read the label - look for common and latin names of plants. It should state what parts of plants were used, how it was extracted, how it was grown. Sometimes a label can be too small for containing all of the information, that's why there should be sufficient information on the website or attached leaflet, or simply you can contact the manufacturer. The label should specify "100 % pure essential oil" whereas "essence oil" means that's not pure essential oil and is a premixed blend of essential oils in a base of carrier oil. The label should clearly list all the ingredients, if you are shopping for pure essential oil it should have only one ingredient.

• The source - it should be easy to find out where it was sourced from. If it doesn't mention country of origin look for the coded number 2.

• Fragrance oil - and there is no Latin name present, it means that it's not an essential oil.

It's better not to buy at all rather than buying synthetic fake ''essential oils'' which might even cause a strong headache. The best is to do sufficient research or simply reach for an experienced certified aromatherapist.