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What are
Essential O
ils
10 I What are Essential Oils
Topical Uses
Complex but tiny essential oil molecules are easily absorbed into the skin and can be safely applied topically. They not only help the immediate area of application as in a burn or a scrape, but they can travel quickly throughout the body to give relief wherever it is needed. They can be cooling, calming, warming, or stimulating depending on the oil and the need.
When you combine different methods of absorption, you can experience significant synergistic benefits that compound the power of the oil. Dr. Daniel Pénoël teaches that using multiple means of absorption doesn’t just add a benefit but actually compounds the benefits exponentially.
Internal Uses
Essential oils are also used as “dietary supplements” by ingestion—capsules; a drop in a tea, water, or juice; or a drop or two in a recipe; etc. Many essential oils are Generally Regarded As Safe (GRAS) for ingestion like those used in flavorings—lemon, eucalyptus, basil, wintergreen, peppermint, etc. GRAS is a designation of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that an oil is safe for human consumption as a food additive or flavoring agent.
Some oils should not be taken internally. Please read the cautions for the oils you purchase to make sure you are using them appropriately. You can tell by many of their names and descriptions whether they can be safely ingested. Obviously spice, citrus, and mint oils are safe to ingest, whereas oils more typically used for aroma or massage only would not be ingested. If you see the GRAS notation, you’ll know that the oil is safe to ingest within the safety guidelines.
DistillationMost clinical-grade essential oils are distilled with steam according to exact heat, timing, and pressure parameters for each plant species and sub-species as well as the part of the plant being distilled. Steam is circulated under low pressure through plant material, liberating the essential oil molecules. As the steam cools and condenses, the water and oils separate, and the oil is collected and filtered.
To guarantee the highest quality and most dependable chemical composition for consistent therapeutic benefits, timing, temperature, and pressure must be closely regulated. Too little or too much heat and pressure will not release the finest quality clinical-grade oil. The extraction method that may be fine for spearmint used for chewing gum will not be right for clinical use.
The selection of medicinal or clinical-grade oils depends on a complex network of individual botanists, growers, distillers, and chemists from
all around the world working to gather an array of quality products you can depend upon. These networks are developed over years of association.
While most oils are extracted by steam distillation, some are distilled in water. Others, like citrus oils, are extracted by mashing and pressing the aromatic peels to release the oils. A few delicate aromatic oils can only be extracted using solvents that bind with the oils and are later removed from the final product. You will see CO2 extraction, absolutes, enfleurage, and other names, typically on perfume oils. There are many methods that have been used through the centuries, but these are the most common.
Will every batch of oil smell exactly the same?
No. These differences are, in fact, a sign that the oils are clinical grade and natural products. Synthetic ingredients will be standardized and uniform. Natural substances grown under varying climate conditions in differing soil will change slightly from batch to batch. Quality suppliers monitor and label each batch so they can identify differences. Just as with different years of fine wines, growers and suppliers are aware of the slight changes. The best companies will maintain a wide range of suppliers in different countries and regions around the world in order to provide their customers with
the finest batches from year to year. If one company claims that their lavender always smells “crystal clean,”
it may be a signal that they are tampering with the product or do not recognize the best, most
therapeutic, natural ingredients. The “crystal clean” ingredients could contain simple synthetic compounds instead of natural ingredients. Your body will recognize the difference.
Over time as you compare the nutritionally dead, synthetic fragrances with the more full-bodied, complex, natural fragrances, you’ll come to tell the difference by smell alone.
Clinical Quality Essential Oils Versus SyntheticsYou can replace many things you now use from your medicine cabinet with safer and more effective essential oils. There are 9 reasons why high-quality essential oils are superior to those patented and pricey drugs and over-the-counter products that so many unfortunate people depend on to control their chronic conditions.
1. Essential Oils Have a Longer, More Complex and Proven HistoryFor many millennia aromatic molecules from plants have been adapting, protecting, energizing, and working synergistically with the world of beneficial and toxic bacteria, fungi and viruses. Humans have used aromatic plants for thousands of years and have, at first pragmatically and later scientifically, verified their safety and functions. The cells of your body recognize a natural aromatic substance and know what to do with it. Your body may not recognize or be able to effectively use a synthetic one. Nature’s purpose in giving us aromatic molecules is to bring us vitality,
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What are
Essential O
ils
12 I What are Essential Oils What are Essential Oils I 13
harmonious balance, and protection. Dr. Daniel Pénoël teaches that “synthetic substances have only two functions—to block and to kill.” Essential oils, on the other hand, “help regenerate, balance, calm, bring energy, and many more functions too numerous to mention” (Daniel Pénoël, Guide to Home Use of Essential Oils, 10).
2. Essential Oils Will Not Encourage “Superbugs” Bacteria can mutate to form resistant strains of “superbugs” to outwit the toxic, synthetic, antibiotic drugs. Living, un-patentable, aromatic oils have never created a superbug. Scientists are now turning to essential oils to fight these fierce invaders because they realize that only nature can win the antimicrobial war with nature. Dr. Pénoël has stated, “In all my experience with bacteria and essential oils, I have never seen strains mutate and develop resistance. There are no superbugs created by essential oils” (Dr. Daniel Pénoël. Guide to Home Use of Essential Oils, p. 9).
3. Essential Oils Will Not Produce Side EffectsYou’ve seen the pages of horrible-sounding side effects that follow every pharmaceutical advertisement. You know the extreme dangers of drug reactions. You’ve heard of the drug recalls that occur each year. Would you prefer using nature’s complex
essential oils with multiple health benefits and virtually no side effects?
4. Essential Oils Bring Vitality to Your BodyWould you prefer using simple, man-made synthetic drugs whose only function is to block and kill? Or would you prefer complex, natural substances designed by nature and proven safe through centuries of use? Dr. Pénoël says, “My patients who complete the sometimes slower but more complete treatments I conduct, do not end their treatment ready to return home and begin the slow recuperation back to health. They are full of life. They are energized. Synthetic drugs lower your energy (entropy) while essential oils raise your energy (reverse entropy)” (Pénoël, p. 10). Have you ever felt mentally and physically exhausted after taking a round of synthetic antibiotics or other drugs? You won’t feel that way after completing a protocol of essential oils.
5. Essential Oils Work in Many Ways All at OnceThe complex synergies of essential oils improve your mood, strengthen multiple systems of your body, and do not disrupt the delicate balance of your beneficial bacteria. They can stop pain, reduce inflammation, stop muscle spasms, decongest, destroy microbes, and calm anxiety—all at the same time. They spread throughout the body bringing vitality and life. Synthetics only block body functions and kill pathogens, leaving their toxic waste behind. Synthetics are like a hammer hitting a single nail and often missing and hitting your thumb. Essential oils are like engineers, constructing and restoring health and vitality.
6. Essential Oils Can Enter The Body by Many AvenuesWhat do you have in your medicine cabinet now that can be diffused, added to your food, inhaled, added to bath water, added to your tea, and
applied in a massage or under your nose? Essential oils are more complex and creative than synthetics. They can work on all these interfaces at once. If for some reason one doesn’t work for you, there’s always another one that can be used. And these different therapies work synergistically with each other multiplying their effectiveness.
7. Aromatic Plants Tell Us by Their Aroma What They’re Good forWe are familiar with the toxic, disgusting smells of decaying, rotting foods that make us want to avoid them and discard them. The alluring aromas created by nature in spices, mints, citrus, and evergreen forests tell us that these substances are designed by nature to combat the bad microbes that cause decay and spoilage. Synthetics don’t offer these natural signals. In fact, they’re more often synthesized from fungus and disgusting-smelling petrochemicals. What does that instinctively tell you about the safety of their long-term use?
8. The Pleasure of Essential Oils Makes Us Want to Use Them ContinuallyWhat pleasure is there in taking a synthetic drug? You would never want to use one when you’re well. But as Dr. Pénoël says, “My patients, once they have completed the therapies I recommend, are always eager to continue using the essential oils on a daily basis throughout their lives. And the ones that are most pleasurable are typically the ones that are best for daily use” (Pénoël, Guide, p. 11).
9. “Nature is Complex So We
Don’t Have to Be”This quote by Dr. Pénoël gives us perhaps the most compelling reason to use essential oils in our daily lives (Pénoël Guide p. 12). Aromatic plants produce hundreds of thousands of complex aromatic molecules. Mortals struggle to classify and put to use this vast complexity. Without even knowing how they are functioning in your body or all the different things they may be doing, you can be confident, knowing that they are doing their magnificent work, restoring what is injured and bringing life and health. What simplistic synthetic can do that?
Most essential oils are perfectly safe for daily use in moderation. The most important function for optimal health is daily use. Prevention is our most effective health practice. We can modify the old sayings to read, “a drop of prevention is worth a gallon of cure” or “a few drops a day keeps the doctor away.”
Dr. Pénoël offers this remarkable promise: “I can safely make you a promise that if you will use essential oils on a daily basis … you will have no need to return to medicine cabinet remedies. Your life will be simpler, and you will find greater sensory and emotional pleasure in staying healthy” (Pénoël Guide p. 12).
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14 I How Essential Oils Work How Essential Oils Work I 15
A BRIEF HISTORY OF AROMATIC MEDICINE AND ESSENTIAL OILS
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Histo
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Essential O
ils
16 I History of Essential Oils History of Essential Oils I 17
What we know about the use of aromatic plants for therapeutic and religious purposes began possibly 6,000 years ago with the dawn of recorded civilization in Egypt, where religious and healing rituals, along with skin therapy, involved aromatic plants. Primitive extraction methods like cold pressing, boiling plants in water, and extracting their essences into animal fats, vegetable oils, or alcohol resulted in pomades, tinctures, and oils. These uses were chronicled in many early writings and suggested in art.
During the third Egyptian dynasty (2650 – 2575 B.C.) the process of embalming and mummification was developed. Frankincense, myrrh, galbanum, cinnamon, cedarwood, juniper berry and spikenard were all used to preserve the dead. The famed incense trail transported precious frankincense and myrrh across the desert. Because the demand for these precious resins outstripped supplies, they were at times traded as currency and comparative in value to precious gems and metals.
Between 1,359 and 657 B.C. the Egyptians became masters of the perfume trade to the point that when Julius Caesar returned to Rome with
Cleopatra, he tossed bottles of perfume to the crowds to symbolize his total conquest of Egypt. Cleopatra’s use of perfumed cosmetics are legendary. On meeting Marc Anthony, the sails of her ship were said to be soaked in jasmine, and he gave up his chance at the empire to follow her.
Hippocrates (circa 460 – 377 B.C.) dismissed the traditional Egyptian view of disease caused by supernatural causes and substituted natural explanations. We give him credit for introducing a more holistic view of health and medicine. He is reported to have studied over 200 herbs for healing.
Worwood quotes Hippocrates instruction: “The way to health is to have an aromatic bath and scented massage every day” (Worwood, p. 8). He taught that burning aromatic substances offered protection from some infectious diseases.
After Alexander invaded Egypt in the third century B.C., the Greeks expanded the use of aromatic herbs and perfumes. Theophrastus of Athens, a student of Aristotle even studied how aromas affect the emotions. His books on the healing properties of herbs became one of the three most important references for centuries of physicians to study.
India has the distinction of carrying the most longstanding tradition for aromatic herbal remedies; the practices of Ayurvedic medicine were never discontinued and were codified in their sacred volume, The Vedas, one of the oldest books on record (1500–1000 B.C.). The volume codified over 700 products, including many aromatics for religious and therapeutic use, such as cinnamon, spikenard, coriander, ginger, myrrh, and sandalwood.
With the fall of Rome, the center for aromatic medical knowledge moved to Arabic countries. The celebrated philosopher Avicenna (A.D. 980 – 1037) is credited with perfecting the art of distillation of essential oils, though others may have used crude forms of distillation
prior to his time. He became the most famous and greatest of the
Islamic physicians. At age 16 he began the study of medicine and
at the young age of 20 was appointed as a court
physician eventually earning the title “Prince of Physicians.”
A BRIEF HISTORY OF AROMATIC MEDICINE AND ESSENTIAL OILS
Marcel Lavabre recounts the story of a Queen of the land called Sheba [modern-day Ethiopia and Somalia] whose fabulous wealth was built on the trade in frankincense and myrrh. Legend has it that “The Egyptians took personal hygiene seriously, as shown by the earliest recorded recipe for body deodorant in the Papyrus Ebers of 1500 B.C.” (Valerie Ann Worwood, The Complete Book of Essential Oils and Aromatherapy, p. 8).
“The Greeks believed that after death they went to Elysium where the air was permanently filled with a sweet-smelling aroma which rose from perfumed rivers.” (Worwood, p. 9).
“The Egyptian priests used aromatic substances not only for embalming their pharaoh but also in their role as ‘psychiatrists’ for treating manias, depression, and nervousness” - (Worwood, p.8).
“The ancient Greeks had a very high opinion of aromatics, attributing sweet smells to divine origin. In ancient myths, gods descended to earth on scented clouds, wearing robes drenched in aromatic essences” - (Worwood, p.9).
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Histo
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18 I History of Essential Oils History of Essential Oils I 19
continued his great work with plant extracts and devoted his life to the research and development of therapeutic plant medicines.
In 1971 Dr. Maurice Girault coined the term “aromatogram” for antimicrobial therapy involving essential oils. Doctors would take microbial cultures and use various essential oils in vitro to recognize which oil or blend would be best to treat the disease. Dr. Valnet helped to spread this concept to the general public.
Valnet also published the book The Practice of Aromatherapy in 1978, which became the first training for Dr. Pénoël and Pierre Franchomme on essential oils therapy.
The modern use of essential oils has continued to grow rapidly as chemists like Pierre Franchomme and medical doctors like Daniel Pénoël conducted research in the laboratory and medical clinic to validate the numerous health and wellness benefits of clinical-grade essential oils. Their book, L’Aromathérapie Exactement, [Precise Aromatherapy] published in 1990, became the “bible” of aromatherapy at the time. And everyone who was to be trained in the use of therapeutic essential oils after 1990 had to understand its contents.
Essential Oils for the Common ManThese pioneers could see that they needed to do worldwide training to avoid serious problems for their new industry. Essential oils would be severely restricted in some countries; others would use them in ways that were unsafe. So there began extensive training.
The English-speaking countries were already doing what the French medical doctors called “timid” aromatherapy with too many restrictions and rules. In these countries the oils were greatly diluted and only applied topically.
“You can’t really accomplish anything significant with microbes and many health issues with that timid approach,” says Dr. Pénoël. “It’s like having a wonderful pocket knife without ever opening the blade.” You have no real therapeutic value when all you can do is use a two percent essential oils solution in a carrier oil for topical massage.
While medical doctors in France were prescribing essential oils for internal and external use, the English and American schools of aromatherapy allowed for no ingestion and no undiluted application. According to Dr. Pénoël, “they were missing most of the power of true medical aromatherapy. And that’s why we see in the USA and the UK mostly recreational fragrances and dead, synthetic essential oils in most shops.”
The pharmaceutical establishment has always tried to instill fear about essential oil safety even though they are used extensively in the food industry and animal husbandry. The English-speaking aromatherapy establishment seems to want to keep the information so complicated that all medical decisions have to be kept away from ordinary people and only in the hands of trained professionals certified to practice aromatic medicine.
You Can Care for Yourself Affordably, Safely, and EffectivelyBecause of the simplicity and safety of essential oils, the mission of Dr. Pénoël and the companies he has worked with has been to empower lay people to care for themselves safely, affordably, and effectively using the most beneficial oils and blends. Because
He authored 20 books and 100 treatises on medicine. His epic encyclopedia, Al-Qanun fi al-Tibb, translated as The Canon of Medicine, was over a million words long and contained all the known medical knowledge of the day, including the traditions of Hippocrates, Galen, and the physicians in India. It became the definitive medical textbook for over 700 years.
In Europe during the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, many herbals books were published. Many included recipes for making essential oils. “Glove-makers used aromatic oils, and it is reported that these and others who used aromatics of various sorts were the only people to survive the ravages of the plagues that struck Europe during these centuries” (Worwood, p. 9).
The Birth of Modern Medical AromatherapyIn the 20th century the medical benefits of essential oils were recognized by a French chemist, Rene-Maurice Gattefossé (1881-1950), who is considered the “father of aromatherapy.” He “suffered serious burns to the hands in a laboratory explosion, and the wounds soon became gangrenous; he was able to effect a perfect cure using essence of lavender” (Jean Valnet M.D., The Practice of Aromatherapy, p. 66).
In 1928 when Alexander Fleming began his work on penicillin—the origins of modern antibiotics—Gattefossé in France was doing his serious investigative research into the therapeutic properties of essential oils. It is interesting that both of these famous pioneers were born in 1881 and died in the 1950s. Gattefossé coined the term “aromathérapie” and is now considered the “father of modern aromatherapy.”
Pharmacists in France were quick to recommend eucalyptus and tea tree essential oils for things that were being treated elsewhere in the world
with penicillin. Oil of oregano and penicillin have relatively equivalent strength against harmful bacteria.
The big difference is that penicillin and all the subsequent strong, pharmaceutical antibiotics could make a fortune for their manufacturers because they could be standardized, synthesized, and patented, while essential oils were natural substances. So essential oils were largely ignored by the medical establishment except in France and elsewhere in Europe where there was already significant published research.
Gattefossee incorporated a blend of essential oils used in treating the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918. His successor in the practice of aromatherapy, a French medical doctor and surgeon, Jean Valnet, “made use of the healing properties of essences in wartime surgery on some of [his] patients in Tonkin, and though having only a very limited quantity of [his] own aromatic essences [he] was able to treat as many patients at [he] … liked, the results … were consistent” (Valnet p. 66). When hereturned to Paris, he
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ONLI
NE PREIV
EW O
NLINE P
REVIEW
ONLINE P
REVIEW
ONLI
NE PREVIE
W O
NLINE P
REIVEW
ONLINE P
REVIEW
ONLI
NE PREVIE
W O
NLINE P
REVIEW
ONLINE P
REIVEW
ONLI
NE PREVIE
W O
NLINE P
REVIEW
ONLINE P
REVIEW
ONLI
NE PREIV
EW O
NLINE P
REVIEW
ONLINE P
REVIEW
ONLI
NE PREVIE
W O
NLINE P
REIVEW
ONLINE P
REVIEW
ONLI
NE PREVIE
W O
NLINE P
REVIEW
ONLINE P
REIVEW
ONLI
NE PREVIE
W O
NLINE P
REVIEW
ONLINE P
REVIEW
ONLI
NE PREIV
EW O
NLINE P
REVIEW
ONLINE P
REVIEW
ONLI
NE PREVIE
W