Therapeutic quality oils have been grown, harvested and processed with the therapeutic use in mind. The oils are kept in a condition as close as possible to that which exists within the plant.
Even the seedlings have been carefully selected and tended and are identifiable by genus and species names of the particular type of plant. Seedlings are carefully grown to the point of planting and then they are tended with extreme care and organic methods till mature.
In the case of Young Living oils, that means that pure mountain water is used to cultivate, only organic fertilizers and compost nutrient the plants and other oils provide protection from insects rather than insecticides or other sprays.
Hand weeding is done, and sometimes the goats are turned loose.
Prior to harvesting the entire field, a small batch of plants are distilled and tested to determine whether there are adequate amounts of the appropriate constituents or whether the plants should be allowed to continue growing.
-Once cut, the plant can no longer produce additional essential oil compounds and you got what you got.
-This is why many sellers end up supplementing the natural molecules with some made in a laboratory- to get the required levels of certain constituents up to a level that passes the minimum (AFNOR) standards. See “Essential Oil Standards”
-Recall that AFNOR is the minimum standard set to meet the needs of flavor and perfume manufacturers who use over 95% of the essential oils produced on the planet!
-These users are interested only in certain molecules from each oil, they do not need, nor are the interested in the therapeutic molecules that COULD have been produced- cheaper is better for them.
Assuming the plants are ready for harvest, special equipment and harvesting methods must be used to preserve the purity of the plants to be distilled. Plant matter is loaded into large distillation chambers which will allow steam to flow up through the plant matter and rise to the top where the steam will begin condensing and gathering in a condensation chamber where both steam and oil will revert to liquid form.
The mixture of the water and oils will naturally separate a bit but further separation is needed to obtain the pure oil for bottling. There is power in this water too- these are called hydrosols.
Young Living uses low temperature and no additional pressure in its distillation. This means that the fragile molecules are preserved and that the full array of available constituents is allowed to be distilled and captured. Again- food and perfume manufacturers are only interested in a few constituents and they do not care whether the other molecules are captured or harmed.
Therapeutic quality oils will be bottled in colored glass containers to reduce damage from ultra violet light. And will be labeled with the genus and species name of the plant. See the article at University of Minnesota’s web site about Therapeutic Quality oils. (Press the Back button if you get sent away from this page.)
Young Living runs the final product through a gas spectrometer analysis and regularly submits its products to third party laboratories as well to document the quality of the oils being sold.
For oils purchased on the commodities market, the spectrometer readings are even more important, after all, those oils were not produced on the Young Living farms. All purchased oils are kept in quarantine while the tests are performed and results analyzed. Last year over 70% of the oils that YLEO imported were rejected, returned to the shipper, and apparently sold to other vendors for bottling and sale.
So I encourage you to ask questions, educate yourself and find out what is really the best thing to oil to use intensively for you and your family. You will find, as I did, that most manufacturers will not answer you or their answers will be incomplete. Click here to see what Young Living makes available about their process. www.YoungLivingFarms.com
Enjoy!
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