Essential Oils

“You talk alot about essential oils but you never explained exactly what that means. What makes an oil an essential oil?”

The terms “essential oil” and its plural, “essential oils”, are catch-all words that describe any volatile liquid taken from plants. These liquids can be squeezed out of fruit rinds, distilled from leaves or simply taken out as sap or resin—much like maple syrup is. And to complicate matters even further, most “essential oils” aren’t even actually oils.

Essential oils are sometimes confused with a group of nutrients called essential fatty acids. The fact is, the two could hardly be more different. Essential oils come exclusively from plants and serve no real nutritional purpose while essential fatty acids are lipids that the body absolutely needs for health.

In a form of herbalism known as aromatherapy, essential oils are used to manipulate mood and create what aromatherapists call a “positive healing environment”. The exact theories vary from practitioner to practitioner but all aromatherapists agree that essential oils promote healing in some way.

And that’s really all essential oils are. They’re the volatile liquids that give oranges their fresh fruit smell and make eucalyptus such a “medicinal” scent for the sickroom.