Essential Oil Quality Tid-bits:

Did You Know . . .

Some oil producers do not actually add chemicals to their oils. Instead, they inject chemical solvents into the water in their boilers during the distillation process, increasing output by about 18%.

Imagine what happens to essential oils when chemicals are added to water, which is boiled into steam and then forced into plants to extract their oil. The very process of forcing chemically-treated steam into the plants fractures the molecular structure of the essential oils. It also seems impossible for an essential oil extracted through this method to avoid containing at least SOME of these chemical additives.

How to be sure your essential oils are therapeutic-grade:

While not everyone has ready access to scientific analysis of essential oils, these questions can help you determine if a product is therapeutic grade:

- Are the fragrances subtle, rich, organic, and delicate?

- Do they feel natural? (An essential oil should not feel greasy like vegetables oils do).

- Do the fragrances vary from batch to batch as an indication that they are pure and painstakingly distilled in small batches rather than industrially processed and mixed on a large scale?

- Does your supplier grow and distill its own organically grown herbs?

- Are the distillation facilities part of the farm where the herbs are grown so they are freshly distilled — or do the
herbs lose their potency as they wait for weeks to be transported and processed?

- Does your supplier use low pressure and low temperature to distill essential oils and preserve all of their fragile chemical constituents?

- Are the distillation cookers vertical rather than horizontal?

- Are they fabricated from costly stainless steel alloys to reduce the likelihood of the oils chemically reacting with metal?

- Does your supplier have representatives traveling worldwide to personally inspect the fields and distilleries where the herbs are grown and distilled?

- Does your supplier buy directly from the grower?

- Does your supplier scrutinize the facilities to ensure that no synthetic chemicals are used?

Ways Young Living Ensures Oil Purity:

1. We plant, harvest and distill on our own farms. The best defense against adulteration is to completely control herb cultivation and distillation. This is why Young Living grows over 15 different herbs, including lavender, clary sage, melissa, thyme, sage, peppermint, spearmint, German chamomile, Roman chamomile, and Idaho tansy.

2. We visit and inspect the farms and distillation facilities of our essential oil suppliers. By personally inspecting the facilities of outside oil producers, Young Living ensures that herbs meet stringent quality specifications.

3. We use state-of-the-art chemical analysis to check every batch of essential oils. Young Living quarantines, inspects, and tests each lot of essential oils for purity and quality. Oils can go through as many as five separate levels of analysis before they are released.

Because Young Living essential oils are grown, handled and distilled properly purity is ensured. You know you are always getting the best.

I have used essential oils for about 20 years. However, Young Living was not in business back when I had begun using essential oils. I still sought out and found the best essential oils I could find in the US. I was looking for essential oils so I could make my own household cleaners, and to use for aromatherapy purposes.

Because the oils I found back then were not stringently regulated and pure I never put a sinlge drop on my body or in my cooking, why? Because they contained chemicals and it would be dangerous. I was only able to use those oils in very limited ways.

Then, about 7 years ago, while attending my classical Feng Shui class, a woman who sold Young Living essential oils did a presentation on how we could use essential oils for purifying negative energy in homes when we were called in to do "Space Clearings." She was also showing us how it was perfectly safe to apply these oils to our bodies and use them in cooking because of their purity.

Well, one smell of the Young Living oils and I KNEW that what I had been buying was junk!

I placed a very large order, over $500, and when I got home I literally threw-out all of the oils I had gotten from that other company. Besides, after smelling pure, high quality oils, the ones I had at home actually smelled horrible and like they could be toxic. Since then, I have only using Young Living oils.

I decided to sell these wonderful oils and essential oil enhanced products about 1 1/2 years ago mostly because I want people to know that the vast majority of what's available out there is junk and they are not safe to use. I wanted people to know there is a better option to choose from. An option that is not adding more chemicals that pollute our lovely earth and bodies.

Even if I were not selling the Young Living line, I would still be buying and using their essential oils and products.

Take a look around my blog here to get familiar with some of the many ways essential oils can be used, this is just a small sampling.

My product website will explain and show you even more ways to use pure essential oils - The Very Essence.

And as always, please feel free to contact me shoud you have any questions and wish to learn more.

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Call of Life:Facing the Mass Extinction

This is a preview from "Call of Life: Facing the Mass Extinction," a feature documentary now in production.

The loss of biodiversity on earth has become so acute that scientists are now calling it a "mass extinction event." The crisis has many causes, all of which are related to human activity. Through interviews with eminent biologists, psychologists, anthropologists, historians, and many others, the film not only presents the facts of the shocking decline, it also explores the ways in which culture and psychology have conspired to determine our collective and individual response to this situation, and how the latest insights into natural systems could help us turn back the tide.

The film weaves biology, psychology, and cultural history into a clear and accessible story of our changing world. The audience is taken into the depths of the human psyche, through the toughest problems of our times and into the cutting edge of what nature has to teach us. The mass extinction is quite possibly the greatest threat that humanity has ever faced. Those of us alive today have been given a choice—one last opportunity to save the diversity of our planet. The decisions we make or fail to make in the next few years will affect the habitability of earth for millennia to come. This is the greatest adventure of all time—with the future of life itself in the balance.

Species Alliance
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Are Your Air Fresheners Killing You?

AIR FRESHENERS AND AEROSOLS

Who would have thought that air fresheners could be harmful? In a major longitudinal study, frequent use of air fresheners during pregnancy and early childhood was associated with higher levels of diarrhea, earache in infants and headaches, depression in mothers.

In New Scientist a 1999 study revealed that in homes where aerosol sprays and air fresheners were used, mothers experienced 25% more headaches and were 19% more likely to experience depression.

ARE YOUR AIR FRESHENERS KILLING YOU?

It's rare that we know what ingredients are in those air freshening products. Those products that scent everything from bathrooms, toilets, our friends homes, those stinky paper scented pine trees dangling from car rearview mirrors, and so forth. Unless we have the opportunity to read the list of ingredients we have no idea what it is that we're exposing ourselves and children to.

For some of us, our noses tell us when we are inhaling a toxic chemical and we may have symptoms of burning noses and eyes, coughing, sneezing, upset stomaches, headaches, asthmatic responses, and more. For me personally, when I go into any store or household that sells anything with toxic ingredients my sinuses and eyes burn so badly that it makes me want to protest and get the stores to stop selling those poisons to people. I actually think it should be criminal to manufacture and sell such poisonous products to uninformed innocent people. And we wonder why the health of Americans is so bad.

The main toxin in room fresheners, urinal cakes, moth balls and certain things like paints ,cleaning products, and vehicle exhaust fumes is 1,4 dichlorobenzene (1,4 DCB). A recent National Institute of Environmental Health Services (NIEHS) study published in Environmental Health Perspectives showed that among 953 adults 1,4 DCB was linked to a reduction in lung function.

Go into your cabinets and see if any of the products in your home contain 1, 4 DCB.

Labels often omit inactive or inert ingredients that make up 90% of that products volume.

About a month ago, I went into a local department store to purchase common products people buy and use daily for a presentation I was to make. This was something I haven't done in 20 years... I was horrified by what I saw in shoppers carts and in total shock by what I didn't see on the labels.

I couldn't believe how many of these products didn't even list ingredients, but did carry "warnings: do not inhale vapors. If inhaled immediately go outdoors for air." These are products manufacturers expect us to buy and use?!

Of the over 17,000 chemicals used in these products only 3 in 10 are ever tested for human safety. I wouldn't allow those products in my home if they gave me a free lifetime supply!

HERE'S HOW YOU CAN FRESHEN YOUR AIR WITHOUT POISONING YOURSELF AND YOUR FAMILY

By using therapeutic-grade organic essential oils you will be cutting down or eliminating unwanted microbes, such as fungus, mold, pathogenic viruses and bacteria.

You will want to use a 'cold-air' diffuser with therapeutic-grade organic essential oils. You NEVER want to heat an essential oil as heat will destroy the beneficial properties. And remember, the essential oils found in the stores are 'perfume-grade', which means they can be derived from any source, synthetic-chemical fragrances, and sold very cheaply to the uninformed public. See my previous posts on essential oil quality: Intro To Therapeutic-grade Essential Oils and The Experts Agree About Essential Oil Quality and Smell Testing an Essential Oil. Never expect to get the same results with any store bought essential oil as you will get with a Young Living essential oil.

COLD AIR DIFFUSERS

A cold air diffuser is different than other means of getting an essential oil into the air. It is electric, and nebulizes the essential oil which creates an extremely fine mist that allow the essential oil to permeate your room(s). It uses only cold air. Here is a picture of what one looks like...


Item # 3830

Diffusing essential oils in your home or office is a perfect way to help relieve tension, dispel odors, kill germs & viruses, eliminate and prevent mold, and create an atmosphere of peace and harmony, terrific Feng Shui.

The Young Living Essential Oil Diffuser is designed with an innovative air pump that disperses the oils in a micro-fine vapor so they stay suspended in the air for several hours. The diffuser disperses the oils without heating them, so they retain their therapeutic benefits. Essential oil blends that contain vegetable oils may diffuse slower than other oils.

This diffuser can be purchased at my website:
The Very Essence

WHICH THERAPEUTIC-GRADE ESSENTIAl OILS DO I CHOSE?

These are two, among many, terrific choices that I use: Thieves Blend (item # 3423), Purification Blend (item # 3399).

Other Young Living essential oils that I enjoy diffusing are - Citrus Fresh, Lemon, Brain Power, Joy, Orange, Evergreen Essence, Sacred Mountain, and Peace & Calming.

A cold-air diffuser on a light timer so it turns on and off by itself, highly recommended. Use it in your home, office, studio, store, or any indoor place that you would want to freshen the indoor environment safely and effectively.

If I can assist you please contact me.

To you and your families good health!