Essential oils are really popular now when it comes to alternative, do-it-yourself cosmetics, remedies, homecare and a thousand other things! Their versatility and variety make them perfect for both serious aromatherapists and simple tinkerers. But in the world of essential oils, there are a lot of things to consider.
Safety Precautions
First, it is imperative before you start meddling with essential oils that you take their potency seriously. Essential oils are highly concentrated forms of the herbs and materials from which they are derived from. If a cup of peppermint tea helps calm your stomach, then one drop of peppermint essential oil is equivalent to approximately 26-28 cups of tea. This is serious!
The benefits and uses of essential oils are very real but they also need to be used with care. For this reason, essential oils should never be ingested except under the direct instruction of a licensed medical professional. Many of the oils have powerful antibacterial and antimicrobial properties that are great as a cleanser but can seriously disrupt your gut health if consumed! Others are known to shift the hormonal balance and for this reason should not be used by pregnant women. Click here to learn more about potential risks associated with essential oils.
Benefits of Essential Oils
With those cautions in mind, we can consider some of the benefits of using essential oils. Far beyond just smelling nice (which is good because not all of them do!), they serve specific functions. Some of them can relieve stress, others are great disinfectants and still others are effective painkillers. They can be used in different ways for different reasons, whether through the air in a diffuser, diluted in a cream or balm, or occasionally even directly applied to the skin.
Selecting a Pure Oil
However you are planning on wielding them, the first step in correctly using essential oils is making sure that the oils you have are pure, and pure in the oil industry means more than just seeing the word on the label. A pure oil is one that has been distilled by steam at a low temperature and a low pressure. This is the process that is required to produce the most valuable oils that will be the most effective for their purpose.
This is very different than the way many oils on the market are made. Often, an oil that is labeled as ‘pure’ has actually been fractured by a chemical solvent that breaks it down and continues to be part of the final product that you are buying. Some essential oils are made up of over 75% of the solvent used to extract them! This is not ‘pure’ and not what you want in the air or on your body. Not only are the unique characteristics of each herb severely minimized by this extraction technique, but the chemical additives can also have negative side effects.
A pure oil should also be undiluted by any other additives, whether chemical or natural. To use an essential oil topically, you will often blend it into a carrier oil such as coconut or jojoba oil. However, this is a process that you will want to do yourself in order to control the ratios and potency of your final product. Many companies use carrier oils, which are significantly cheaper and lack the benefit of the essential oils, to dilute the real thing. This is frustrating, because if you’re buying essentials oils, then you should be getting the real deal.
It is definitely a tricky move for a company to sell oils pre-diluted, without saying so, when you’re paying top dollar for the product. An easy way to check if an oil has been diluted by a carrier is to drip a drop onto a piece of firm paper. If the oil completely disappears, leaving nothing but its fragrance behind, then what you have is a pure oil. If the drop spreads and remains on the paper, then it’s not what it’s claiming to be.
If all of this sounds overwhelming, don’t be alarmed. The easiest way to know that you’re getting a good product is to buy it from a trusted brand. There are a lot of them out there, but one brand is set apart from the rest.
Our Recommended Brand
Of all the essential oil brands that there are to choose from, Rocky Mountain Oils is the best. Founded in 2004, this company took over the popular Native American Nutritionals. They are based out of Utah and are committed to providing the best quality oils on the market.
They rigorously source their ingredients from only the best there is to find and they do thorough testing. Every batch of oils they produce has to be individually tested and guaranteed. To prove this, the batch number of each one is printed on the bottom of its bottle so that the consumer can, free of charge, look up its particular certification online. This certification shows that it has passed a Gas Chromatography and Mass Spectrometry test, GC/MS for short, something only a truly pure oil can do.
The company also labels each bottle with the scientific name of the contents and the geographic source of the oil. In addition, they only source plants from areas where they grow natively, ensuring that they are getting the best pedigree in the most sustainable way. Most of their sources are wildcrafted and organic as well.
This degree of transparency inspires trust in their product, as does their no-questions-asked 90-day return policy. Without any explanation, you can send an oil or oil blend back for a full refund. They are a direct-to-consumer company that avoids the multi-level marketing that so mires the essential oils industry. Rocky Mountain Oils also offers discounts to professionals who use essential oils in their businesses, whether it be for massages or soap-making.
So whether you’re buying for personal use or professional, whether it’s your first try with essential oils or you’ve been doing it for 50 years, Rocky Mountain Oils has the best product on the market. They are pure, unadulterated oils that you can trust. When used correctly, they are extremely effective.
See the Full Range of Rocky Mountain Oils