Where Do Essential Oils Come From?
Where do all the essential oils come from? The simple answer is everywhere in the world. From around the corner to the a field in India and everyplace in between is where you will find the thousands of the essential oils available on the market.
Many of the essential oils which come from plants, trees, roots or types of grasses have a wide distribution across many continents. This is true with caraway, lemon balm, calendula, white birch, tarragon, celery, dill, cumin, lemongrass and hundreds of other essential oils.Then there are those other oils which are found only in a few areas such as sandalwood, lingonberry, cedarwood atlas, rosewood, citronella, peppermint eucalyptus, texas cedarwood, sweet birch, tea tree and hundreds more found all over the world.
All the essential oils that are cultivated such as lavender, rose, lemon, orange, ylang ylang, elemi, marigold, tarragon, parsley, dill and more than can be listed here were at one time wild harvested. Then when the demand increased for a particular plant and that type of plant was easily cultivated people began to grow the plants in large fields or groves.
There are some plant oils that do not do well being cultivated due to the growing cycle, slowness of growth or the susceptibility to pest infestation. These include rosewood, snakeroot, cajeput, peru balsam, myrrh and again many other plants & plant parts.
Except for the Antarctica essential oil plants are found on every continent on earth. The original uses of the essential oils throughout the world mainly had to do with health issues. The medicine man, shaman or healer did & still does use these indigenous plants to help heal and treat people of the tribe, town or general surrounding area.
In modern times there are the holistic practitioners, alternative Md’s and aromatherapists that utilize various essential oils to treat ailments from depression to gout and everything in between. Obviously you must do your own homework before relying on someone else to cure you. Look at the credentials of the practitioner before your entrust your future health to him or her.
Before you use an botanical oil please do careful research on the particular oil and it’s possible harmful effects. Just because it is natural does not mean it is safe! Two good reference books to use are “Essential Oil Safety by Tony Balacs & Robert Tisserand” and The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Essential Oils by Julia Lawless”.
It is imperative that do careful research to ascertain which distilled botanical oils are beneficial and which may be potentially harmful. All people will not react the same to the various essential oils but the extremely dangerous oils should be avoided at all costs.
All the hype on the internet should be looked at with the eye of a skeptic because either the ads and sites are just plain wrong and are recycling old information or they are just trying to separate you from your money. Aromatherapy seems harmless enough but when these scents are released into the ambient air it goes into your lungs and throughout your body. Nothing is totally harmless especially compounds that enter the body.
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