french aromatherapy
I first heard about Young Living Oils 18+ years ago and I quickly discounted them. BUT I was introduced to YL Thieves Oil through my herbalist, after our son was born, and thought that she must be off her rocker.
But there remained in me a curiosity. And it’s impressive how that curiosity has changed our family!
Rewind: I Wanted A Baby
After struggling to become pregnant for several years, I discovered that I had PCOS (poly-cystic ovarian syndrome). I was told that the likelihood of ever having children was slim. I began looking for healthy alternatives that would support my body in the way God designed.
A Return Trip to the Crazy Herbalist
Remember that crazy herbalist? Well, she isn’t so crazy. She said that with God all things are possible.
Yes. I believed that.
Then she stated I would be pregnant within three months. Yea, right!
Guess what? I got pregnant within three months using a concoction of various herbs that she suggested. But really — we see all 4 of our children as a miracle from the Lord.
Why Thieves Oil?
After my son was born, I continued to make a monthly visit to our herbalist. She talked me into purchasing that Thieves oil from Young Living.
We used this dietary supplement and were delighted how it supported wellness.
Quite frankly, the rest is history.
I was able to use Thieves oil with confidence because of following the French Aromatherapy practice.
We use Young Living oils because they are specifically cultivated and distilled to be used in a French Aromatherapy way. French Aromatherapy is not common in the United States, especially within the Aromatherapist profession. There are often many warnings from bloggers and aromatherapists themselves that are fear-based and contradict the way we use Young Living Oils.
I hope to give you a more clear understanding of French vs English Aromatherapy and Therapeutic vs Fragrance oils!
Essential Oils Safety Recommendation
The concerns about oil safety that contradict how we use oils at Young Living, supposedly come from the Essential Oils Safety book by Robert Tisserand. It’s the book that all of the British-model trained aromatherapists call their “Essential Oil Bible”. Tisserand’s book is a compilation of the toxicology reports from the fragrance industry. The fragrance industry is required to have toxicology reports for each and every chemical that they use to produce the fragrance of essential oils. So there are toxicology reports for literally every single chemical in every oil that’s out there.
What you need to know about these toxicology reports is that these chemicals are either
(a) isolated from the rest of the chemicals in the actual essential oil or
(b) synthetically produced.
French vs English Aromatherapy
There are 3 schools of thought on aromatherapy – French, German, and English. English focuses on HEAVILY diluting and is basically for the smell only, German focuses on diffusing, and French uses all three, including ingesting and “neat” (or undiluted-with certain oils) application topically.
English Aromatherapy, most common in the US and with Aromatherapy certifications, places no emphasis on the quality of the oil in the bottle. There is no distinction between an oil distilled to be a fragrance and an oil distilled to maintain the therapeutic properties of the plant .
In French Aromatherapy, oils have to be of the highest quality. They need to be grown without any disruption of the therapeutic qualities of the plant, which means without chemicals in the land or water, plants have to be picked at just the right time and distilled in a specific way to maintain the integrity of the plant.
Labeling Laws for Essential Oils
Sadly, the vast majority of essential oils on the market today are only suitable for cosmetics and perfumes.
Essential Oils are all the rage right now, but it SUPER important to know how essential oils are regulated in order to understand the importance of knowing WHERE your oil comes from and the QUALITY CONTROL used in the process of growing, harvesting and distilling the plant to create the therapeutic oil you are wanting to support your family with. You can not support your body with a fragrance oil.
It’s also important to understand the labeling laws for essential oils. Once you understand them, you will understand how you really need to dive way deeper into an oil companies harvesting and distilling practices to know if their oils are made to be fragrance oils or therapeutic oils.
Essential Oils are regulated by the FDA under the cosmetic and fragrance category.
The FDA requires no testing or requirements PRIOR to placing a cosmetic or fragrance to go on the market.
The FDA requires that no product misrepresent it’s contents on the label. The FDA will investigate claims of misrepresentation. THIS IS HOW THE FDA regulates. That’s it. They investigate claims that a product misrepresented itself.
There are ABSOLUTELY NO regulations on labeling laws of essential oils other that they can not misrepresent the product.
When a company write the words “pure” or “organic” on the bottle, they can be referring to a single ingredient or ingredients in the bottle and NOT the entire contents of that bottle as a whole. This is important to understand. You CAN NOT trust labels if you are looking to use an oil therapeutically.
Organic means NOTHING. PURE means NOTHING. Therapeutic means NOTHING. Harsh, I’m sorry, but truth and everyone needs to understand this. Of course a company is going to label it’s oil “Organic” if there is one organic ingredient in it! Why? Because it will sell better! PS “organic” doesn’t mean therapeutic in any way and we will touch on that next!
You may notice that many of us YL Oil Educators will use terms like “digestion support” and “immune support” This is because essential oils are not regulated as medicinal and can not be promoted as being capable of curing or treating and illness or disease.
Fragrance vs Therapeutic
Fragrance oils, aromatic oils or perfume oils as they are sometimes called, are manufactured scents. They are artificially created fragrances and they contain artificial substances. They are specifically designed to mimic the scent of a natural product (such as coffee fragrance oil) or are created to invoke a feeling (for example “spring rain”). The range of scents is enormous and fragrance oils are quite inexpensive.
Fragrance oils are used primarily in the manufacture of perfumes, cosmetics and flavorings. They are also used by soap and candle makers to enhance the smell of their product. While some essential oils can also be used by soap and candle makers, they are not as commonly used for these purposes due to cost and a more complex blending procedure.
Defining what exactly is a “Therapeutic Grade” essential oil
The term “therapeutic-grade” was coined by Gary Young in an effort to market the “specialness” of his oils. He wanted to define HOW Young Living was different by labeling his essential oils as beneficial to your health.
There is no legal of certificate of a “therapeutic-grade” essential oil. As you learned, essential oils are regulated in the cosmetic category and there is no grading or certifications for cosmetic or fragrances.
However, let’s define what it means to plant, harvest and distill an essential oil to maintain the therapeutic integrity of the plant and provide medicinal value to you and your family.
A pure, genuine, therapeutic grade essential oil is defined as one that is specially distilled from plants that are grown and gathered wild in clean environments, or cultivated organically.
Plants must be from the proper botanical genus, species, chemo-type, and cultivar.
No chemical fertilizers are added to the soil, and crop cultivation is free of herbicides and pesticides.
Plants must be harvested at just the right time. This is a VERY scientific process, as just like with a tomato or banana, picking too early or too late will change the nutritional value and taste of the palnt.
Plants, with few exceptions, must be extracted by steam distillation at minimum temperatures and pressures, as was done in ancient times.
No chemical solvents are to be used in the extraction process.
Moreover, the distillation, condensation, and separation should be performed entirely in clean vessels constructed of relatively inert materials, such as food-grade stainless steel or glass.
The essential oil must be distilled using low-pressure, low-temperature steam, for the proper length of time, to ensure that a complete essential oil is extracted, and that there is no significant loss or exclusion from the oil of the lighter fractions (such as monoterpenes, esters, and phenols) or of the heavier fractions (such as sesquiterpenes or diterpenes).
Finally, a therapeutic-grade essential oil should be bottled as it comes from the still, with none of its natural constituents removed and with nothing added. The container and its lid, or seal, must be non-reactive, air-tight, and a shield from light, such as with bottles of brown, amber, or dark blue glass.
The standards detailed in the above definition are those applied to the oils produced, purchased, and distributed by Young Living Essential Oils, Inc. They were originated, developed, and established by Gary Young. They are the highest standards in the world.
When another brand of oil says that their oils are “therapeutic grade,” you need to know their definition of the word and the definition of their label? How to they plant the seeds, harvest the crops and extract the oil to make it therapeutic grade? If they aren’t telling you on their website, they probably don’t know or don’t care.
Young Living Oils for Natural Support from Plants
The reason Young Living’s oils are so different is their unmatched commitment to producing a pure, unadulterated oil that gives you a therapeutic benefit wen using it.
Young Living’s devotion to creating a highly therapeutic product means they’ve invested in their own farms, care for and nurture their own plants, trees, and shrubs, and finally distill, test, and bottle the oils that arrive on your doorstep.
The thing that YL has that NO OTHER oil company has, is full control of their farms and farming practices! NO OTHER company has this much control. With that control, they are able to maintain the extremely high standards of French Aromatherapy practices in cultivating and distilling an essential oil.
This is called Young Living’s Seed to Seal® process. And it is unmatched. Every step from planting to bottling is detailed and controlled.
I chose Young Living because of this process ultimately. Other oils from other companies made me feel sick and gave me headaches. And when I visited the farms first hand . . . there is nothing like it.
I take a lot of time choosing what I put into my body and allow my family to use too. It only made sense to take the same care with the essential oils I chose to use to support our health and wellness and to make sure I’m not introducing any additives, synthetics, or other toxins into our bodies. Here is the specific process needed to created such high quality therapeutic oils.
If at any point in that production process something doesn’t meet their standards, they get rid of it and start again. Because of this, our favorite oils sometimes go out of stock… and we are happy about it! Because we love getting our oils from a company that doesn’t crank them out quickly in a lab to make a buck, but waits on the plants to grow (no synthetics) and until the batch is perfect. They accept nothing less.
Young Living lets you see this process yourself by touring their farms! If you don’t have the option of touring a farm and seeing for yourself how the oils is made, you can’t be sure that you are getting an oil suitable for French Aromatherapy.
Consuming oils.
In French Aromatherapy, oils are consumed. Not ALL oils, but certain ones are recommended to be taken internally.
Why do some aromatherapists say to never ingest oils?
The reason there is such “controversy” in the US over it is that most people here practice the English method only with low quality oils. Which you should absolutely NEVER ingest. Ever ever.
Sooo important to do your research. YL is the only company I’d ever ingest, they actually have an FDA compliant line of oils purely labeled for dietary supplements-these are the Vitality or white labeled oils.
Safety is KEY and that’s why we have so many amazing resources in our oil groups.
Here’s the thing to remember. Remember oils have been around for hundreds of years! They’re not new fads. And there’s very little cases of negative results. And YL alone has been here for well over 20 years. Negative effects are extremely rare but as with anything can still happen. So be smart. Check with your doctor but also do your own homework with creditable sources as many doctors aren’t educated in natural alternative medicine.
And remember, a lot of the studies done that may have had any negative results involved other companies that were not therapeutic grade oils which were not meant for ingesting or they abused taking them internally or the persons involved had a prior medical history so be sure you read the studies yourself when investigating a fear-based claim about oils!
Lastly, the oils we have available for ingestion are actually labeled GRAS (generally regarded as safe) for consumption by the FDA as a dietary supplement . Young Living also worked with the FDA regulations and was able to create line specifically labeled for internal use – the Vitality line. We are the only company who has this. So if an oil says “not for consumption”-listen to them! And question the quality of that brand!
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