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Health & Fitness

What Are Essential Oils?

Therapeutic Grade Essential oils are very effective - they get absorbed thru the skin in just 30 seconds!

My eager-to-learn class,

The more I learn about the therapeutic grade essential oils, the more I like them and want to share the information with you. 

Did you ever wonder what essential oils actually are?

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“Essential oils play very important and diverse roles in plant metabolism.  They serve to attract beneficial insects and defend against harmful microorganisms.  Moreover, essential oils allow plants to send and receive signals and to communicate with one another.

Each plant has a particular organ for producing or storing an oil, for example, the glandular hairs in the outer cell layer (epidermis) of the labriate varieties such as thyme, marjoram,..  These oil (or hair) cells are living cells filled with essential oils or resin… Essential oils, resins, or balsams can be found in the oil and hair canals, and cavities of plant tissue.”  (Kurt Schnaubelt, PH.D.)

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It is very important to use high quality "whole" essential oils. Then you can be sure that what the oil is supposed to deliver will work.  Don't expect the same results from low quality oils - they are actually harmful chemicals.

Unfortunately, poor quality essential oils are used in everything you can think of, including the orange juice. Mistakenly, many people think that using creams, etc. on their skin and laundry detergents do not harm them.

If you are one of many who has allergies and dry skin, and other problems, to name a few, you probably already discovered that synthetic fragrances and other additives used IN SOAPS, PERFUMES, LAUNDRY DETERGENTS, underarm deodorants and shampoos are dangerous for your health. 

Why?

Because our skin is an organ, “our third lung”, the largest organ we have.  What’s under the skin?  Isn’t it lymph, which circulates thru our whole body?

Lymph is a clear to yellowish watery fluid which is found throughout the body. It circulates through body tissues picking up fats, bacteria, and other unwanted materials, filtering these substances out through the lymphatic system. It is sometimes possible to see your own lymph; cuts sometimes weep clear lymph rather than blood, for example. The circulation of lymph through the body is an important part of immune system health.

This clear fluid contains white blood cells, known as lymphocytes, along with a small concentration of red blood cells and proteins. Because white blood cells are smaller than red blood cells, they can pass easily through membranes which red blood cells cannot penetrate. The lymph circulates freely through the body, bathing cells in needed nutrients and oxygen while it collects harmful materials for disposal. You could think of lymph as the milkman of the body, dropping off fresh supplies and picking up discarded bottles for processing elsewhere.

As lymph circulates, it is pulled into the lymphatic system, an extensive network of vessels and capillaries which is linked to lymph nodes, small nodules which act as filters to trap unwanted substances in the lymph. Lymph nodes also produce more white blood cells, refreshing the lymph before it is pumped out of the lymphatic system and back into the body. Lymph may not be as showy as blood, but it is related to an equally complex and ornate system of vessels.

Some of these lymph nodes are found in clusters in the underarms, groin, neck, chest and abdomen.

Source here.

This is why essential oils are so effective.  Therapeutic oils get absorbed thru the skin in just 30 seconds!

Therapeutic oils are pure, if there are no solvents or any other chemicals used at any stage of growing plants and oil preparation.

The next paragraph resonates so much with me that I felt compelled to type it:

“Betrayed and helpless, we are at the mercy of the powers that be when all of life’s needs are provided by one single source. We sense the cynicism, but see the truth only reluctantly in a vain attempt to protect our worldview from grim reality.  In fact, cynicism is even more pervasive than generally feared. Not only do big financial institutions own share in fragrance and food companies, they also hold interest in firms producing pesticides linked to causing breast cancer and at the same time rake in profits from medications used to treat it. The scientific and economic necessities are staggering and diversity has been all but eliminated so as not to get in the way of business. More and more, our lives are determined by the one-dimensionality of synthetic chemical products.”

And one more.

“This massive processing and standardization of our foods should alarm consumers, not the least because these “new” and “wonderful” synthetic fragrances and additives are not substances to which the human body has been aclumated to over a long period of evolution.  Many of these new substances are completely synthetic and like antibiotics and pesticides, contribute to overloading our system with chemicals that heavily tax our organs of metabolism and elimination.  The body responds to the chemical overload by inventing “civilization diseases” such as neurodermatitis or CFS.” (from Kurt Schnaubelt’s book Advanced Aromatherapy: The science of essential oil therapy.)

 

To your health!

With love,

Eugeniya

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