Essential Oils’ Healing Compounds Are Affected by Many Factors
Therapeutic Essential Oils
Various factors contribute to medicinal plants’ health & vitality. The growers’ cultivation practices, harvesting conditions as well as processing – timing and technique – and, on a subtle energetic level, the company employees’ attitudes towards the products, all affect the final quality of therapeutic essential oils.
Ideally, the plants must be grown:
- Organically and/or without chemical sprays
- In a climate and at an altitude ideally suited to the plant, enhancing the quality of their essential oil compounds.
- The harvested plant material (roots, stems, bark, leaves, berries, petals, rind…depending on the essential oil) must be processed under low temperatures & pressures for the appropriate length of time. Nothing, except for steam used in the distillation process, should be added* or removed* from the essential oil.
- Gas chromatography – scientific laboratory analysis – is used to assess the proportions of an essential oil’s component molecules to determine whether or not the essential oil meets AFNOR’s therapeutic standards.
AFNOR, a French organization regulates essential oils in the European market
AFNOR has set standards of how much of each chemical component must be in each therapeutic essential oils. Young Living Essential Oils are tested at the AFNOR lab (and several others) to assure their healing components meet these therapeutic standards.
