All Essential Oils Uses And Their Benefits For Sleep, Skin Care, Anxiety & Depression

Essential oil

Is a concentrated hydrophobic liquid containing volatile (easily evaporated at normal temperatures) chemical compounds from plants? Essential oils are also known as volatile oils, ethereal oils, petroleum, or simply as the oil of the plant from which they were extracted, such as oil of clove. Essential oil is "essential" in the sense that it contains the "essence of" the plant's fragrance—the characteristic fragrance of the plant from which it is derived. The term "essential" used here does not mean indispensable or usable by the human body, as with the terms essential amino acid or essential fatty acid, which are so-called because they are nutritionally required by a given living organism.

Essential oils are generally extracted by distillation, often by using steam. Other processes include expression, solvent extraction, sfumatura, absolute oil extraction, resin tapping, wax embedding, and cold pressing. They are used in perfumes, cosmetics, soaps, and other products, for flavoring food and drink, and for adding scents to incense and household cleaning products. Essential oils should not be confused with perfume, fragrance, etc. as the latter usually include pure chemical components whereas essential oils are derived from plants.

History

Essential oils have been used in folk medicine throughout history. The Persian physician Ibn Sina, known as Avicenna in Europe, was the first to derive the attar of flowers from distillation while the earliest recorded mention of the techniques and methods used to produce essential oils is believed to be that of Ibn al-Baitar (1188–1248), an Arab Al-Andalusian (Muslim Spain) physician, pharmacist, and chemist.

Rather than refer to essential oils themselves, modern works typically discuss specific chemical compounds of which the essential oils are composed, such as referring to methyl salicylate rather than "oil of wintergreen".

Interest in essential oils has revived in recent decades with the popularity of aromatherapy, a branch of alternative medicine that uses essential oils and other aromatic compounds. Oils are volatilized, diluted in a carrier oil and used in massage, diffused in the air by a nebulizer or diffuser, heated over a candle flame, or burned as incense.

Medical applications proposed by those who sell medicinal oils range from skin treatments to remedies for cancer and often are based solely on historical accounts of the use of essential oils for these purposes. Claims for the efficacy of medical treatments, and treatment of cancers, in particular, are now subject to regulation in most countries.

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