Any oil or hydrosol Psychosis

[Guest guest]

I need to report on an illness which seems to have spread like a

plague among aromatherapy and herb suppliers.

 

This illness seems to have developed about 30-40 years ago in France

from where it quickly spread to a few UK suppliers. From there they

spread it to their customers in America, and then far and wide.

 

The Psychosis (possibly a virus) works like this:

 

A supplier that has in the past stuck to the well known botanical

extracts, suddenly realises that they need to keep up with the con

artists in the trade, by offering their customers any extract they can

lay their hands on. Once a supplier realises they can sell these novel

oils and hydrosols to their customers using some hype and baseless

claims, they will then try to find out what other weird extracts they

can add to their lists.

 

Small growers & producers around the world who do not deal with the

real essential oil trade will happily add novel oils to their

production cycles. These producers then set up web sites to promote

their little known products, often inventing the therapeutic uses and

avoiding the safety issues. These same producers often come across as

charming and their gullible customers are ready meat for their hype.

 

As the result, we now have dozens of essential oils and hydrosols

commonly traded, on which there is no known safety data and extremely

weak therapeutic use information.

 

There is far less of a problem with the use of novel essential oils

for non-skin-contact fragrance products. However, how often do you

see a supplier warning their customers that the skin safety is

unknown. The example I gave in my last message on Blue Cypress being

a great example of where an oil is suspect, but is still sold without

clear warnings.

 

Some of the hydrosols on offer are likewise just there to lure the

gullible. With some such as cucumber, you can make a far more

effective product for self-use using just the fresh vegetable. Using

such a commercial hydrosol in a cosmetic product is worthless and

reminds me of the marketing scams the major cosmetics manufactures

inflict on the world.

 

The facts are this:

1) The supply of novel botanical extracts is not aimed at helping

people with health issues. It is purely a commercial activity aimed

at maximising profit. That is immoral when it is enticing people into

thinking the product may help a health problem when there is no good

evidence for that. The use of novel oils as perfectly acceptable

non-skin fragrances are rarely separated from their use as massage

oils. It is left for the un-knowledgable customer to decide on how

they wish to use the oil based on suppliers and novel writers hype.

 

2) It is rare to come across a newer essential oil that has superior

properties to ones we have had for a hundred years or more.

 

3) In old pharmacopeias are many essential oils with a long track

record of medicinal uses, but which nowadays are rarely used simply

because the popular aromatherapy authors knew little if anything about

them. One of my favourites is Cubeb oil (Cubeba officinalis). There

is loads of good old information on how both the oil and the herb were

used; it has a wonderful fragrance (if it's genuine oil which a lot is

not); it has proven antimicrobial actions, and rarely for an essential

oil, it may have some antiviral actions, lastly it is tested safe for

skin application, etc.

 

Against that we have oils such as Nerolina (Melaleuca quinquenervia)

from Australia. Weak smell and I don't think it's that pleasant. The

safety data given by the supplier is based on what is known about one

single chemical in the oil called nerolidol. There is no safety data

on the WHOLE oil. There is no sound therapeutic use information. We

have other oils such as already mentioned in my last post, where the

safety is doubtful. We have numerous others on which there is not a

shred of evidence of their usefulness as anything other than a

fragrance and certainly no safety data.

 

It is for these reasons I called the title of this 'Any oil or

hydrosol Psychosis'. I think this severe mental illness has now

affected 99% of aromatherapy suppliers. People who seem to be logical

and knowledgable, then seem to enter a different place in their mind

when promoting these novel extracts. That is some kind of psychosis,

they invent the uses of these extracts, so I am inventing the name for

their illness!

 

No wonder the FDA and EEC are investigating what they can do to

safeguard the publics health. Those that don't know me won't know

that I have been warning this might happen for years. My predictions

are now coming true.

 

A bit more on this is on:

http://www.aromamedical.com/articles/hypedoils.htm

 

Martin Watt

http://www.aromamedical.com