Everywhere you look today you see the term 'therapeutic-grade' when talking about Essential Oils. Unfortunately, many consumers hear, and then believe, "Oh, you should always only use the Essential Oils that are marked as certified pure therapeutic-grade."
The term therapeutic-grade in reference to Essential Oils was started by one of the largest Essential Oil companies as a marketing ploy to say their Essential Oils are better than their competitor's oils.
It's unfortunate for the marketplace, and for the consumer, because the fact is there is no such thing as a therapeutic-grade Essential Oil.
An Essential Oil is determined to be therapeutic based upon the combination and percentages of the chemical constituents that are found naturally in the Essential Oil. There are no agencies that 'grade' Essential Oils as therapeutic.
Science Tells the Story
There are many different levels of Essential Oil quality, purity, and therapeutic value, and again, absolutely no regulation available to assist consumers in discerning what is a 'commercial, recreational, and aromatic use' Essential Oil and what is a therapeutic Essential Oil.
How can the consumer know what is a pure and therapeutic Essential Oil?
Having an Essential Oil third-party tested with a Gas Chromatograph for the percentages of chemical constituents and having someone with Alexandria's deep understanding of Essential Oil chemistry to review the results of the testing is the only way to know if an Essential Oil is, in fact, therapeutic.
All of goDésana's Essential Oils are Gas Chromatograph tested by an independent 3rd party lab. Every batch is tested multiple times before it's sent out the door to you, our customer.
This ensures that the same amazing Essential Oil reviewed and approved by Alexandria, and then ordered by goDésana, is in fact what ends up in the bottle for you. goDésana is the only company going to such lengths to ensure that you are getting the highest quality Essential Oils available.
Every bottle of goDésana Essential Oil is labeled with a lot and batch number that corresponds with the Gas Chromatographs on file at the corporate office. This is your assurance of the quality you've come to value and trust. goDésana documents and proudly shows our 3rd party Gas Chromatograph test results to you.
Organic, Wildcrafted, or Commercial Plant Material
Organic and Wildcrafted Essential Oils are far superior in purity, quality, efficacy, and in their ability to assist in healing.* They're packed with high healing energies, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and other healing constituents.*
Consider the fact that an Essential Oil is 75-100 times more concentrated than the plant material it came from. So when you distil an Essential Oil from organic or wildcrafted plants, you are garnering healing energies, antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients and healing constituents that are 75-100 times more concentrated in the resulting Essential Oil.*
Organic and Wildcrafted Essential Oils are literally packed with the innate healing wisdom of the plant while other Essential Oils not only lack the things that make an Essential Oil a powerful healing agent, but they often include herbicides, pesticides, insecticides, chemical fertilizers, sewage sludge, etc.*
Every goDésana Essential Oil is 100% Pure, Organic or Wildcrafted. That information is printed, along with the country of origin, method of distillation, producing organ, lot, and batch number on the label of every product.
Specific Botanical Species
Often you will see a company selling Lavender, Thyme, Eucalyptus, and Essential Oil without providing the botanical species of the specific Lavender, Thyme, and Eucalyptus.
Designation of botanical species is critical in knowing what unique characteristics are available for therapeutic uses and safety.
For example, there are several forms of Essential Oil of Thyme, each having its own therapeutic benefits, uses, and safety cautions.
Nowhere is the importance of specific botanical species more evident than in the production of "Lavender". There are many types of Lavender Essential Oil, with each botanical species having its own unique properties and aroma, as well as therapeutic constituent benefits.
Knowing whether you have Lavendula vera, Lavendula spike, Lavender, fine, Lavender maillette, Lavendula hybrids, etc, can make all the difference in the end result.
Making selections and discerning that only the best, purest, and therapeutic Essential Oils are sourced and documented, Alexandria knows and understands the differences and subtle nuances in botanical species of the plants in the Essential Oil world. Alexandria's expertise, "nose", and intuitive wisdom make all the difference in the finished product that shows up on your doorstep.
Specific Plant Producing Organ
For many Essential Oil plants, it's vitally important that the producing organ is identified and that the oil is sourced from the part of the plant that produces the most effective oil for the desired therapeutic use and safety. For example, Cinnamon Oil can be sourced from the leaves, bark, or roots, with each having its own distinct properties, safety concerns, and therapeutic value.
All of goDésana Single Essential Oils have the plant producing organ and the botanical species along with individual batch and lot numbers on every bottle. This is your assurance of purity and quality; your assurance that each batch was tested, that a Gas Chromatograph is on file to document the efficacy and quality of that batch, and that the integrity and efficacy of the Essential Oil is intact.
Adulterated Essential Oils
Pure Essential Oils contain living molecules and constituents that simply cannot be duplicated by chemists.
For instance, we know that the formula for water is H2O. But when chemists combine the elements of hydrogen and oxygen, they've yet to generate life-giving water. There's something more to the equation.
It's the same with pure Essential Oils. Chemists may be able to isolate and identify specific constituents and add those constituents to a base of pure oil to "enhance" it, but they cannot duplicate the elemental power of the pure Essential Oil distilled from organic or wildcrafted plant material.
Many companies claim to have pure Essential Oils that have not been adulterated, and many of those same companies fail miserably when their oils are tested.
Sadly, current regulations allow commercially produced Essential Oils to be labeled "100% pure" while still being extended by up to 52% with synthetic extenders or an inexpensive carrier oil.
The sad fact is that many Essential Oil companies use synthetic or 'nature like' ingredients to enhance the scent, to increase the presence of specific constituents, or just to make the Essential Oil more profitable.
It has become a commonplace practice with some large Essential Oil companies to add constituents that have been extracted from one Essential Oil, usually a less expensive one, to another Essential Oil.
Because the added constituents are originally extracted from an Essential Oil, the now adulterated Essential Oil appears to still be a natural product, making this practice difficult to detect.
Companies will do this for a variety of reasons, with cost and creating a 'unique' product being two of the most common reasons.
For example, Linalyl acetate is often added to Lavender Essential Oil, Ethylvanillin is often added to Peppermint, Methyl salicylate is extracted from Wintergreen Essential Oil and sold as pure Birch Essential Oil, and Linalool or an extracted constituent from Pink Grapefruit is often added to Sweet Orange and then called Wild Orange.
Another common practice in the marketplace is to subject Essential Oils to a process called rectification (second and even third distillation). This is done to artificially inflate amounts of various chemical constituents.
This is commonly done to Peppermint Essential Oil that is grown in the United States to increase the amount of menthol. Peppermint grown in the United States contains a low level of the constituent menthol, and as a result it is not considered to be a therapeutic Peppermint Essential Oil in the world of French Medical Aromatherapy. Companies will redistill (rectify) a second and third time to inflate the mentol to an amount believed to be therapeutic. Alexandria and goDésana consider this adulteration.
goDésana Essential Oils are pristine by their very nature. Nothing added, nothing taken away, nothing extracted. They are treated with the utmost honor and respect as the gifts from Mother Nature they are. goDésana and Alexandria Brighton are dedicated to sourcing only the best Essential Oils from organic and wildcrafted artisan-type farms that span the globe. The quality of oils acquired from these sources is simply not available in the mass production market many other companies use. This is yet another factor that sets goDésana apart from other brands.
