Let me introduce myself, my name is Alicia Clampet. I'm a mom, wife, herbalist, farmer, aromatherapist, student, and business owner.
My love for plants and healing have always been a big part of me. I love helping people and animals with the gift that God gave us.
The ability to help heal and teach healing is a passion of mine and in this blog of parts, we will be looking at meanings, terms, abilities, and the differences between all of it, but right now we will be covering meanings and the differences between herbal and science terms.
Even tho the world science is a VERY large umbrella, a lot of people don't understand the difference between them all. So science terms are all different because of the type of science someone might be studying or looking at.
So today I want to look at the world Pure. I don't want to beat around the bush anymore, let's get into it.
Okay..... The world Pure is normally defined as "not mixed or adulterated with any other substance or material".
So this means and apple is an apple and not mixed with let's say a grape (lol thats silly, but hey people will mix almost anything together).
Now the Scientific term of pure is "A pure substance or chemical substance is a material that has a constant composition (is homogeneous) and has consistent properties throughout the sample. In chemistry, a pure substance consists only of one type of atom, molecule, or compound."
As you can see it's a little different, but not much different as the regular definition of the word Pure in it's own term. Here is where things will get a little fuzzy and almost a gray area. A lot of people know more of the Scientific term of pure mostly from growing up in the school system.
There's nothing wrong with this, your just at this point stuck in your ways (so to say) and need to learn to open your mind up to other terms for different sciences. As a scientist and herbalist myself I had to do the same thing. No matter what you study in your travels always allow yourself to be open to different terms.
Let's look at the much wanted Herbal terms for the world pure. Just like the world science, herbal is an umbrella for other different sciences of plant medicine. You have the plant (herb) and oil (essential) from the plant.
Plants have many parts and many different kind of parts. On most plants you can use almost every part of the plant. This science is the study of Botany with a little sprinkle of Chemistry (chemistry is used to see what properties are in the plant's parts and to see what those properties can do).
Now that we covered that and I'm sure a lot of you already knew this information and that's ok and I'm glad if you knew all of this already. I needed to go over a little over it because the term "Pure" is not for the plant, but for the oil that comes from the plant.
I bet some of you didn't know that! A "Pure" plant would be if the plant A and plant B are 110% the same so that the babies from this two plants will be the same. That goes into breeding and really isn't apart of this list.
So for essential oils the definition is "a natural oil typically obtained by distillation and having the characteristic fragrance of the plant or other source from which it is extracted.". So pure would be "An essential oil is a concentrated hydrophobic liquid containing volatile chemical compounds of the plant. Degradation through high temperature extremes does not occur. The essential oils are mostly pure and contain little to no foreign substances.".
SO by this definition alone a lot of people would say that essential oils are NOT PURE, and on a scientific stants I would have to agree. But I am a herbalist and have studied the herbal science behind this pure term battle.
Some plants are processed in a way that all that is left is water and oil from the plant and a little water from the machine that was used to get the oil out of the plant(s), this is called steam distillation (see picture above).
So this is a pure oil because the water will be taking away from the oil and if the process is done right than there will be no water to take away because the oil and water will properly separate before it gets to the bottle.
Some plants are processed with the help of chemicals. This method is frown upon because the oil that comes out are truly not pure. What ever striping chemicals are used are still in the plant oil and because the chemicals are striping, the best part of the oil from the plant are mostly gone. These oils are mostly used for smell only! They are not safe to use for anything else.
The last two processes is mostly used by Home Crafters. They will use what is call oil infusion and cold pressing.
Oil Infusion is where you take your fresh or dried herbs (flower heads, leaves, or stems) placing them in a glass bottle with a tight closing lid and than poor your carrier oil (this oil is a vegetable type oil like sunflower, olive, sweet almond, grapeseed, avocado, castor, and coconut) on top of the herb until the bottle is full or is over the herbs. Than let it sit for 4 weeks.
Oil Infusion is not the purest of essential oils. This process is easy for people to do at home and is used in cooking, skin care, and making other goods like candles, shampoos, soaps, and other items that call for a soft diluted essential oil.
Cold Pressing (see picture above for at home machine) is the last process we will cover that helps Home Crafters and large oil manufactures collect oils from the plants seeds. This process is by using a machine that crushes the oil out of the seeds and push the seed pulp out the end and the oil falls down the middle of the machine into a glass container.
This is where your cooking oils come from. This is easy, fast, and efficient, and you get 2 different products to do different things.
The pulp is used as a burning fuel or animal feed because it is just seed shells from the plant. No chemicals needed there.
And then the oil that will be put through a thin filter to get any pulp out that may have fell throw. After that it is bottled and shipped all over the world. We went through this list of carrier oils above with just some of the plants that are used with this method.
Cold Pressing is the purest seed oil anyone can get, but this oil doesn't have healing properties like your essential oils do.
Oil Infusion starts out with a pure seed oil and then you add plants or essential oil to it. The plant is pure the seed oil is pure, so this would be a pure product, but not fit the pure term.
Chemical Striping is frowned upon cause this is the lowest quality oil and is only safe for using in candle warmers.
Steam Distillation is the process that will give you by herbal and scientific definition the "Pure" oil that everyone wants. Even tho this process is one of the most expensive, it is (in my professional opinion as an Herbalist and Aromatherapist) the only way to get a truly pure and health benefit filled essential oil.
I hope you have enjoyed this first part of Herbal Term vs. Science Term. I really enjoyed writing this out and hope I covered every part to help you understand better on the terms and means between the two.
There are a lot of great oils out there, but please remember that there are a lot of companies out there that will lie about the quality of the oils they make. Do your research on the company and don't be afraid if the farms they use aren't in the US. Just really look at how they process the plants to get the oils.
Thank you for joining me today. Have a wonderful and Blessed day!
If you have any questions, concerns, or just want to chat all things herbal, feel free to send me a message.
I do want to leave you with one more thing today. I like to share places you can find wonderful essential oils and even a wonderful place to get all your CBD needs. The next time you join me we will be covering CBD and THC and the different in terms for them along with the health benefits and why some people are for it and/or against it.
If you want to check these products out, I do get a portion of sells and helps me and family out. I greatly appreciate your time, and many many blessings to all of you.
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