99% of People Don't Know the Common Sense of Essential Oil

1. There is an essential difference between essential oils and edible oils：

Essential oils are oily substances with characteristic aromas extracted from the flowers, leaves, roots, skins, stems, branches, fruits, seeds and other parts of aromatic plants. Depending on the type of aromatic plant extracted, the part extracted, and the extraction method, the smell and efficacy of the essential oils obtained are very different. At present, the main methods for extracting essential oils are: pressing, distillation, fat dissolution, solvent extraction, etc.

Essential oils are oils and not oils. Their essence is a high-concentration plant extract, but they are indeed oily and cannot be diluted with water (a trace amount is soluble in water). However, the molecules of single essential oils are very small and have strong permeability. Most of the ingredients in them are volatile substances. From this perspective, it is not like oil.

2. Three major categories of essential oils: single essential oils, compound essential oils, and base oils：

Essential oils are divided into three categories: single essential oils, compound essential oils, and base oils. This is the most basic and most important because it is related to the safety of use. Single essential oil is 100% pure essential oil. If the concentration is too high, it cannot be used directly, otherwise it may burn the skin or cause irreversible damage to the body. Base oil is actually vegetable oil, but it is extracted by cold pressing. The molecules are relatively large and not easy to volatilize. Common base oils include olive oil, grape seed oil, rose seed oil, sweet almond oil, etc. The ingredients of base oil are relatively safe, generally oleic acid, linoleic acid, saturated fatty acids and vitamins, etc. It can be used alone or diluted with single essential oil. Compound essential oil is a mixture of more than two single essential oils and base oils. Different types of single essential oils cooperate with each other, and some can complement each other and enhance the efficacy.

3. Essential oils have the effect of boosting or calming emotions：

Since the information transmission of the human nervous system depends on potential and trace chemical molecules, and these small chemical molecules contained in essential oils have strong penetration, they can easily affect our nerve information, and nerve information is the chemical messenger that regulates our physical and mental emotions. Taking rose essential oil as an example, phenylethanol is the representative ingredient of rose essence. This chemical component can act on the sympathetic nervous system and regulate neurosensory substances such as norepinephrine, dopamine (happy and excited transmitter), serotonin (calm and relaxing transmitter, directly involved in the generation of emotions and feelings), which is an important substance for managing anxiety and stress, responsible for regulating psychoactive neurotransmitters. Essential oils have certain antioxidant properties. However, they also enhance the toxicity of some essential oils to the nervous system, so the amount used must be controlled.

4. Essential oils have certain antioxidant effects：

The antioxidant effect of plant essential oils mainly depends on their rich phenolic components. The main action pathways include scavenging free radicals, chelating with metal ions, inhibiting cell membrane lipid peroxidation, and regulating antioxidant enzymes. From the molecular formula, plant essential oils should have certain antioxidant capacity.