Undesirable side effects

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Undesirable side effects of medication are well known. The manufacturers' "patient information leaflets" or "package inserts" are usually ignored: Printed too small, too much - often rather incomprehensible - and also scary content. Reading them makes you feel increasingly ill ...

But what about essential oils? Are they really free of any side effects?

As is often the case in life, the devil is in the detail. Pitfalls lurk here too. And it is highly advisable and therefore also beneficial to use them properly if you really want to enjoy their effects free from - undesirable - side effects!

Antibiotics

Whether a cough, cold, hoarseness or pneumonia - an antibiotic is usually prescribed. Depending on the preparation, a stomach protector may also be prescribed.
The symptoms get better, but diarrhea and the like, a fungal infection here, itchy redness there replace the actual complaints. Undesirable side effects on a completely different terrain than the original cause are a problem. But there are also medications to combat this - with new undesirable side effects. A vicious circle.

As antibiotics are now becoming more and more broad-spectrum in order to combat increasing residual tendencies - and thereby further accelerate them - the undesirable side effects are also increasing.

(Side) effects of essential oils

But what about essential oils? Are they free of - undesirable - side effects?

Oreganoas an example for parasite infestation in the intestine, is a highly effective antibiotic and anti-inflammatory oil, which also has antimycotic (against fungal infections), mucolytic (expectorant - cough, cold ...), anticoagulant (blood thinning - stroke, heart attack) effects.

As a side effect, at a correspondingly high dosage (but always diluted!), it impairs the bacteria in the intestinal flora, which is why this should be built up with new strains of bacteria typical of the intestine.

Another example: Lime has a purifying, detoxifying effect, which manifests itself in increasingly blemished skin and the formation of spots, as waste products and toxins are transported out of the body. This "side effect" is therefore neither undesirable nor a side effect, but the effect itself.

A distinction must therefore be made between effects and side effects, especially those undesirable side effects that have an impact on a completely different level than that of the disease.

Essential oils

Essential oils are highly concentrated, purely plant-based products and represent the plant immune system. This explains, among other things, their high effectiveness and, when used properly, the fact that they are free from - undesirable - side effects.

In addition, the human organism cannot develop resistance to their active ingredients, as is the case with drugs, especially antibiotics.
The dreaded MRSA bacterium (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), for example, has no chance with essential oils that have an antibacterial effect, while antibiotics have become powerless here due to resistance.

Medication

Medication contains the main active ingredient, but also adjuvant ingredients that have an effect on the body, unfortunately mainly in the form of undesirable side effects. Some active ingredients attack the stomach lining, for example, which is prevented by taking another medication before the main one.

As is the case with pharmaceuticals, improper use of essential oils is not without consequences.

purity

In order for essential oils to be used properly, it must first be ensured that the oils are pure, without additives and not mixed with oils from different sources. Species a plantgenreor were mixed.

The lavenderSpecies Spiked lavender, Crested lavender, Real lavender, etc. have differently weighted ingredients and therefore also different main effects. Only the Latin plant name makes a clear definition of the oil possible.

Growing conditions, such as soil type and composition, solar radiation and harvest time also influence the composition of the individual active ingredients in an essential oil.

Inhalation

Essential oils are also used for room scenting, but are not heated (vaporized) but nebulized and inhaled in ultrasonic diffusers.

When we inhale, their scent molecules reach the central nervous system via the ethmoid bone (a permeable, bony plate that closes off the nasal cavity from the brain), which is part of the paranasal sinus. After just a few seconds, they have already reached the brain. Who hasn't experienced this: a familiar smell takes you back to your childhood.

Incidentally, the molecules can be detected in the blood after about two minutes.

Oil mixtures

Some manufacturers combine pure oils to create oil blends. These blends can only be produced from pure oils of one plant species, the ingredients of which have been determined by laboratory analysis and can therefore be combined to create highly effective oil blends with knowledge of the respective main effects in order to achieve the desired effect.

Oil exchanges

Oils from oil exchanges are generally offered at lower prices than pure oils from one plant species. A large number of producers from a wide variety of regions supply their oils here, with equally variable qualities and active ingredient contents. These are then marketed as oil blends.

Oil producers who exclusively source and bottle oils from their own farmers have the advantage over oils from oil exchanges that defined quality standards and thus consistent qualities are always guaranteed, especially with regard to the concentration of active ingredients.

Pure - or not pure?

So how can the user check whether the essential oil in question is a pure oil?

The very rough test is simple: put a drop of the oil on a sheet of paper, let it soak in and dry. If a "grease" stain remains on the paper, it is not pure essential oil, but oil that has been contaminated or stretched in some way.

If the manufacturer does not provide a laboratory analysis of the ingredients on request, there is a high probability that the oils are from oil exchanges: Each batch consists of different blending ratios (see above). Since you are acting in an economically optimized way, you will not re-analyze every delivery and therefore cannot issue analyses to the dealers or, on their part, to customers.

However, if the manufacturer provides laboratory analyses on the basis of a batch number printed on each filled bottle, which can be entered online on the manufacturer's website, for example, and leads to the complete analysis, then the oil is pure essential oil.

If the price is comparatively very low, it is usually a (fragrance) oil with synthetic ingredients.

Can't it be cheaper?

Cheaper is always possible! Be it by diluting with carrier oils (e.g. edible oils, castor oils, nut oils), adding petrochemical products such as synthetic linalool or linalyl acetate or stretching with synthetics based on natural or fractionated isolates or similar but inferior oils.

Quality has its price. And if you have experienced live how, for example, oregano is harvested in Turkey by entire families, bent over all day in bright sunshine, seemingly effortlessly, we recommend that you do the same - just for an hour! But then we are still quite far at the beginning of the production chain and costs ...

Which oil for which germ?

In medicine, an antibiogram used to be prepared by cultivating the pathogen and applying various antibiotics to the nutrient solution containing the germ to see which antibiotic was specifically effective against the pathogen.

In the course of the increase in antibiotic resistance, broad-spectrum antibiotics were developed that were effective against a whole range of pathogens.
The patient was pleased that the first antibiotic had already worked successfully. However, over time and with the increasing broad-spectrum nature of the preparations, several pathogens became resistant to the broad-spectrum antibiotic.

With essential oils, too, an aromatogram is used to determine which oil is effective against the specific pathogen. The sole purpose of this is to save time in therapy, as the administration of various oils is avoided until the effective oil is found by chance, thus shortening the course of the disease.

Small print

Declarations depend on the use of the essential oil, whether it is used as a Consumables (e.g. scented oil), Cosmetic (e.g. skin care, bath additive), Food (e.g. flavoring, seasoning) or medicinal products (external, internal use).

The regulations for the information to be printed on the label vary accordingly. Therefore, one and the same essential oil can be available on the market with up to four different labels, depending on its use.

Sometimes, for example, an essential oil suitable for ingestion is also declared as a consumer product instead of a cosmetic, because otherwise therapeutically effective ingredients would have to be removed as they are not approved for use as a cosmetic.

Sometimes active ingredients are also explicitly listed that supposedly have nothing to do with the actual oil, e.g. lavender, such as linalool and geraniol. These are natural components of the pure oil, but in higher concentrations and therefore require labeling with regard to the type of use.
Another example is rose hydrolate produced without alcohol: however, the label shows benzyl alcohol as an ingredient because it is a natural component of rose hydrolate.

Quality seal

Last but not least - quality seals. There are plenty of them, but as a rule they are not a sign of quality. They are often issued on a company-specific basis, independent of applicable regulations, etc. Quality can only be proven and assessed by means of laboratory analyses.

Our sense of smell may be fine, but it cannot reliably distinguish between well-balanced synthetic and naturally pure fragrances.

Laboratory analysis

A laboratory analysis consists of several test procedures, in simple terms, gas chromatography to determine the individual active ingredients and mass spectrography to quantify the individual components.

An analysis usually comprises around 60 active substances, their Latin names, percentage, the name of the laboratory, the client, batch number, date, the analytical device used (in the case of gas chromatography, the carrier gas used), the sample preparation, the name of the person carrying out the analysis and the name of the person who checked it.

Further information on this topic can be found, for example here.