All About Essential Oils: What Are They, What Do They Do, and Why Quality Matters
You may have used essential oils before, but not everyone knows what they are or how they get from the plant to your body lotion! Lucky for you, here at Sage Stone Botanicals, we’ve got some answers for you.
Essential oils are a part of all of our products. Whether you like lotions, body washes, cremes, or lip balm, our products infused with essential oils are going to cover you in wonderful scents and softness. So what exactly are essential oils anyway?
What Are Essential Oils?
In a nutshell, essential oils are made from compounds obtained from plants. You can read the more detailed and scientific explanation about what makes up an essential oil compound here. But the short version is that the substances are extracted from parts of a plant, like the bark, flowers, seeds or roots, through processes like distillation or cold pressing. Once extracted from the plant, the essential oils obtained are combined with a carrier oil so it can be easily used on your skin or in a bath or diffuser.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, it takes about 250 pounds of lavender flowers to make about a pound of lavender essential oil. To make a pound of rose or lemon balm oil, you’d need about 5,000 pounds of rose petals or lemon balm. When essential oils are made, they are concentrated forms of the plant's finest oils.
Each plant has its own unique properties and have been used for centuries for medicinal, aromatic, and cosmetic purposes. Now you might be wondering, what are the benefits of these essential oils? Why do we use them instead of just using the carrier oils, like jojoba or almond oil by themselves?
Benefits of Essential Oils
Combining essential oils with carrier oils is how we are able to reap the benefits that each plant has to offer. Because of the strong concentration of essential oils, it would not be recommended to use them at full strength.
Research at the Cleveland Clinic also suggests that essential oils could have a variety of benefits, depending on which essential oil you are using. These benefits include:
Promoting better sleep
Killing bacteria, fungus, and viruses
Reducing pain
Reducing nausea
Relieving headaches
Some evidence points toward wound healing and fighting inflammation too. And other oils, like citronella have been used to repel insects.
Aromatherapy is a popular way to use essential oils and may have positive results on things like stress and anxiety. Who doesn’t love the soothing scent of a lavender bath? Or a gentle massage with the sweet smell of roses?
Using a diffuser to enjoy these oils or adding them to a bath are a couple of ways to utilize their benefits. Adding water to an essential oil and using it as a room spray is another popular use. And probably one of the most loved and common ways to use these oils is by creating lotions, cremes, body washes, lip balms, and more. Absorbing the oils into your skin can not only make you smell great but research points to health and wellness benefits too!
What Essential Oils Do We Use?
When it comes to the types of essential oils available, there are many brands on the market. Some are better than others as far as quality and value goes.
Here at Sage Stone Botanicals, we don’t use one specific brand because we are always watching for the best essential oils we can find for our products. We purchase different oils from various vendors that meet both our expectations and requirements for quality. It’s important to be informed about what you’re looking for and what brand delivers that and this is why our vendor list varies.
We use several different essential oils, like lavender, peppermint, cinnamon, pine, lemon, rose geranium, citronella, sweet orange, tangerine, and lemongrass.
Why Quality Essential Oils Matter
Of course, most people are going to agree that if you’re going to buy something, and especially if you’re going to use it yourself, you’re going to want it to be good stuff. Quality matters, no matter what.
When it comes to anything, especially our products with essential oils, we’re not cutting corners on quality! What you put on your skin matters to us and we’re pretty sure it matters to you too-that’s one reason people shop our store to begin with; because they know the quality is there.
When we look for good quality essential oils, we start with organic products first. Pure oils without chemicals or unknown additives are a must! We also look for oils that are most consistent with the qualities of the plant they come from, not changed through extraction processes, or diluted with synthetic fragrances or other oils.
It’s important to us that we find out about the oils we're purchasing and learn how and where the plants were grown. What type of environment are they grown in? What methods are used for harvesting and extraction? And finally, we search for reputable vendors that have our desired scents in stock. If they have been doing good business, and making good products, it’s easy for us to verify that information and order our essential oils from them.
Overall, quality is everything. You can’t reap the benefits of a plant to its fullest extent if you’re not receiving a quality oil. In fact, if it’s not a good product, you could run the risk of doing harm to your skin or breathing in unknown chemicals. We don’t want that!
Now you have an idea of what essential oils are, what the benefits of using them can be, and why the quality of them matters. You can be sure and count on us at Sage Stone Botanicals for the best organic, quality, lotions, cremes, body washes, lip balms and more that include essential oils.
If you have questions about our products, feel free to reach out! We’re happy to address any questions or skincare concerns you may have.
