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About Lavender Essential Oil

Which Lavender Gives the Oil | The Chemistry | The Renaissance of Lavender | Quality, Quality, Quality | Buyer Beware

'The Blue Gold'

Essential oils are the fragrant, highly concentrated natural constituents that are found in plants. They are what gives the plant its characteristic odour and contain the healing power of the plant from which it was extracted. When used correctly, essential oils bring a wide range of health benefits since unlike modern drugs, they have no side-effects.

Lavender essential oil has enjoyed a renaissance in pure form use for medicine and aromatherapy and is included in many perfumes, personal body care and household products. Production of this exceptional oil has expanded to parallel increased demand.

Lavender essential oil is otherwise known as ‘blue gold’ and considering that it requires approximately 130kg of flowers to make 1 litre of oil through the process of distillation - the name seems very appropriate.

Lavender oil has been used as a household remedy for centuries and its various applications have been tried and tested over time. It is a very safe oil which can be used easily for first-aid purposes as well as for a wide variety of common problems such as skin complaints, respiratory disorders, muscular pains and children’s illnesses. Its classic floral fragrance lifts spirits; its soothing anti-depressant properties are ideally suited for today’s stressful climate.

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Which Lavender Gives the Oil?
 
For the purpose of lavender oil, we are mainly concerned with the following four species - Lavandula angustifolia (also known as English lavender or true lavender), Lavandula x intermedia (also known as Lavandin), Lavandula latifolia (Spike or Spanish lavender) as well as Lavandula stoechas (French lavender or Butterfly lavender).

Within each of the species there are many varieties and lavender farmers around the world will argue about which ones produce the best oil.

It is generally assumed that the majority of lavender essential oil is produced in France, but although the French do still grow a lot of lavender, they are not the major producers of the essential oil. The largest producer of lavender oil today is Bulgaria, as well as Croatia, Russia, China and Australia, and to a lesser extent Italy, New Zealand and the United States.

Where an oil is grown dramatically affects the balance of its constituents. The same variety of plant, such as Lavendula angustifolia, grown in the cooler English climate at lower altitudes will produce a different type of oil or ‘chemotype’ than its Mediterranean or Eastern European counterpart.

Essential oil qualities also differ from batch to batch and from crop to crop, even within the same year – which of course affects the quality of the fragrance too. Recent research has shown that different species and ‘chemotypes’ of lavender oil have different therapeutic effects, so the ‘quality’ of an essence – especially in the context of aromatherapy, depends largely on its specific use and appropriateness, rather than simply on its aesthetic appeal.

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The Chemistry

The chemistry of an essential oil is extremely complex, and a typical example of oil will contain an elaborate mixture of aromatic constituents such as alcohols, aldehydes, esters, keytones, lactones, phenols, terpenes and sesquiterpenes that combine to produce a unique set of therapeutic qualities.

There are, for example, over 150 different constituents in lavender oil - the two main ones are linalool and linalyl acetate – it is these which give lavender its light, sweetish note. The linalyl acetate (ester) content of lavender oil is also used as a criterion of quality.

The highest quality lavender oil, with an ester content of 50 per cent or more, is reserved for exclusive perfumes; lavender oil with an ester content of around 40 per cent is employed in lavender water and colognes; while the lower grades (approximately 30 percent esters) are used in soaps, detergents and the like.

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The Renaissance of Lavender

The history of lavender reveals that its aromatic, medicinal, and culinary properties have been recognized from early times. However, lavender essential oil experienced a true renaissance and earned itself a special status in modern aromatherapy, ever since the famous French chemist René-Maurice Gattefossé. He treated a gangrenous laboratory burn on his hand with pure lavender oil and it healed remarkably quickly. He had previously noticed that severe war wounds could become infected and the poison enter the bloodstream, yet when treated with lavender oil, the poisons were detoxified and the wounds themselves healed remarkably quickly, making for a rapid overall recovery.

This remarkable event inspired him to devote all his energies for the rest of his life to the scientific exploration of essential oils and their healing properties, henceforth the birth of modern aromatherapy.

In aromatherapy, essential oils are delivered through the skin with the use of aromatic crèmes or massage oils. Other methods include adding them to a bath and inhaling them through the olfactory system. The olfactory bulb receives minute pieces of information from the environment with every breath. It carries the fragrance molecules of an essential oil to the limbic system, the area of the brain connected with the body’s basic drives such as hunger, thirst, breathing, sleep patterns, sex, emotions, and memories.

Essential oils possess a wide range of healing properties that can be used effectively to keep an individual in the best of health as well as looking good. These health-giving benefits include improving the complexion of the skin by stimulating cellular renewal, balancing roller-coaster emotions and fighting bacteria, fungi and other forms of infection. Lavender essential oil especially is extremely versatile and has an almost endless list of therapeutic uses.

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Quality, Quality, Quality

Of the utmost importance is the quality of essential oils. Although cheaper essential oils may appear to save money initially, they will certainly not deliver the results that one is entitled to expect. Some industries process essential oils in order to make them meet a required odour or flavour 'profile'. To achieve this, synthetic chemicals are added to the oil and often certain unwanted non-fragrance components are removed.

This so called 'standardisation' is common practice in the perfumery and flavour industries in order to maintain absolute consistency in fragrance or taste, but totally unacceptable if the essential oil is for use in aromatherapy or top quality cosmetics. Adulterated essential oils may often smell acceptable to the untrained nose, but because they are extended with synthetics or diluted with vegetable oil it makes them extremely poor value for money, and simply ineffective.

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Buyer Beware

Lavender oil is available from many sources with extreme price variations. The essential oil business is fraught with problems due to the many ways in which the essential oil can be ‘tweaked’ or modified.

The quality of an essential oil depends primarily on the growing conditions of the plant: soil, weather, water, climate, and the timing of the harvest will all influence the fragrance, colour and potency of the extracted essential oils.

Highest quality perfumes, natural beauty products, cosmetics and aromatherapy products use only the highest quality – pure and unadulterated essential oils. For aromatherapy especially, it is essential to obtain essential oils that are marked as being 100 per cent pure. There are many perfume oils that are not essential oils and do not have the healing properties of pure essential oils – there is even a substantial difference in the use of lavender essential oil versus lavandin essential oil.

Modern technology is able to modify fragrances; some are even synthetically created in a laboratory. These are the first perfumes in the history of fragrance unsuitable for medicinal use. In the process of commercial trading, this adulteration takes place under circumstances where buyer and seller know the game and a standardized fragrance quality is sought after, for instance in the production of industrial cleaners, laundry detergents, candles, cat-litter and dish washer detergents.

The problem occurs when the inexperienced buyer is looking to purchase pure, good quality oil or natural cosmetics and falls into the pond where the commodity practices take place. The buyer may not even know or be told that they are purchasing an impure oil.

Some of the unethical practices that occur are:

• lavandin oil sold as lavender angustifolia oil (in aromatherapy, these two oils do not have the same medicinal qualities, yet since lavandin is much cheaper it is often used in ‘stretching’ the lavender oil)
• Pure lavender oil is diluted with an odourless solvent
• Cheap synthetic chemicals are blended with lavender oil

To avoid any of the unethical practices, it is recommended to buy a reputable high-standard brand – where quality control validation documents of organic quality are available.

If the label on a bottle reads: ‘Lavender aromatic or perfume oil’, this is not an essential oil. However, if the label reads: ‘100% pure lavender essential oil’, this would be a correct choice. Some companies specify the botanical name on the bottle, for example ‘lavandula angustifolia’ or ‘lavandula x intermedia’ – for aromatherapy purposes this is an ethical method of distinguishing the essential oils.

Furthermore, only buy oils in metal or dark bottles – never clear glass or plastic. Pure lavender oil is expensive to produce, do not buy the cheapest, rather buy a small quantity of the best quality. 

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