Supply and demand challenges for essential oils in the coronavirus era
Tisserand Institute
by Robert Tisserand
4y ago
by Robert Tisserand A field of roses in Syria, image courtesy of BioCham The supply-demand dynamic for essential oils has always been a delicate thing. Prices fluctuate, but generally trend upward. In the past 50 years, the price of Indian Sandalwood oil has increased by about 200 times, although one reason for that has been the exploitation and consequent reduction of the natural resource. If supply exceeds demand for an essential oil then prices at source may drop, but these savings are generally minimal and are not passed on to the consumer. Surges in demand stretch supply chains, and wi ..read more
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Consuming essential oils responsibly
Tisserand Institute
by Natalie Miller
4y ago
by Natalie Miller It’s been quite some time since we asked Natalie Miller, an incredible aromatherapy professional and a great and gracious woman, to share her thoughts on the phenomenon of collecting essential oils. Between then and now, a lot of time has passed, and everything has changed. The whole world is impacted by a pandemic, this reverberates in the essential oil supply chains, and it is perhaps even more important to be mindful in our consumption. Rather than rewriting the post, we are publishing it unaltered. We hope you find it insightful! Sales season has been and gone – we’ve h ..read more
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Covid-19 and unfounded claims
Tisserand Institute
by Robert Tisserand
4y ago
by Robert Tisserand I have always believed that it is important for aromatherapy to move out of the realm of “quack medicine” and to be established as a viable modality. It is really not helpful to this process when claims are made for essential oils that have no established clinical basis. This may help to sell more essential oils, but it also undermines the validity of using them in healing. This has been highlighted with the current pandemic. Using essential oils is one thing, but claiming that any are viable treatments is quite another. When exactly does “sharing information” cross a red ..read more
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Essential Oils and the Immune System: Q&A with Dr. Petra Ratajc
Tisserand Institute
by Petra Ratajc
4y ago
Do essential oils influence our immune system directly? Dr. Ratajc answered this question during her Essential Oil Kinetics Masterclass in April 2020, and we thought you might find her answer interesting. Please note that this is related to physiological effects – not the effects on our psychological well-being, which is indeed linked to how our immune system functions.  Question: Hi Petra! I keep thinking of how EOs specifically could help us in this pandemic when the organism needs a strong immune system – let’s say phenol-rich oils? Or perhaps antioxidant EOs are not necessarily the b ..read more
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Essential Oils and Coronaviruses
Tisserand Institute
by Shannon Becker, PhD
4y ago
Shannon Becker, PhD RA On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 – a virus that was first seen in the Chinese city of Wuhan, and subsequently appeared in virtually every country in the world. The designation means that the epidemic of the virus and the disease it causes, COVID-19, has spread internationally, and through local transmission. Efforts to control the epidemic have failed. Pandemic declaration does not mean that the virus has become more infectious or more deadly, nor that individual risk has escalated (other than t ..read more
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Functional Group Theory – Does it Work?
Tisserand Institute
by Robert Tisserand
4y ago
By Robert Tisserand Note: below is a link to a full article, along with an Executive Summary in six languages. Nature is complex. A single essential oil can contain dozens of constituents, each one of which, alone, has certain properties. How do we make sense of such complexity in nature? We often turn to patterns, to broad categories, just to give us a “rough idea” of what’s going on. And sometimes this works well enough. But what if our “rough idea” is more wrong than right? You may not realize it, but much of the information taught and written about concerning essential oils i ..read more
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Phyt’Arom Conference Report 2019
Tisserand Institute
by Hana Tisserand
4y ago
by Hana Tisserand Robert and I try to keep in touch with the world-wide aromatherapy community. We do this through our students, who come from all parts of the globe, Robert’s speaking engagements – which took us to Japan and Singapore this year – and through attending conferences. Phyt’Arom Grasse had been such an amazing experience for us in 2017 (read our report here), it didn’t take us long to decide we would once again travel to the ‘World’s Perfumery Capital’ for its biannual showcase of French aromatherapy. Two years was enough to bring a palpable change. Essential oils, a ..read more
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Assessing the Safety of Essential Oils – the Nutmeg Case
Tisserand Institute
by Hana Tisserand
4y ago
“Is Nutmeg essential oil safe?” someone asked the Tisserand Institute in a FB message. This, and similar questions, were prompted by a post that claimed this particular oil should not be used in any form, due to its potential toxicity. And since this claim was supposedly based on Essential Oil Safety 2e, I felt that some clarification would be useful as a case study. How do we assess the safety of an essential oil? Essential Oil Safety 2e and safety guidelines Essential Oil Safety 2e contains the most comprehensive and up-to-date list of hazards present in essential oils, but it ..read more
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The Case for an Evidence-based Aromatherapy Practice
Tisserand Institute
by Tamara Agnew
5y ago
by Tamara Agnew PhD The current mood around aromatherapy is complex. There are companies and company representatives making ludicrous health claims which are damaging to the reputation and therefore the development of the practice. In contrast, there are the vocal cynics and critics who, using mostly offensive, ignorant language, insinuate that all complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) practice is sham, there is no evidence that it works (a very broad statement), those who practice it are quacks, and those who research it are pseudoscientists. Finally, there are practition ..read more
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What Is Aromatherapy? The Dividing Lines Between Feel-Good and Medicine
Tisserand Institute
by Petra Ratajc
5y ago
by Petra Ratajc, PhD Aromatherapy’s unique appeal is that something natural and fragrant can have beneficial effects on both body and mind at the same time. This therapeutic duality was recognized independently by ancient civilizations that incorporated aromatic plants into traditional medicines, rituals and everyday life long before distillation and essential oils were known. However, it was not until the 20th century that René-Maurice Gattefossé, a French chemist and perfumer, identified aromatherapy as a distinct discipline (Gattefossé, 1937). In broad terms, aromatherapy is th ..read more
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