Much known are the beauty and health benefits of essential oils. The craze for this new natural and tested way to achieve beauty goals is reaching its pinnacles. While essential oils have been in use since ancient times and our ancestors have trusted miraculous healing and skin repair, relaxing and soothing powers of essential oils; these products are now gaining more visibility and importance in cosmetics industry. Let’s not forget their great role in aromatherapy as well. Since nature based products are gaining pace and reputation for their very wide safety and efficacy indices, all limelight is equally being shared by essential oils.

Essential oils are generally cold compressed or mechanically derived oily concentrates of beneficial herbs, plants, flowers, seeds, tree barks and other plant products. Their purity or no-chemical origin is the guarantee of their effectiveness and their nature based origin takes you back in the lap of Mother Nature. Essential oils are increasingly being used in various types of cosmetic products, skin care creams and lotions and even in some ointments and gels for common skin and other diseases. Following blog targets to enrich you with key pointers which can help you select your essential oils intelligently, so you can reap maximum benefits from your choice.

Know the source: Buying essential oils has become easy because numerous brands and vendors are offering them. But remember, cost is one major criterion while selecting high quality essential oils. NO we are not saying costlier is better but cheapest is for sure not high quality. This is so because production of essential oils is a high grade, high amount of raw material consuming, time consuming and precision requiring task. So probably, manufacturers offering lower prices might be compromising on quality somewhere. More over a small vial lasts long because only small amounts of pure essential oils are used for application (even when used daily) so investing money in good brands will be fruitful when you see beautifying benefits for yourself in long run.

Many factors affect the purity of essential oils. These include:

• Place where plant is grown
• Time of harvesting
• Season
• Variable climatic changes
• Distillation method used
• Storage techniques involved
• Processing and packaging methods involved.

All the above affect the purity of the essential oil which can be sometimes judged from its fragrance, but sometimes it cannot be judged at all. So, safest option remains to purchase from known quality vendors. Vendors or retailers specialising in essential oils can be trusted but only time tests them.

Purity standards: Organizations like National Association for Holistic Aromatherapy work to promote use and production of pure essential oils for cosmetic uses, healing purposes and aromatherapy.

• Look out for suppliers affiliated with such organisation or having membership of same.
• Another indicator could be mention of GC/MS tests or validations on bottles.

Pure and high quality oils are responsibility of suppliers but a promise most often broken for commercial benefits. In this hall full of brands and varieties, stick to brands you have previously tested, or trust word of mouth from reliable sources or else just go through list of accredited suppliers available on aromatherapy websites, to know about some good brands. Purity of essential oils is the promise for their efficacy so in no way can we rely on low grade or sub-standard products.

• Trust retailers who store and market ‘unsprayed’, ‘wild crafted’ or simply organic essential oils. Because plants grown in clean air, soil and water would guarantee pure essential oil yield.

The daunting task of selecting a suitable and appropriate bottle of essential oil is made easy with certain tips or pointers aforementioned. The selection process might cost you a lot of energy but getting hands on to what you need will take to close to better and beautiful life. Small vials of essential oils have loads of health secrets to be explored and put to use.

For more information on essential oils and their benefits, click here.