With the essential oil trend growing worldwide, it’s been getting harder to find quality essential oils and blends that optimize our health and wellbeing.
Essential oils are known for boosting our mood, reducing anxiety and pain, improving our sleep and our performance during the day, and many other things. Because of that, the demand for good essential oils is rising quickly, and with that, the number of scams out there in the market.
Fake essential oils are more common than you might expect, and there are signs you need to be aware of when shopping for the real deal. Avoid the scams with these seven tips for determining the quality of essential oils.
- Essential Oils vs Fragrance Oils
The first essential tip is to learn the difference between these two because people sometimes tend to get them confused.
Essential oils are natural oils that come from plants. They smell great and have many beneficial properties for our health and wellbeing.
On the other hand, fragrance oils are synthetic and made with artificial substances. Because of that, they are usually cheaper than essential oils. Also, they don’t have the health properties that come from plants.
- Look at the Name
Authentic essential oils are named after the plant they were extracted from. Lavender, Peppermint, and Sandalwood have known names that can also be attributed to fragrance oils.
Instead, look for the scientific, Latin name of those plants (like Lavandula Angustifolia for Lavender, for example) to make sure that the source of the oil is genuinely natural.
- Test the Oil on Paper
To test the purity of your essential oil, pour a drop of it over a white piece of paper and wait for it to dry, which takes about 30-45 minutes.
After that, check the paper and see if you find any leftover oil in a ring shape. Also, touch the paper and notice if it feels greasy.
These are signs of fake essential oils that have been mixed with other substances.
- Check the Price
A lot of plant material goes into making small bottles of essential oil. Because of that, true and natural oils tend to be a little more expensive than fake and artificial ones.
If you pay bargain prices for your essential oils, they are probably not entirely natural.
- Look at Package Claims
Pure essential oil bottles require a claim saying that the oil is “100% pure,” or any similar statement. This statement should be visible to the client.
If you can’t find those words printed on the bottle you purchase, that oil is probably mixed with synthetic materials.
- Sniff It Out
The oil matter extracted from plants tends to be highly concentrated and has a pretty solid and characteristic smell. That’s why many people use a scent diffuser machine when working with them.
When shopping for these products, open the bottle and sniff it. Identifying the scent of the oil and feeling it strongly entering your nose are signs of high-quality essential oils.
Natural essential oils are supposed to have a pleasant smell, with no traces of alcohol or any synthetic aroma you cannot identify.
- Send Them to a Professional
If you are still unsure about the purity of the oils you buy, you can always send them to a professional lab that will chemically test them.
This allows you to be 100% sure about the quality of your oils.
The Quality of Essential Oils
Pure essential oils are a hot and expensive commodity right now because of their numerous health properties. Because of that, there are a lot of fake essential oils in the market, and we need to be wise to avoid them and to know the quality of essential oils we chose to purchase.
Check our website and other posts to learn more about how you can use these oils in your home and daily life!
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