What is Young Living Therapeutic Grade Essential Oils?

When talking about therapeutic essential oils, what does it mean? How do I know I am getting quality oils?

Lets ask some questions on what a therapeutic grade oil should be...
Are the fragrances subtle, rich, organic, and delicate?
Are they distilled in small batches, rather than processed on a large-scale?
Does your supplier send each batch of oils through up to five different chemical analyses before it is released?
Are these tests performed by independent labs?
Does your supplier grow and distill its own organically grown herbs?
Are the distillation facilities part of the farm where the herbs are grown to maintain potency?
Does your supplier use low-pressure and low temperature to distill the essential oils?
Are the distillation cookers fabricated from stainless-steel alloys to reduce the likelihood of the oils chemically reacting with metal?
Does your supplier have representatives personally inspect fields and distilleries where the herbs are grown and distilled?
Do they scrutinize the facilities to check that no synthetic chemicals are being used in any of the processes?


Looking at Young Living's process from start (Seed) to finish (Seal) and you will understand why they are classified as Young Living Therapeutic Grade Essential Oils.

The process Young Living uses when planting, cultivating, harvesting, and distilling a batch of oil is crucial to retaining its vital compounds. Without the exact blend of naturally-occurring plant chemicals, an essential oil can lose its beneficial properties and fail to produce the desired effect.

Plants
An oil's potency can be affected not only by selecting the proper plant to cultivate, but also by where the plant is grown, the quality of soil in which the seed is planted, and even the time of day it's harvested.
Young Living has extensive experience selecting the correct species of plant for desired oil potency, planting under optimal conditions, using ideal soil and natural methods to encourage growth, and knowing the precise time to harvest each crop. Only those plants that produce the most active and widest array of therapeutic compounds are selected.

Preparation
Once the optimal soil, plant, cultivation, and harvesting conditions have been adhered to, the plants must be distilled properly in order to meet Young Living Therapeutic Grade standards. Young Living uses a gentle, proprietary technique for steam-extracting the most potent essential oils, which remains unmatched throughout the essential oils industry.
To meet Young Living Therapeutic Grade distillation standards proper temperature must be maintained throughout the distillation process, and pressure, length of time, equipment, and batch size are strictly monitored.

Purity
Young Living Therapeutic Grade standards prohibit the acceptance of any diluted, cut or adulterated oils. Every product Young Living produces—essential oils, oil blends, nutritional supplements, or personal care—meets strict purity standards.
Every batch of essential oils is subjected to rigorous, state-of-the-art analysis at the Young Living chemistry lab. Using some of the most advanced equipment in the world, our scientists subject every batch of essential oils to Gas Chromatograph and Mass Spectrometer testing, and heavy metals analysis. Oils that exhibit even the slightest hint of possible adulteration or tampering are rejected.

Potency
The culmination of the preceding three stages, Potency means that the naturally occurring compounds contained in each essential oil product are of the highest and most consistent bioactive levels. Without strict adherence to the Young Living Therapeutic Grade standard in the Plant, Preparation, and Purity phases, the final product would not have the necessary potency to create the desired effect.

Young Living owns the 4 largest distillers, partners with the next 2 largest, distills on 5 continents, farms much of their own production. Young Living can produce a GC (Gas Chromatography)/MS (mass spectrometry) analysis for any of their oils. YL spends a million dollars annually just on testing. They test every batch. They have 20+ employees on quality control. They spent $750,000 this year alone on state of the art in house testing equipment.
Young Living monitors almost every oil seed to seal and overseas all other processes, distills all of their own and tests every batch and still discards large percentages of their oil because it is not therapeutic grade and that is sold to brokers and then sold to other retailers and perfume industry.

Young Living
is the first company to use oils intra-muscularly,
is the first company to use oils intra-venously,
is the first company to use oils as dietary supplements approved by the FDA and Health Canada,
is the only company that is AFNOR, EC and ISO certified Therapeutic Grade-In Europe, the French Association of Normalization, also known as AFNOR, and the International Standards Organization (ISO), have set standards for therapeutic-grade essential oils. They provide a set of established standards that outline the chemical profile and principal constituents that quality essential oils should have. Considered the "gold standard" for testing essential oils, the AFNOR standard is most stringent, and distinguishes true therapeutic-grade essential oils from Grade A essential oils that lack the same chemistry,
oils never expire because there are never fillers, water or any other chemicals added,
oils are used topically neat(undiluted) even on day old infants etc.


“Here is an example of the importance of precise timing during distillation. Cypress has 280 known chemical constituents, and all 280 constituents must be present for Cypress to have medicinal and healing potency. If it is distilled for 20 hours, only 20 of the 280 properties are released. If distilled for 26 hours, none of the properties are released. Most Cypress available in the US market is distilled for about 3 1/2 hours. The correct length of time for distilling Cypress is 24 hours, releasing all 280 properties.” Debra Raybern

According to "The Complete Book of Essential Oils & Aromatherapy" by Valerie Ann Worwood, you can do a test with the oils to see if they are pure and not adulterated with carrier oils or other chemicals. She states that "Pure essential oils when dropped on blotting paper will impregnate it, then evaporate and disperse, leaving no oily patch. Other vegetable oils, on the other hand, will leave an oily mark. There are some exceptions to this rule: vetiver, for example, is viscous and more difficult to identify when diluted in a base oil."

A couple other points she makes on telling if an oil is a quality pure essential oil, is there is no standard price on each of the oils. Example Jasmine will be priced way higher then say grapefruit. Or sandalwood vs lime. Never buy oils that are not stored in brown or dark colored glass container away from heat, light and dampness.





Info taken from Youngliving.com and Terry Tillaart for informational purposes.


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