aromatherapy update

Aromatherapy in 2010.

Now I am a pensioner, and no longer rely on selling my services, this has freed me a little. Therefore, I have decided to consolidate and update into a single article information in other articles on this site. This is mainly for the benefit of new people who are not familiar with my past efforts to expose the dishonesty in aromatherapy. Aromatherapists can be wonderful caring people, but are rarely backed by accurate education on the products they use.

Aromatherapy web sites:

This week (Oct. 2010) I decided to do an Internet search on Juniper essential oil. The web sites continue to promote the sale of their oils intended for external use, but with therapeutics drawn from the respective herbs or oils as internal medicines. This grossly inaccurate aspect of aromatherapy never changes, mainly because it pushes oil sales. To this day, most schools and web sites continue with their nonsense on the properties of essential oils, and most of their readers believe them.

Below are examples from just four web sites, but a search will find hundreds of others making similar outrageous and dangerous claims. This is not an attempt to discredit any particular site, but just to give examples of the poor and misleading information out there.

http://www.essentialoils.co.za: "It is helpful when the prostate gland is enlarged and is used to help with the inability to pass urine, in cases of cystitis and kidney stones."
This is dangerously misleading. Even if used as internal medicine it is doubtful and very dangerous.

"For the liver, it has a tonic effect"
No essential oil applied to the skin can have such an effect.

"Juniper oil generally helps with the digestive system, particularly in cases of obesity, overindulgence of food". What when applied to the skin??

http://www.ehow.com: "juniper oil is known as an antiseptic and astringent in helping a variety of ailments, such as acne, eczema, kidney stones, dehydration and digestive issues."
No essential oils are "astringent" in fact they are all rubifacients which is the opposite action. As with the site above, we have this dangerous nonsense about kidney stones. Dehydration, where the heck does that crazy information come from?

http://beauty.indobase.com: "Juniper oil is extremely beneficial in treating kidney stones. It aids in retaining the fluids in the body, thereby preventing the body from being dehydrated." Kidney stones once again!!
As to it retaining moisture in the body, that is abject nonsense. Given internally it has an irritating effect on the kidneys causing expulsion of urine, the opposite to their claims.

http://100pureessentialoils.com: "Juniper oil is used externally to cleanse the body, ridding it of excess fluids, and is helpful with kidney and bladder problems".
Same comments as above, total nonsense!

"Pure juniper berry oil is also listed as helpful in obesity and cellulite as it is known to remove toxins, is a diuretic, and has (physical) cleansing properties".
Nothing but sales hype. There is no evidence whatsoever that juniper oil is useful in obesity or acts as a diuretic if used externally.

Most of the claims on Juniper oil make no attempt to differentiate between the uses of the essential oil taken internally and its use in massage. Many of the properties given such as "diuretic" cannot be achieved via external application of the oil, that and similar claims are just beauty therapy hype to lure gullible customers. Some sites try to cover their back by giving a list of reference books, but they do not tell you most of these are on herbal medicine.

Is the information on such sites deliberately misleading?
In many cases the answer is yes. Many are there just as sales outlets, not really to aid peoples health.

Is it because the site owners are not aware their claims are wrong?
Yes this can be the case, especially where the owners have taken the many lousy courses around, or had their minds controlled by companies such as Young Living.

Why does no one tell them they are wrong?
Mainly, because most of those who know better, are also traders and do not want to offer competitors good information. Also, because most trade associations do not monitor what their members do or say.

Should I as web user tell them?
You can try, but in my long experience it usually goes in one ear and out the other. Only rarely will you find a trader willing to change their ways, but hey it's worth a try.

Should I inform regulatory authorities?
I would not unless the site has been informed so that they can change what they claim, if they don't do that, then yes report them.

Are these errors you report not just one persons opinion?
This is something my opponents will often hide behind. There are facts and there are opinions. I base reviews on facts that I can prove if challenged, not on trade hype.

University and College courses:

In the UK & USA, many of these course are of highly suspect quality. The scientific aspects such as microbiology, horticulture, A/P etc. are often fine. However, where they fail, is their reliance on the works of popular aromatherapy figures for their information about therapeutics. They also rely heavily on incorrect extrapolations of therapeutic activity based on single chemicals as is mentioned in several of my articles.

Several of the leading name teachers on these University courses have been appointed simply on the basis of them publishing books and research articles that gain them a 'name'. The fact their so called 'research articles' have been castigated for their inaccuracy by real experts, rarely becomes public. Scientific and Medical journals are notorious for not printing exposures of errors in such articles. Beware of peer reviewed articles in aromatherapy, the "peers" rarely know enough about the subjects that they are reviewing.

Some of these courses use lecturers who have no experience or training within the essential oils trade and frequently have only taken aromatherapy courses of very doubtful quality. The administrators assume if a teacher or course is approved by a trade organisation then they should be OK - far from it!

I have had reports from students in UK colleges of further education who say their teachers refuse to answer vital questions. Often the teacher will instruct a student to find the answer themselves, that is fine for teaching them how to do documentary research, but is not fine when the answer comes out of an aromatherapy book or from a suppliers web site which it commonly does. Often the teachers use such research done by students to improve their own lacking knowledge.

Aromatherapy as a profession:

The sausage machine of private and public funded training schools continues its work unabated. The trade organisations have never attempted to restrict intake into the trade to make it more professional. They dare not because most of their founder members run schools. Many of these schools started life as beauty training outfits, that trade is notorious for training young therapists, most of whom drop out after a few years through lack of employment opportunities as they age. Thus the cycle continues unabated as a money making racket for the course providers. With my own course, I will no longer accept new students in the UK wanting to make aromatherapy a career. This is because prospects for anything other than part time work are remote.

In some countries the market has not been flooded with thousands of badly trained part timers like in the UK, and therefore career prospects are better. On the other hand, in most countries aromatherapy education is still based around the UK and US models which are very low in quality and accuracy.

Aromatherapy organisations:

Numerous organisations around the world continue validating teachers and courses who provide the standard trade hype. Some give students the impression that they are approved validation authorities, when in reality they are private for-profit companies. Some are based around a central charity, but their member schools still teach the same old junk that has been taught for years. The 'standards' all these organisations say they adhere to are a joke. The real standards of teaching accurate verified information on their therapy do not exist. When I have challenged what some of these validating organisations are allowing their members to teach, I am met by a fire wall of hostility as they do not like their real standards challenged. Instead, they prefer to put up convincing web sites with misleading educational jargon.

Membership apathy prevails in most aromatherapy trade organisations, that equals dictatorship and abuse of power which is common in most complementary medicine associations.

Legislation:

Difficult to be precise here because this varies a lot around the world. Most countries do not have State approved standards for aromatherapy. For example, there is often legislation over massage, and increasingly a lot of legislation over the sale and supply of essential oils. Anyone interested in training needs to check out the laws in their own country. Anyone supplying essential oils will be faced with a lot more hurdles over legislation and need to be ultra cautious.

Sadly, numerous aromatherapy suppliers continue making unfounded and illegal medicinal claims to sell their oils, frequently because they have either no training in the subject, or have taken one of the many appalling quality courses. Never forget anyone can set up a flashy Internet site and start selling essential oils. Rarely are illegal operators prosecuted by the enforcement authorities. Even in the UK, with our old laws on medicinal claims, the MHRA agency of the Department of Health are not fit for purpose and can take a year to take action against rogue companies.

Essential oils:

I am tempted to write a book on the history of the aromatherapy supplies trade as it has grown at a fantastic rate since the 1980s. What most therapists are not taught is that aromatherapy suppliers are tiny fish in an International trade in essential oils. Below is the structure and function of the traders.

Producers: These are mainly large agricultural concerns producing essential oils by the ton. Some such as Turkish rose, are produced via small growers all feeding into a central processing factory who then sell in bulk. We do also have a number of small scale growers who sometimes do distillation. However, the vast bulk of the worlds essential oils originate from the big agricultural producers and not the tiny growers as many aromatherapy companies would have you believe.

International dealers: These very large organisations deal mainly with the big producers. Some 'deal' in essential oils as commodities like coffee and tea and rarely involve themselves with handling the oil. These traders seldom involve themselves with aromatherapy suppliers as that is too small volume for them. They tend to supply the big essential oil users such as food and flavour trades and perfumers.

Middlemen wholesalers: There are a variety of different sized operations here. Some also do not deal with aromatherapy as it is too small, but instead they resupply the smaller wholesalers.

Aromatherapy suppliers: Again a huge range in size of businesses ending up with many one person, kitchen sink operations. Incidentally, that is how most aromatherapy suppliers who are now big names started up. Often without any knowledge of what they were selling.

Some aromatherapy suppliers will buy small volumes of oil direct from producers, but often those sales are only a tiny part of their total sales. The remainder come from middlemen wholesalers many of which cannot be trusted on quality issues. Some of these middlemen will tell aromatherapy suppliers anything to achieve a sale. Many (if not the majority) of aromatherapy suppliers, just regurgitate on their web sites what the oil trade con artists have told them, or regurgitate what they have read in aromatherapy novels.

Some aromatherapy suppliers will do their utmost to ensure they only sell genuine oils by having basic analysis done, or by dealing with a selection of small producers directly. The problem is that essential oils adulteration further up the chain can now be so sophisticated that only expensive analysis by a trade expert can detect good fakes. That kind of cost is beyond the financial means of most aromatherapy suppliers. There are of course other aromatherapy suppliers who will buy the cheapest junk they can and resell it at the highest price they can get away with. It is very much a case of buyer beware and ask questions. When I was on the newsgroups I got so tired of those saying "I trust my supplier", yet I knew some of these suppliers were liars and worse.

Beware of essential oils originating in far flung countries where "organic certification" is being offered. Do not believe a fraction of what essential oil suppliers will tell you on this issue.

Beware of flashy web sites covered in logos of conservation and other organisations, all designed to fool the eye and deceive you. A genuine supplier will answer questions on their oils except giving you the name of the producers or suppliers they buy from.

Martin Watt. "Oh he is always so negative"- the common comment you will hear coming from the aromatherapy trade con artists, or those who have this mad idea that to criticize wrong doing is politically incorrect, or that everyone has a place in this trade.