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AromatherapyEssential oils are the volatile components of aromatic plants. You can find them in flowers (lavender, neroli), leaves (eucalyptus...), eucalyptus), bark (cinnamon, sassafras, sweet wood, sea pine), seed (carrot, anise, dill, fennel, caraway) and roots (angelica, valerian) among a whole range of plants. Essential oils have some functions in the plants, for instance the defense systems. Some people compare them with plant hormones, or with the Chi, the life force of the plants. In France, the country where modern aromatherapy was born, where up to today a big scientific knowledge is present a difference is made about two products: The "essence" which means the essential oil in its natural state in the plant and the "essential oil", the product obtained after a human intervention with different ways of extracting. Without some knowledge of the components of essential oils, aromatherapy is not possible: ignoring some negative aspects of some components could even be dangerous! Distiller Henri Viaud was one of the first to clearly mention it in his small book in 1983, later the book of Franchomme and Dr Penoel prepared the way to a real science of aromatherapy. It is not the intention to give a lesson in organic chemistry here, but a brief explanation of the building blocks of essential oils will be helpful. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen are essential to life itself, and all three are contained in every essential oil. They combine in countless mono- and sesquiterpenic families of hydrocarbons, alcohols, ketones, acids, phenols, esters and coumarins (and furocoumarins).
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