Essential Oils for Herbalists with Hana Tisserand: Safety, Quality, and Sustainability

Essential oils are powerful tools, but they’re also some of the most misunderstood substances in modern herbalism. Safety concerns, quality questions, and sustainability issues are real, and sorting through the marketing noise to find reliable information isn’t easy. This episode cuts through the confusion.

Hana Tisserand, internationally respected essential oil educator and author, joins me to talk about how herbalists can use essential oils confidently and responsibly. We cover safety guidelines that actually make sense, how to assess quality when you’re buying oils, what sustainability really means in the essential oil industry, and how to integrate aromatherapy into your herbal practice without overwhelm.

If you’ve been curious about essential oils but unsure where to start, this conversation offers a solid, grounded foundation.

You’ll learn:

• What essential oils are, and what they are not
• Why essential oil safety requires more nuance than most people realize
• How quality, sourcing, and sustainability impact both people and plants
• Common misconceptions herbalists should be cautious of
• When essential oils make sense in herbal practice, and when they don’t

If you’ve ever felt unsure about essential oils, overwhelmed by conflicting advice, or curious about how they fit into responsible

If you're feeling all the feels with the state of our world these days, I want to invite you to a free herb class I"m hosting this Saturday January 31st at 11am PST.

It's called Herbal Support for Nervous System Resilience- Staying Regulated When the World Is On Fire

You can sign up for free here. 

Wondering how you can use your herbal skills to help people when times are tough?

Grab Medicine For The People - An Herbalist's Guide To Showing Up For Your Community In Times of Need

It's loaded with ideas and resources to help you help others!💚 Click here to ge

We're seeing more home herbalists pop up in the world today, and it's so beautiful to see!

That also truly skilled and knowledgeable herbalists that can go beyond surface level herbalists, and guide others on their healing journey. 

If you're feeling that call, I invite you to check out the Community Herbalist Certification & Mentorship here. 

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Guest Setup
• 5:00 Ancestry, Resilience, And Context
• 11:50 Herbalism As Rebellion In America
• 17:52 Beyond Aromatherapy Labels
• 25:07 What Essential Oils Actually Are
• 31:17 Choosing Routes That Match The Goal
• 38:02 Quality, Sourcing, And Sustainability
• 48:17 MLM Claims And Standardization
• 54:52 Building A Scent Library, Not A Stash
• 1:02:02 Citrus Phototoxicity Made Clear
• 1:08:32 Learning More And Final Takeaways
• 1:12:27 Closing And Listener Reminder

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 2:05

Hello, hello, and welcome to this next episode here on the Herbalist Path. I know that you are going to absolutely love this particular episode, especially if you've ever thought about essential oils or you've thought about how to handle the times that we are handling right now here in the United States and all over the world and the different things that may be very, very challenging to deal with. And I had this great pleasure of bringing on a guest to this show. Her name is Hannah Tisserand, and she is with the Tisserand Institute, where they do some deep scientific explorations of what essential oils are and how they can be a therapeutic in various different ways, and definitely going beyond the trendy stuff you see on social media. And usually when I hop into a podcast episode with a guest, we spend quite a bit of time just chatting and setting up things and answering questions and whatnot. But Hanna hopped on and the conversation was amazing and deep from the start. And I just let her roll. She really brought into perspective, she's from Prague, Czechoslovakia. And we started immediately talking about the current situations here in the United States that are happening. And she really brought it back to the relevance of the strength of her ancestors, the strength of her mother, her grandmother, her great-grandmother when Czechoslovakia was going through so many uh challenging times. And just listening to her story, her family's story, her origin was just the medicine I needed in this show. And then, of course, she did bring on her incredible depth of knowledge on essential oils and shared so much in this episode. It was an absolute honor, left me fully intoxicated for my day. And I can't wait for you to tap in to this show and share it with those that you know and love. If you find it insightful, be sure you do follow Hana at the Tisseran Institute and also share it with your friends far and wide. Yeah, that's it. Quick intro from me. I know you're gonna love this and I hope you enjoy. Take care. Welcome to the Herbalist Path. If you love learning about the power of plant medicine and how to use it in your life, this show is for you. I'm Mel Mutterspa, clinical herbalist, herbal educator, and your host. In each episode, you're gonna hear me sharing herbal insights and knowledge from my 25 plus years of working with and learning from the plants. Plus, I'm gonna share interviews with some of the most amazing herbalists, educators, farmers, and healers out there, all bringing their herbal wisdom here for you. Really, this show is all about continuing this movement to put an herbalist in every home and a healer in every community. Again, thank you so much for listening and welcome to the herbalist path. Enjoy the show. Hi, how are you? I'm all right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 5:38

Well, thank you so much for hopping on for the show. Oh, cool. Thank you. Thank you for having me. And well, we've got looking out my ground.

SPEAKER_02: 5:48

We like books and knowledge and solid science-backed wisdom, also honoring tradition. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 5:58

Absolutely. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02: 6:00

Yeah. So you say it you're okay. Is that an implication to the absolute poop storm of what is happening here in the United States?

SPEAKER_00: 6:08

It's a combination of so many things, but mostly the fact that I put my pop down two weeks, two days ago, which was that was the biggest one. These happenings in the US, well, coming from Eastern Europe comes very handy. Yeah. When you realize that the things you thought you were everybody told you're paranoid about, like, no. Um, I know these things happen, and I've my family's lived through this. So yeah, I had a I think I had a jump start on processing, like foreshadowing everything right after the election, where I basically didn't sleep for a month. Because I'm like, okay, these are the things that are going to happen. And I know they're going to happen because I've seen that happen to my family or to, you know, in the not so distant past in my family. So I guess that's a that's lucky.

SPEAKER_02: 7:03

It's like you're I mean it it helps in preparation for the next time around.

SPEAKER_00: 7:09

Yeah, yeah. It's just kind of like, you know, a bit a bit less of a shocked Pikachu face and more of like, yep, and it's probably gonna get worse. Talk to your Eastern European friends if you don't trust your friends of color.

SPEAKER_02: 7:23

Yeah, yeah. I thought you have so much insight and wisdom to share in that realm and like how how to get through it and maintain some semblance of sanity when everything feels consistently insane and wrong.

SPEAKER_00: 7:43

And honestly, what helps me most was like was looking at my great-grandma and my grandma, because our like the women lineage is in my family, is incredibly strong. And my great-grandma was born in the early 1900s. She was very cultured, incredibly smart. She was set to go to university in like 1930s Europe, but she was the generation that had been called for forced labor to Germany. It wasn't like fully forced, it wasn't yet like completely camp, but there was a generation that was just supposed to go to Reich to work, or she could get married and stay. So she got married instead of pursuing whatever she wanted to do. My grandmother, her firstborn was born in 1940, and her brother was born in 1942. So my great-grandmother made it through the Second World War in an area of Czechoslovakia that was not in a great shape. She exchanged knitted goods for food, and my grandma's earliest memory is running from the city as it was being bombed, and her being so nervous that she needed to go to the toilet and they had to stop. But her mom was like, No, we have to go, we have to go. So that's my great-grandmother raised the family in that space. And then my grandmother went through 1968. And I don't know if you know what happened in Prague in 1968. I do not. So we had a communist regime from 1948 till 1989, but in the 60s, there was a sort of softening of the regime. There was a lot of cultural opening to the world, there was a lot of cultural exchange with like France, and you know, it looked like okay, we're gonna have what they called socialism with a human face. And there was an easening, and that's when like the a lot of the film industry blossoming happened and you know, stuff like that. But the Soviet Union did not like that. And in August 1968, they sent tanks of the Warsaw Pact to occupy Czechoslovakia and to occupy Prague. Well, 1968, my mom was five, and my grandma was pregnant with her brother, and they had to be in Prague, otherwise, in the summer they would be in what you got, countryside where you know that was my grandpa's ancestral home. So we would spend the summers there. So they were supposed to be there, but because my mom had a medical appointment, they happened to be in Prague on the day when the Soviet tanks rolled into the city, and one of them was aimed at their building. Wow. And so my grandma went through this and survived and raised her family, and had, you know, one more child afterwards. The uncle that she was pregnant with in 1968 actually was a part of the 1989 Velvet Revolution that tore down the communist regime. He got beaten up uh in one of the first protests. But so my grandma, you know, lived through that and managed to live and managed to create a wonderful family. And then I was born three years before the revolution, and my mom had a very young child during a very uncertain time because they did not know for the longest time how it's gonna shake and whether we'll have another 70s with political prosecution and in you know, labor camps and all of that. So just looking at that ancestry of very strong women that have not only gone through very difficult periods, but have raised families, sustained families, and raised strong children through all of that. It's like, hey, this these are my roots. Yeah. This is who I come from. This is who raised me. And I was very lucky that I got my great-grandma for a long time. She is an incredible inspiration. She got divorced later, you know, the one that was forced to marry so that she wouldn't be sent off. Right. Uh, which also wasn't a super common thing to do. She taught me the value of quality clothing because she was a seamstress. I still have clothes that she made for me. Oh, I love that. And so just looking at her and looking at you know how she went through that. My my grandma, her daughter, is one of the most caring people. She introduced me to herbs, but she was also a nurse. Like the definition of a caring, nurturing person. There is within the medical establishment, but she's the one who made lemon balm tea for me in the evening so that we would have a good night's sleep. And and we would gather yarrow together. That was the first three herbs that I learned to recognize was lemon balm, yarrow, and ladies' mantle, I think. Yeah. So, you know, and and then my mom, who's a pediatrician. Nice. Also a caring person. So that's helpful both for the moment we find ourselves in, yeah. And just kind of informing, you know, who I am, who I have been, and and you know, what where I stand in my two feet.

SPEAKER_02: 14:33

I love that. I am feeling so inspired and powerful and empowered and in awe. That's that's amazing. Like technically, we haven't even started the show yet, but that's going into the show.

SPEAKER_00: 14:48

No, it's really, but yeah, it's really helpful to, you know, to to contextualize this and also to contextualize, like, if I know that many Americans are reasonably freaked out, yeah. For one reason or another, they were not aware of this being the nature of you know, many of the state institutions. And it's helpful to look at people in the sort of collective, the you know, the the cultural sense to see how they have withstand times like that. Like I mean, even during my living family's lifetime, so my grandma's lifetime, the country itself changed regimes and shapes and borders like four times.

SPEAKER_01: 15:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 15:35

But the people are still there. You still live your lives, you still raise your families, you still do that. You do what you have to do to take care of yourself, to take care of your community, to protect those that you can protect.

unknown: 15:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 15:50

That's great to hear because I am definitely one of those Americans that's freaked out and I've gone through both times of like, oh my God, what are we gonna do? And also, like, hey, I have to maintain my own sense of mental health and well-being. I have to continue to stand where I know I'm doing good for people and the planet. Yeah. I have to continue to make the impact that I know I'm here to make, which, you know, it can be a struggle for sure, obviously, right? But that's where wise and powerful people come up from as well. I think it's so important. So to hear you say that after coming from your lineage with these deep-rooted experiences in your family and women who carried on making a difference, doing their care, giving roles and raising their families and continuing to live life even when there's extreme upheaval and violence and wrongness being done everywhere. Yeah.

unknown: 16:55

Yeah. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00: 16:57

And I and I'll tell my ancestors that they're they don't the thing is, they don't even realize that until I kind of pointed it to my grandma. I said, Grandma, that must have been really, really tough for you. She just didn't even think in that terms. You know, it just happened. They just managed. I mean, she's aware that it was tough.

SPEAKER_01: 17:18

Right.

SPEAKER_00: 17:18

But I think it never got really acknowledged. You know, the bravery never got acknowledged.

SPEAKER_02: 17:24

I think often in times when at least this has been my experience throughout life, when I'm going through very challenging times, you just make it through. And then, you know, years later, you're like, oh wow. That was tough. That was really challenging. No wonder why that might have an impact. Yeah. And I made it the best that I could in that moment of life and time. So yeah, that's good. Good juicy stuff. This is exactly what I need right now. Like, I was going through creating questions to ask you for this show, and I'm like, those are irrelevant.

SPEAKER_00: 18:01

Yeah, I mean they're irrelevant too, but it's all connected. It's all connected.

SPEAKER_02: 18:04

It really, really is. And like I I've been reflecting on this a lot. Like, I think I got into herbalism as an act of rebellion. Like I was a young, rebellious child since a teen. And when I started discovering plants as medicine, like my family was very involved in not involved. They succumbed to the words of our broken Western medical system quite easily. We'll put it that way. They were not nurses or doctors, they were government workers. My mom was a social worker. Rest, like heck yes, she's very powerful in that way. And my father was an Air Force aircraft mechanic. So yeah, just gosh, I lost my train of thought.

SPEAKER_00: 18:54

The herbalism as a rebellion as an act of rebellion. I mean, damn the coming, coming from you know, that's an incredible thing about the Central European medical tradition, is that it never got divorced from herbs. It never got divorced, it always was in you still get that in the pharmacy. There's still huge collaboration, and it's just kind of it's the spectrum of possibilities is always there. While here, and I know that from one of our wonderful graduates and colleagues, uh, she lives in she lives in Alaska, but she's kind of straddling the two traditions. One was the the African-American herbalist tradition, and the other one was which was her family, I believe, and then her husband's family, which was the full medicine cabinet in the bathroom. And I remember she telling me, like she went to his home for the first time and you know, saw the kind of the movie thing when you open the cabinets like full of full of pharmaceuticals and it completely two different worlds. That's not the case in where I come from. So becoming a herbalist is an act of rebellion. Sounds sounds amazing and kind of funny. So in in Czech, the the sort of stereotype is like the granny herbalist. It's not quite a Baba Yaga, but it's like, you know, it's like the granny with like the babushka scarf, just going in the forest collecting her herbs. So, like, hey, I'm a rebel, I'm gonna stick it to the van by getting into herbs is wonderful. I love that.

SPEAKER_02: 20:32

It is funny. And I like what you were saying. I remember I was born in Germany, but left when I was four. So I grew up very American girl. It was an Air Force base, you know. But I went back when I was 31 and I went on a solo backpacking trip around Europe, wherever my soul decided to go. And I remember seeing all the apothecaries everywhere and how they were integrating, you know, the pharmaceuticals and the herbals, which makes so much sense. So I love the vision of the grandmother with the babush gun, you know, out in the field with a basket or you know, a swath of cloth to gather the herbs in, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just beautiful. Yeah. And yeah, I still did it as an act of rebellion. Yeah. It's amazing. And it's still like, let me help more rebels get out there and do the rebel yell, you know. I think it's so important. Oh gosh, this is great. I'm so excited for this conversation. I yeah, I want to hear more about you. Like, obviously, that's some of your roots. And you had your grandmother introducing you to ladies' mantle and yarrow and lemon balm and your mama doing the same. And here are these nurses, these healers, this pediatrician using these plant medicines. So they're again like this is all integrated and should be again here in the States, right? I think it's happening more as a trend because in the United States, we're such a trendy culture for lack of better.

SPEAKER_00: 22:02

Very, very, very industrial. Yeah. Everything needs to become an industry in a way. So that's uh that's a bit of a challenge. Like, okay, you you have to make it profitable somehow, which but that's a different conversation.

SPEAKER_02: 22:17

But it is a different and a big conversation that I could definitely speak on for a long time, but it I'm perfect evidence of how that's such a a piece of this culture. I mean, yeah, we all have to make money in one way, shape, or form, but how can we do it with respect and honor as well? You know, becomes a whole nother, whole nother world of speak right there.

SPEAKER_00: 22:41

That is possibly a different socioeconomic podcast on like, okay, let's let's see how to, you know, how to curb the real the relentless optimization for profit and make things actually sustainable. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02: 22:57

And for me, that was another piece of it all is the sustainability of it all. Like I fell into it. I was a backpacking guide and wilderness therapist, and all I wanted to do was get more people to connect with nature so that they would be uh more deeply inspired to take better care of our plants. And that continued to evolve. And so I would love to hear a little bit more about what you're doing today with your work because I do love how you are also very much integrating the science of plant medicines and these more folk traditions and bringing it all together to also educate other people and help them use this responsibly, ethically, sustainably, all of that.

SPEAKER_00: 23:42

Yeah. Well, it really is kind of a, you know, it's a combination of all of my uh, all that I bring to it and all that Robert, uh, my husband, partner with crime, you know, the the the brain behind uh the the Sran Institute, as well as my brain being there. Um all of that combined, it leads to exactly that. Like we're not uh we consciously decided not to teach aromatherapy. Because if you ask anyone what aromatherapy is, you'll get 10 different definitions from 10 different people, and it's very restrictive usually, and um it boxes you in something. And we decided to take a truly holistic look at essential oils, which are a tool of aromatherapy, not doesn't always have to be essential oils. We've got different extracts, we have just the aroma of anything, and sometimes you get therapeutic benefits from smelling a very synthetic fragrance because it opens something in somebody's mind and soul. But anyhow, we decided to to do that, and it made sense to me because my brain is built to want to understand the why behind everything. Yep. How and the why. How do we get here? Why are we here? Why are we doing something? Um, and is the thing that I'm using the best tool to do that, and why am I saying that it is? What is my decision based on? And it really rounds it up to um, okay, let's understand what an essential oil is, which means let's understand where it comes from, let's understand and not only which company is selling it, but you know, uh which plant is it from? How do you get it from the plant? What does it do to the plant? Um is it something that can be easily reproduced on a large scale, or are we, you know, literally evaporating populations because we like the smell of something? Uh so you understand the plant, you understand what the essential oil is, what function it plays in the plant. Because, well, okay, if we're gonna get technical, plants don't create essential oils, they create volatile organic compounds. And whenever you smell a plant, that's what you're smelling. We just distill them. So then understanding the process of distillation, what that does, and then understanding what the product is and what the powers are of that product, how does it impact your body? How does it impact the environment? What does it do? And the the blessing and the curse of essential oils is that they are usable and useful for so many different areas of our life and for so many different areas of healing. And that was another reason why we thought, okay, well, let's look at everyone who uses them, who wants to use them, and let's equip each and every one of these people with the knowledge they can have so that they can make their own decisions and they can understand the tool they're using. And we're talking about massage therapists, we're talking about cosmetic formulators, we're talking about herbalists, of course. There's a lot of misunderstanding of essential oils in the herbalism space. Um, we're talking about pharmacists. Um, they like to come to us because we speak their language. And I like talking to them because, you know, we can we can go down in uh what's the pharmacokinetics of this constituent and they know what we're talking about. But also, um, you have the the mom at home who's got a kid with a colleague and she goes on social media and reads, well, you know, put um chamomile oil on their gums. And that's another person who wants to use essential oils because they have become a part of the um popular discourse, for better or worse, usually worse. Yeah, I agree. So we uh we and I I tried to embark on a mission to um do a sort of okay, so you want to use essential oils. Okay, let me show you what you need to know to do that in a meaningful way for what you are trying to do, for what your why is with these essential oils. And sometimes you might find that you actually do not want to use essential oils. And sometimes you might find that what you thought they were going to be useful for, unfortunately, no, but they can be useful around that space. Typically cancer, and I know that's that's probably very similar with herbalism, because you know, the big scary C-word cancer, everybody is trying to grasp at anything that gives any kind of hope. And again, if someone says we had this with Frankensen's essential oil, frankincense is going to cure cancer. It doesn't matter what cancer, it doesn't matter what stage. So you will get messages from people trying to okay, my insert any loved one. Yes, how can I use frankincense oil or what can I do with essential oils? And then you have to have the um the compassion, the knowledge base and the diplomacy to talk them down from finding a glimpse of hope. I'm so sorry, but there's nothing that tells us that this is going to do what you hope it's going to do. However, it can, you know, you can work with people to help ease your anxiety, ease your fear, um ease your loved one's anxiety and fear, and give their body the best chance to fight this off. But it's not gonna be the the weapon.

SPEAKER_02: 30:05

I love hearing that perspective, and it absolutely correlates to what happens in the world of herbalism. The the cute meme goes out on social media and it spreads so quickly. I like to say make herbalism spread like wildflowers, but that's what the misinformation on social media tends to do. And you do get hit up with things like this. And it it brings me just, I just started a new cohort in our community herbalist program like this week. And immediately one of our students who's who's fabulous, she's wonderful, and I understand where she's coming at with this question. Um, but immediately is like, hey, I heard that pine needles are great for headaches, but I'm afraid I'm gonna find one that's toxic. So how can I know which pine needle is good for headaches? And I'm like, hold on. Um you're jumping the gun here. Let's really focus on like, why are these headaches happening? And what are the different attributes of a certain plant that may help this person? How can we handle them? Can we help them alleviate stress? Can we help them in other ways? So I love, I love hearing that from you. And I love hearing you spoke about equipping people with knowledge. And I think that's empowering them with knowledge so that they can learn to think about these things on a significantly deeper level than you're gonna get on those social media memes and cute little posts. Yeah. Yeah, you know, come at it with with a level of intelligence and and deep thought and care and the compassion word to and curiosity.

SPEAKER_00: 31:39

I think the you know, curiosity is is is key to to uh open people's minds. That's my if if there was no essentials, no her, no health. I mean, I'm I just want to make people curious because I'm a deeply curious person. Um and it it helps existing in the world, whatever is happening, because curiosity, if you if you come at anything from the space of curiosity, it takes the fear away. I love that. Uh, it doesn't make anything easier, it doesn't make anything, you know, uh immediately go away, but it takes the the fear away if you're curious about it. And if you're uh if you're trying to understand what is going on um in your body, and like you say, the headaches, you know, it takes the like, okay, I have a headache, I take a pine needle. What if the pine needle is toxic? Now I'm anxious, now I'm getting more headache, the pine needle is not helping, what am I doing wrong? It's like, okay, why am I having a headache? Okay, what is going to help me here? Um, I get recommended essential oils for headaches all the time. I'm a migraine sufferer, doesn't work. What is going to happen if I use an essential oil when I have a migraine attack? Is I'm going to condition my migraine to come whenever I smell that essential oil. Absolutely not what we want. I had to get off neuroli for a while because that's what happened. I I was wearing an aroli-based scent when I had a really bad attack, and then it became a trigger. So that's another layer of that understanding. You know, a a doesn't always equal reach for that. And, you know, if you if you have that knowledge, if you have that understanding, and it feels good. It feels good. I know people resist sometimes. Like, just tell me what to do.

SPEAKER_02: 33:33

That's so much the case. Just give me the instant fix, please. That's all I want. I don't want to actually learn what is happening and the how and the why, like you were speaking of. I'm also one that's like, no, I want to know why. Uh, I remember my my first deeper herb school. It was very, it was lovely. You know, I learned a lot about plants to harvest near me, how to make great medicine. And it was a little bit too hippy dippy for me and left me yearning for more of that why and more of that science. Like, what's going on in the body? Why are these herbs working with the body? And what is happening, you know? So I can think on that deeper level. Um, just awesome. I want to back up just a little bit. Um and you mentioned that you teach our students how to understand what is an essential oil. So let's like go super basic. I mean, no, that's not basic because it's also very complex. But like for our listeners.

SPEAKER_00: 34:41

Yeah. Uh so essential oils that there is actually an internationally accepted definition, and is that an essential oil is a um uh is an extract from volatile, is a volatile organic extract. I'm butchering the definition, but basically you extract volatile organic compounds from plants using steam or hydro distillation, or in the case of citrus, uh you express essential oils from the rind. So essential oils are um herb extracts, hydro extracts using distillation. Um, so you have your uh still, your copper still, you put your plant material in there. Depending on the material, either the material sits on top of water and you run the steam through it, or it percolates in the water, and the steam captures the sand, the volatile, organic, the smelly compounds from the plant, and then they get condensed in the condenser, and then what you get is a full floral water. Horrible combination of words to say. Also hydrolite or hydrosol, depending on who uh who you talk to. I prefer hydrolat, which is the the water part, and then you have the volatile part, which is the essential oil that floats on top. Uh, it does have the oil in its name. I'm not really sure where that came from. Uh, but it's not oily, it's not lipid, it's not fatty, it's uh volatile, it's uh which means I keep saying that word, uh volatile means that it's easily turned into vapor. So, like if you heat water, it turns into steam. Essential oils, you don't need to heat them up quite as much. The molecules are so tiny that they're very happy to turn into gas and just float around, which is why we can smell them. That's what volatile means. Oh, I think I have a slide somewhere which has a limanine molecule with little wings, like you know, it's flying because that's the it comes from Latin and then French, and it all has to do with flying. So these compounds are so small that they're very happy to go in the air, which is why we can smell them. But it also gives them a lot of properties that we can then use, which makes them very versatile. They're incredible uh paint thinners and decreasers.

SPEAKER_02: 37:14

I've used them to get like really potent, um, like really strong stickers off of glass to reuse something. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 37:21

I know I shocked my mom when she was trying to do that. I said, Mom, do you have do you have a um a spruce essential oil somewhere? It's like, yeah, I do. And she still tells the story, like, oh my god, it uh and it's the same nature that also makes them um easy to penetrate our skin sometimes, which is why we dilute them when we use them. And it's the same nature that helps them uh penetrate into the cell membranes of bacteria and sometimes viruses. So it's the the nature of the essential oils, these tiny molecules that the plants create, uh, that we then distill uh that gives them all these different properties. Now, I think that an important distinction here is that essential oils are natural, but they're artificially concentrated. So, with the exception of peeling your orange and and squirting, you know, the essential oil on your fingers, you will not find essential oil as such in nature. It needs to be distilled. Which, if we're talking to herbalists, is why very often it's like, oh, they're too strong, it's too powerful, it's an overkill. I understand that they're incredibly potent, which is why they're that's where the essential part comes from. It's from alchemy, from quintessence, the fifth essence, the like you get to the core, to the nature of the substance by distilling it. Ah, so that's you know, they're natural, but we artificially concentrate them and we need to be aware of that.

SPEAKER_02: 38:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 38:57

Um, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 38:59

And they are powerful. Oh, they are, yeah. Which is where it can also be advantageous as herbalists to uh have them on board with your toolkit, right? But to be empowered with that knowledge of the best ways that they are going to be useful for your clients and how you can really truly use them to help. And I know you just started talking about how they can penetrate through the skin quickly, how they can penetrate through our viruses and bacteria attacking the body. And I just want to like take a little moment and talk about how we can do that with respect to yes, they are also very highly concentrated extracts, right?

SPEAKER_00: 39:45

Um, and thinking about that and gosh, I guess that's a that that all in the key essential health in the in the body. Yeah. Uh well, so I I think that there's a um there there are two um sides to how essential oils work. And one of them is um more subtle and more psychological, and it's mostly the scent. And then this this way, uh uh I think actually herbalists engage in aromatherapy very often in that aspect, because anytime you take a whiff of your herbal tea, that's aromatherapy. You're you're inhaling those volatiles. Uh, and that's more um psychological, and this is not a dichotomy, it's either psychological or it's pharmacological. It's always a spectrum, it's always a visual analog scale of like were we on that. And then we have the pharmacological, the physiological aspect, which is what the molecules themselves do in our body and do to our body and do to other organisms that live in and on our body. And it's always about uh finding why you're using them, what is the issue, ideally, what is the core issue, or what are the, you know, what is what are you targeting? And then finding the best way to get the substance to the place in a sufficient dose. That's like that's the pharmacological and uh uh any medicinal aspect is okay. Well, I have a treatment, I have a substance, but I need to get it where it needs to go in a sufficient amount so that it has an effect. Uh, to give you an example, very often I see essential oils being recommended to be put on the soles of a foot for various ailments. But let's say you have a cold, you have swollen sinuses, your nose is running, you can't breathe, you have upper respiratory infection. We have a lot of evidence that essentials can be very beneficial here. We've got eucalyptus, we've got uh pine, we've got spruce, we got peppermint. But if you put them on your foot, what you're getting at best is some absorb transdermal absorption to your foot, and you get a nice smelling foot, and you may get some secondary inhalation from putting those essential oils on your foot. Um, I'm not talking about any acupressure points, that's not my expertise, and that's you know, that's a different ballgame. Just talking, just slather your essential oils on your foot. But wouldn't it be more uh uh targeted if you actually inhale them? And if you put them either as a chest drop or do a steam inhalation where you put a few drops of these essential oils in in a ball of hot water and inhale that, you're getting it directly where they need to be. And there they're gonna be working on many levels, they're gonna be relaxing your swollen sinuses, taking Down the inflammation, giving your body a fighting chance, and also attacking the bacteria, possibly, or whatever is causing the infection, although that's probably going to be secondary. But that's the kind of dynamic that we're talking about. You know, find out what you're trying to do and find out the best way to target it with the best possible essential oil. Sometimes you'll have research to back that up. Sometimes you'll just know from your experience, which this is a side side note. I firmly believe that traditional knowledge is scientific methods, just not documented in the way that people in peer-reviewed journals like, but it's still you do an intervention, you observe what happens, you document what happens, and you pass it on. So sometimes it's based on that, and sometimes it's just based on the preference of the person, especially if we're talking about um more of the mental health and using scent, purely scent. In that way, you can have hundreds of papers telling you that lavender is great for anxiety. But if that person that you're working with has a very horrible experience that is associated with lavender scent, it's not going to make them less anxious.

SPEAKER_02: 44:39

Absolutely. Yeah, I have many people that I know in my circles that are allergic to lavender and they're like, yeah, that's not lavender I want to turn to. You know, that does not feel good for me. And like you with the migraines and the neuroli, you know, that's another way that it can be triggered. The mind is so powerful. It really is. It really is. Um, this is this is awesome. I'm loving all of this. I wanted to just quickly talk on one thing. I think I think uh quality of essential oils is a big, big thing out there. And I know, you know, one thing for certain when people are getting their essential oils. You mentioned how these aren't actually oils, you know. So I know one test to be like that paper test, put a drop on paper if it looks like oil. That's that's not who you want, is it?

SPEAKER_00: 45:34

Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's that's a big question. And there's um uh there's sustainability linked to it as well.

SPEAKER_01: 45:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 45:45

Um, so quality, quality and sustainability. Uh, there's uh um there's a lot of claims floating around, um various different grades. The truth is that there is no um universally accepted standard for all essential oils or any kind of quality standard. For some essential oils, you will have a pharmacopeia standard. Um, so there's um a German uh was it monograph E. Uh, you know, some E monographs. Yeah, yeah, these ones. Um so some pharmacopeias or some some of national organizations in pharmacology will have standards for some essential oils. Not all of them. Uh, there are some ISO standards, international standard standards organization standards, again, for some oils from some regions. But for most essential oils, we have an idea what they should look like, but they're very variable uh in terms of where the plant grows, how it grows, how is it distilled, all these other things. So for a layperson trying to get an essential oil and to see if they're high quality, looking at the analysis, you can it, which is your sort of the proof of concepts, like okay, give me the analysis, give me the GCMS, gas uh chromatochram, uh mass spectroscopy, basically telling you all the different constituents are there. Well, you need to know what's supposed to be there, you need to know at what ratios it's supposed to be there, and that's very complicated. So if you're trying to find a good quality essential oil, uh look for there there's some indicators that you can rely on, which is does the company tell you what the Latin binomial is of the plant that was used to distill the essential oil? That's like basic.

SPEAKER_02: 47:48

To even think of a company that wouldn't think they exist.

SPEAKER_00: 47:51

They they do. Wow, but that's that's like basic. They should also tell you where that the essential oil come from in terms of country, in terms of region. Um there's tea tree grown in China, there's tea tree grown in Australia, there's tea tree grown in in Portugal, I believe maybe. Um you should you should have that information. So you should know which plant was distilled, you should know where it came from, and they should also tell you if it was distilled or if it was a different extraction. With citruses, that's very crucial because uh you can distill them and you can express them, and some expressed citrus oils will uh react with sunlight if you put them on your skin and give you a nasty burn. Uh, so the company should list the Latin name, they should list the country of origin and the way of extraction. That's sort of the bare minimum. If they offer analysis, that's great. You don't need to be able to read the analysis, but the fact that they are open to share the analysis and say, hey, we tested our oils and we stand behind them, you know, that's a good sign.

SPEAKER_01: 49:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 49:02

Just the fact that they tell you. And then it kind of depends on what you're looking for. If you're looking for a particular oil, there might be only a few companies that carry it. Do not fall for the trap of being loyal to one company for all of your essential oils, uh, or herbs, or anything really. Just find what works for you. It's, you know, just look around.

SPEAKER_02: 49:25

I really love how you just stated that. I'm just gonna interject there. It's beautiful. Some microbial moment.

SPEAKER_00: 49:32

We've we've we've been there, but that's you know, and and I'm gonna touch on the uh on the giant um MLM companies with essential oils um a little bit because that that's an important point in terms of quality. So don't be afraid to shop around. There, wherever you are in the world, there are many wonderful small companies and distillers that work with the plants that are local to you. And it's always if sustainability is your focus, as it should be at this point, uh, if you're looking for lavender, I guarantee you that there is going to be someone who distills their own lavender oil within a reasonable radius from you, pretty much wherever you live. It's a wonderful herb that grows easily everywhere, and we kind of, you know, uh, and and the knowledge base for how to make a good lavender essential oil is there. So you don't have to have it imported from France, you don't have to have it imported from China, you can find a local lavender farm, probably. Uh, and if you can do that for other herbs, that's great. I know of a brilliant um distiller in Canada who focuses on conifers uh um in the Arctic Circle, and they have essential oils that you won't find anywhere else. Spruce bark, oil, wow, which smells like a wood shop. If you've ever walked into an active wood shop, it's that smell. So that's that's another point of like look for different companies that are close to you, they're working with the plants, they're local to them, they understand those plants. Now, going back to the MLM companies, which are from the US but are kind of infiltrating essential markets all around the world, they created their own quality standard, which is their marketing claim, and it's trademarked, it's not third party. And they say this is, you know, this is, I think it's a certified therapeutic grade. Uh no such thing. It's their trademark. Many people started claiming that as well, because it's now become the trademark. It needs to be certified essential oil. Um, but which you need to understand with these companies, I'm not saying that their essential oils are necessarily not a good quality, but there are two things to understand. First, they have millions of members all across the world that are purchasing these essential oils, and they rely on these essential oils to be a standard quality because this is the brand loyalty. This is the you want your lavender to smell always the same, or you want your frankincense to always smell the same. You want all of these oils to you need consistency with product in large quantities. That's not going to be an artisanal small small farm, however, they want to claim that they have small farms. They might, but they're now openly saying that they're blending their eucalyptus oil, they're blending their frankincense oil because they need to have standardization, because they need to have large quantities. Uh so you're getting a decent quality essential oil, but it's not going to be an artisan quality. And they will try to justify the price by telling you that it's a quality, but the price is there to feed the upline downline. Uh full disclosure, I used to be. That's how I kind of restarted my interest in essential oils as I was and in one of these MLMs. But in terms of quality, is it worth the price? You know, the extra amount that you're paying compared to even, you know, a small uh family-owned company near you, you're paying more for standardized quality. And we know what happens with standardization. You kind of you go with the with the middle. Yeah. So if that's your choice, if that's what you have available, if you have a family member who's got extra and it's just giving you these alls, I'm not gonna tell you that they're not good quality, they're decent, but you're paying premium on the price unnecessarily, and you're not necessarily getting, you know, uh, the most beautiful reiteration of the essential all, which is my favorite part of working with essential oils, is just like, okay, I've got three different patchoulies. Yeah, just noticing the subtle differences, the the amount of lavenders that you can smell, the amount of conifers, the amount of, you know, just different bergamot essential oils. It's just yeah. So don't box yourself into one company, one essential oil.

SPEAKER_02: 54:29

I really love hearing that because it and you speak about the smaller family-run distillers, and all I can think about is the relationship that they have also cultivated with those plants. And so that brings in that spiritual energy to this medicine and the love and the quality. And I am a firm believer that that can be felt in so many different ways when used on a therapeutic or spiritual level out there. So it's uh pretty beautiful. And usually those people are really going to have that connection that also fosters more of a sustainable ethical sourcing, right?

SPEAKER_00: 55:11

Yeah. Yeah. And they will if you're uh if you're shopping around for essential oils and you're not sure, try to email the company, try to talk to them and see how the conversation goes. Uh, you will know who does it because they love it and they love the essential oils and they understand them. Uh, because they will know their declared responses to. And and you'll know who's uh who will even tell you, hey, I don't think this essential oil might be right for you, or the last batch of this one is not the top that we have. You know, we'll let you know when we have a when we have a better one. Um and if you are more serious about getting to know essential oils, um go slow.

SPEAKER_01: 55:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 55:58

It used to be, I think it's a little bit less now because everyone's pinched financially. So creating collections of essential oils is no longer a bit of an issue. But I've seen people like have a box of 20, 30 essential oils. Like, okay, I've got these now, what do I do?

SPEAKER_02: 56:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 56:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_02: 56:18

Can we back up? A lot of stats. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 56:21

So I don't think that's happening that much, but just go slow and and engage your nose. Um, engage your nose in um smelling the different essentials, smelling them at different times of day, um, smelling different batches, asking for samples. Many companies will do samples so you can, you know, you can see if you like it, because you might like the idea of something, might like the idea of spike nerd, and then you smell it, it's like, ooh, I don't like that. Or, oh, myrrh, you know, it's that's a sacred um resin in many sacred uh texts. It must be wonderful. I'm gonna get a myrrh essential oil, and then you go, oh, it smells like gasoline, and or you know, it doesn't, I don't like that smell. And you have a whole bottle of this resource, and you're like, just just go slow. Um, if you can find someone in your community who is an aromatherapist, who is an herbalist, who has essential oils, um have a sniffing session together. Just like, hey, let me sniff your oils. Let me, you know, just have fun, engage with them before you purchase them. Um, build your scent library in your brain. Uh generally speaking, I would not rely on testers in health food stores, uh, because those are um and are going to quality once you purchase the essential oils. Uh, because of their nature, uh they do go bad, quote unquote, in that they oxidize and they turn into a not very nice version of themselves. Uh depending on the oil, this can take a couple of years, this can take decades, this might not happen at all with some, excuse me. Um, but one way to accelerate oxidation is if you keep the essential oils in plain light in a heated environment and exposed to air very often, which is exactly what happens with testers in stores. They're like plain light on them, either daylight or you know, um, artificial. It's usually a warm environment and people keep opening them, not closing the caps. So if you smell a uh a tester in a store like that, it's not going to be indicative of what the essential oil should smell like. Usually, I'm not saying that you shouldn't buy essential oils in stores. There are some reputable brands there are in stores where I know that the people behind those brands do good work, like um acacia.

SPEAKER_01: 59:03

Right.

SPEAKER_00: 59:04

Uh but don't rely on the testers. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 59:08

That's great, great words of wisdom there. It makes me think about some of the aroma blending bars out there. Um I have not been to one, but instantly that's what I was thinking of. And I'm like, well, surely if these people are opening up an aroma blending bar, they've gone through some extensive training in this realm and are hopefully taking great care.

SPEAKER_00: 59:33

Those will usually have fragrance oils most of the time, especially if it's like you creating your own perfume and go. And I'm not saying that's bad again. Right. I'm not a binary thinker. It's not good or bad. Fragrance oils have they space in their space. And as I kind of said at the beginning, talking about aromatherapy, if it's an aroma that does something to you, you go. Yeah, it might not have the it might not have the pharmacological effects. We don't know about those. And the safety profiles are different. Uh but the aroma bars will usually have um fragrance oils, which would be synthetic um accords. They're pre-blended so that someone who comes in can just combine these. Kind of like when you have a synthesizer for music, and you just plug in a program and it creates chords for you. So you don't have to have a degree in composition, you don't have to have a brain for composition. It has sort of a pre-made plug-and-play. That's how they usually work because you go there, you spend an afternoon at most, and you come out with a you know, with a finished product.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:48

That's not how perfumery works if you do it, you know, from scratch. And it's really hard to do perfumes with just essential oils. It's really, really hard. You can make blends that smell nice. You can make blends that are very perfumey, but to create a long-lasting, complex perfume with just essential oils is really hard. Really hard and takes, yeah, takes a lot of skill and practice.

SPEAKER_02: 1:01:16

Yeah, I can imagine. Um, you are absolutely inspiring me to want to dive deeper on my knowledge of essential oils. And we're gonna definitely ask how others, because I'm sure this is happening for all of my listeners as well. And before we get to like how they can do that and how I can do that, I wanna back up when you were talking about orange essential oils and the difference between the expressed essential oil and the uh distilled essential oil and whether one or the other is going to cause photos photosensitivity. Um, can you talk a little bit more about this?

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:54

Yes. So um I'm gonna back off all the way to peeling the orange. So you we've all peeled the citrus, we've all got our hands smelling beautifully of the uh uh of the smell of the orange or the tangerine or whatever. And if you look at the citrus rind and you see that they're little dots, those are literally pockets of essential oil. And for some citruses, uh, these pockets also contain um substances that are called foranocoumarines, which are photosensitizing. These are too large to be distilled. So, you know, the volatile molecules are tiny, the smelling molecules are tiny, they pass over in the destillation, they can hitch a ride on the steam. Uh, foranocoumarines can't, which is why if you distill the citrus rind to get the essential oil, you won't get these molecules. Uh, but if you have them in your citruses, the biggest um offenders with the highest content of these that can cause the most issues are lime and bergamot. Um, not all citruses have them in sufficient amount to cause a problem. And there are some other essential oils that can be phototoxic as well, but bergamot and lime are very commonly used essential oils. They smell wonderful. Uh, and we love them. We love burgamot, we love oral gray tea. So, with these, if you put them on your skin in not sufficient enough dilution, which means either undiluted or above a certain percentage, and you then expose the skin to UV light, these pharenocomarin molecules basically get fused into your DNA and instruct your cells to commit apoptosis to initiate cell death. And it looks very much like a chemical burn if that happens. Uh sometimes this is called margarita dermatitis because if you're making margaritas on the beach, you're cutting up limes, you have lime juice all over your hands, you're in the sun. If you Google it, um warning don't. It looks horrible. It really does look like a burn with blisters and everything. And it's 100% going to happen if the conditions are right. If you have undiluted lime essential oil, undiluted bergamot oil on your skin under sunlight, this is going to happen. Not everyone may have allergic reactions, not everyone may have irritant reactions, but this is going to happen to your skin.

SPEAKER_02: 1:04:34

So, in in the making of an essential oil that's going out to the masses, like it's a product somebody has created. Is there going to be a difference when they're making it? You were talking about the expressed. Is that just when we're peeling the orange? That's the expressed one. Well, it's not peeling.

SPEAKER_00: 1:04:51

Yeah, it's it's not the similar concept as peeling, but there's like there's machines that do that kind of like imagine like a washing machine with spikes inside the tumbler and you're just tumbling the citruses there and they're poking holes in the rind and then they're collecting the essential oil. So that's the expressing. It's not it's not cold-pressed like you do with fatty oils with seed oils, or you know, if you just when you just basically apply pressure, you just kind of break down the rind. Uh, so you just get that clearly from from the rind of of the citrus. Now you can get uh foranocoumarin-free bergamot oil, which is not uh expressed and it's not distilled. It's just that these molecules, the dangerous photosensitizing molecules, have been taken out from the essential oil and it would usually have FCF on it. Because this is such a surefire reaction that you're going to have, and companies selling essential oils, do not want to get sued, do not want to get people hurt. And even if you say in big warning letters, do not use before going to sun, or do not use over certain dilution, people are gonna peeple. Uh so they've they've started removing it. So you can get bergamot oil that is foranocoumarin free that you can put on your skin. And if you inhale these essential oils, you're good. Right. You're good. It's not gonna happen. It only happens skin contact and then sunlight.

SPEAKER_02: 1:06:26

Amazing. Thank you. Thank you so much. This has been an excellent episode. I'm so excited to share it with the masses. Um, and I want everybody to know how they can connect with you more, how they can learn with you and be empowered with the knowledge to think about essential oils beyond the trending means, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:49

Yeah, if you if you're ready to get thinking, uh, we'd love to have you uh at uh the Tisran Institute, Tisran Institute.org. Um, you can start with our Instagram account, where uh so far we're still there, which is Tisran Institute, uh, which will give you sort of easy entry uh information. Um our website has so much on it. It's a decade, more than a decade, of information being built up. Um we have a lot of a lot of free resources, a lot of blog posts that go deep into either specific topics like essentials and mosquitoes, or essentials and the flu, or inhalation. We also have beginner-friendly. If you if you search for beginner, we have a couple of guides that go into exactly the kind of information that I talked about, in terms of okay, what is an essential? How do we get it? What are the basic ways to use it? And we have safety pages as well to make sure that you are safe when you're using these powerful tools. So to Saran Institute.org. And uh, if you want to take part in a course that we offer, I think one of the best ways for herbalists to get into essential oils is our beyond the bottle course, which goes exactly into the whole process from planned, so why plants create them, to cultivation and harvesting, to distilling, to quality of the product, to what you as the consumer do afterwards in terms of storage and taking care of your essential oils. That's a great way to get involved in the nature of essential oils. And I know that uh herbalists love the different types of extracts and you get very hands-on on like, you know, macerations and concoctions and everything. I think this one is really great in kind of putting that piece of information in there so you then don't have to be either afraid of essential oils or think like, oh, they're, you know, I I shouldn't use them. They're not really what I want to do.

SPEAKER_02: 1:09:04

Yeah. And then you can come back around and educate your clients on those pieces as well and serve them on such a higher level. So thank you. This has been absolutely incredible. I can't wait to share. I can't wait to have you as a guest teacher in the community herbalist program. And I can't wait for the moment that I get to enroll in some of the programs that you have and deepen my knowledge in this department because always a thirst for knowledge and learning. And like you said earlier, curiosity. I think that's uh really important stuff.

SPEAKER_00: 1:09:41

I'm glad to have you. Where yeah, just just be prepared for a lot of it depends kind of answers to the questions you have.

SPEAKER_02: 1:09:47

I give a lot of those myself in my program. I did that just yesterday with a new student. I was like, well, there are many different ways to think about this. And I think that is our our job as educators in such a complex area of study and understanding that we are working with human beings that are complex. We are working with plants that are also complex, and there are so many different nuances coming together to, you know, make sure that the ideal outcome is more likely.

SPEAKER_00: 1:10:21

Yeah. Yeah. That we're minimizing the risks, maximizing the benefits, and thanks again.

SPEAKER_02: 1:10:30

I'm gonna make sure that everybody does go and follow you and checks out your website and your over a decade of information available for free. And those that are ready to invest in their next level of knowledge and kind of combat the uh rampant misinformation out in the world. Uh, I really hope they do connect with you. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you so much for joining me on this episode of the Herbalist Path. If you're loving this journey into herbal medicine, please follow and review the show. It helps more people find their own path with the plants. And if you know someone who could use this kind of support, please share this episode with them. So that way we can keep making herbalism spread like wildflowers. Also, a gentle reminder: nothing shared on this podcast is intended to diagnose, treat, or cure any disease. This is all for educational purposes, and yeah, a little entertainment too. But it is not a substitute for personalized care from a qualified health practitioner. Always do your own research, listen to your body, and when needed, partner with a trusted professional who honors both your intuition and your unique health journey. Until next time, take care, stay curious, and keep walking the herbalist path.