Culture and Wellness

Various books have opened my eyes to the role of culture in wellness.  Our ethnic and cultural backgrounds play a large role in our health.  Our diet, our go-to remedies, our choice in health care provider are all influenced strongly by our personal and familial history.


That said, here are a few suggestions for learning more about how culture affects health care:

How to Use a Plant (to promote health)

Ocimum tenuiflorum

Suppose a gardener has a bumper crop of Ocimum tenuiflorum, commonly known as Holy Basil. Here are some of the possible ways that crop can be used immediately or preserved into useful herbal remedies:

1. Fresh
  a. culinary
  b. infusion or decoction
  c. distillation
     i. hydrosol
     ii. essential oil
  d. flower essence
  e. homeopathic remedy

2. Dried
  a. culinary
  b. tincture (alcohol, glycerin, vinegar, honey)
  c. powdered preparation (capsules, pastilles, bath salts, facial clay mask, smoothie ingredient, etc.)
  d. maceration in fixed oil
  e. smudge wand

 (Note:  Ocimum tenuiflorum is not usually used in culinary preparations.)

Often, herbal preparations may be combined to increase absorption or increase certain constituents.  For example, a foot scrub could be made by combining dead sea salts with the Holy Basil infused fixed oil, some dried Holy Basil, and a couple drops of Holy Basil essential oil.  In this way, the lipophilic and the hydrophilic components of the original botanical can be used in a holistic fashion.

Phytotherapy (promoting health using plants) is a holistic practice.  Not only it is holistic from the standpoint of considering the whole person when formulating a protocol, it is holistic with regard to the plant.  Many times, it is most beneficial to use the most whole, complete form of the plant, or a combination of preparations of the plant to gain the most complete form.  Using one form only, just the essential oil or just the dried herb, is not always the best remedy as many of the original properties of the whole plant have been removed during processing and others have been concentrated.



______________________________
References
Easley, T., & Horne, S. H. (2016). The modern herbal dispensatory: a medicine-making guide. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.

Holistic. (n.d.) American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. (2011). Retrieved September 15 2017 from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/holistic

Phytotherapy. (n.d.) Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014. (1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014). Retrieved September 15 2017 from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/phytotherapy

Review: Nature's Gift

Company: Nature's Gift

Website:  www.naturesgift.com

Notes:  Nature's Gift has a very wide variety of essential oils, carrier oils, and CO2s.  After learning more about CO2s from Ron Guba and Marge Clark at the AIA conference, I decided to order some.  Nature's Gift had a special eclipse sale on August 21, and this was the perfect opportunity to order some CO2s.  They were having a problem estimating shipping through the post office that day due to a problem on the USPS end, but they were phenomenal in handling the situation and making sure the customer got the shipping option which worked best for them,  kudos to customer service!

Shipping time:  I ordered on Monday and my package arrived on Thursday.  

What I ordered:  

Chia Seed CO2

Rose Hip Seed Total CO2

German Chamomile 10% CO2

Calendula 10% CO2

Rose Damascena 5% CO2

My order came quickly and very well packaged, including Teflon tape around all the caps to prevent leakage as well as bubble wrap and pretty tissue paper.  I also received a small sample pack which is delightful!!  The samples included spearmint EO, raspberry seed co2, vetiver EO, and 10% New Caledonia Sandalwood EO.  An information sheet was also included for the samples.

All the products have batch numbers, excellent labeling, and the Certificate of Analysis is available for each batch online for all to see.

Everything smells amazing and I can't wait to make some skin nourishing topical cream using my purchases.

  

AIA Conference - Part 1

Alliance of International Aromatherapists - 2017 Conference
New Brunswick, NJ

Overview

The Alliance of International Aromatherapists' 2017 Conference was entitled Out of the Bottle and Into the Garden. It was billed as "bringing together 300-400 of the world's top Aromatherapy leaders, practitioners, educators, research scientists, integrative health practitioners and entrepreneurs."  and did not fail in that effort.

Importance of Community

The aromatherapy community can, at times, feel very isolating and even combative to the lone aromatherapist.  However,  there are like-minded practitioners, who can come together for true fellowship and encouragement.  At this, my first aromatherapy conference, I found aromatherapy professionals, like myself, who had been engineers, mathematicians, and scientists before seeking education in aromatherapy.  There were former social workers, homeschool parents, massage therapists, and medical doctors who were deeply concerned with learning and teaching safe and effective usage of aromatherapy.  This community is highly concerned with sustainability and ethical practices in every step of the manufacture of essential oils and hydrosols.  We are highly interested in learning how to communicate better with kindness and understanding.  

On the first day of the conference, Nyssa Hanger. of Upward Spiral, gave a compelling talk on how to better communicate and listen with understanding -- this is a lecture I need to commit to memory and is the area I consider to be my biggest weakness.  It is easy to be discouraged when enthusiastic essential oil users are loudly promoting unsafe usage; but staying in contact with like-minded, educated individuals is a balm to the soul. 

Be Kind.  Be Effective. Be Safe.

References

Admin, M. (n.d.). Alliance of International Aromatherapists. Retrieved August 14, 2017, from https://aia.memberclicks.net/index.php

AIA - 2more days

As I mentally prepare for the upcoming AIA conference, I am reading up on hydrosol distillation.  I am carefully considering purchasing a copper still for making my own hydrosols and potentially essential oils from wild crafted plant materials.

HydroDistillation primer:

Plant matter is combined with water in the "pot" part of the still.  Heat is applied until steam travels through the hat and the condenser coil where it is cooled and becomes liquid water again.  Tiny drops of an oily substance float on top of this water.  The water part is the hydrosol.  The oily part is essential oil.  These can be separated with an essencier or separating funnel.

Hydrosols are not just plain distilled water, they contain a vast array of botanical molecules which are active and useful for skin care and general health.  Hydrosols are more gentle than essential oils, but they are no less powerful when used with respect.  Hydrosols have a limited shelf life due to possible "bloom" (contamination by bacteria or fungus), but they have a much higher yield and are generally safe for drinking and direct topical application compared to essential oils.

I am planning to purchase a few hard to find hydrosols at AIA, and am carefully considering a copper still to add to my botanical medicine making toolbox.

Quality: Control, Assurance, and Verification

When I was in my late teens and twenties, my dad transitioned from being on the manufacturing floor to being a six-sigma certified quality control manager for a very large and well known manufacturer in the film industry.  I went into software engineering as a programmer, but additionally trained in time and quality management using the same principles that the manufacturing industry had been using for decades. I was working for a Fortune 500 communications company.   My dad and I had many talks about quality control, quality assurance, and verification.  Below, I will be sharing a bit about quality measures and how they apply to botanical products, specifically essential oils.

Quality control:  In the auto industry, a windshield must be the right size (length, width, thickness), have the proper curvature, have glare protection, safety glass, and a host of other features in order to be safe and suitable for use in a motor vehicle.  All of these features are measurable and are called "metrics".  Each metric has a range.  For example, if the glass thickness must be 12mm, it may have a range of "acceptable" if it is between 11.995mm and 12.005mm to be usable.  If a particular windshield is 12.1mm in thickness, it is rejected and not used in a vehicle.  Controlling these metrics and rejecting those pieces which fall outside these metrics is done by people on the manufacturing floor, if a piece fails, it is rejected, if more than three pieces fail in a group of ten, manufacturing stops and the equipments is recalibrated so that there is as little waste as possible.  Safety of the end user is at stake, all the pieces of the vehicle must be correct within the specified ranges.

Quality assurance: It is not enough for the people who are manufacturing an item to say that it is correct, a separate testing group must double check.  In the software world, a programmer makes sure that his programs "works" on its own and in conjunction with the software from the rest of his team.  But, the "testing group" takes the software and assures that every single requirement is met. Several hundred requirements for a piece of software are written down before the software is designed or written.  For each requirement, the testing group writes a test to assure that the software meets the requirement.  While this may or may not find all the "bugs", it acts as an internal audit of the product answering the question: Does it do what it says it does?

Quality verification:  To verify something is to declare it as true.  In the banking industry, Federal regulators will visit a financial institution for several weeks as outside, independent auditors to assess whether or not the bank is following it's own procedures.  These auditors are "third-party", they have no incentive to falsely represent their findings, they exist for the purpose of "keeping the bank honest". Although banks have self-checking systems (internal auditors who constantly assure that procedures are written and followed), they are not independent.  Outside, independent verification is needed.  Without this step, the consumer must blindly trust that the institution is doing what it says it does.  The independent regulator can say "I am not an employee or owner or stockholder, I have checked that they do what they say, here is my report, here is my signature, you can trust them because you can trust me because I have no reason to lie."  A report verifying the findings of the independent auditor is made public every year, reassuring the consumer that the bank is above board.

How does all of this apply to botanical products, particularly essential oils?

Briefly, essential oils are extracted by one of three processes: cold pressing, steam or water distillation, or CO2 extraction.  The quality of the plant matter is important. Soil quality, water quality, altitude, farming methods, pest control methods, etc., all play a part in the quality of an essential oil, or any botanical product.  Each batch of distilled essential oil varies from other batches due to the factors listed above, that is there are slight (and sometimes not so slight) chemical variations between batches of essential oils.  Many vintage and professional aromatherapists seek out unique distillations for specific therapeutic needs.   Some very large retailers blend various batches together so that over the years, their product is chemically standardized, that is, they allow for almost no variation in chemical constituent levels in their final product from bottling to bottling.

Let's say that a retailer has purchased a barrel of essential oil from a distiller.  The distiller provides the retailer with a batch specific analysis of the chemical constituents.  The retailer then runs some basic tests, perhaps blends this batch with other batches, and retests until these test results fall within the acceptable ranges set by the retailer.  Retailer bottles and labels the product for sale.  This is quality control.

A quality inspector for the retailer randomly chooses a bottle, checks the label, the cap, the weight, opens it and smells it, perhaps they check some of the metrics that quality control says that it meets.  This is quality assurance.

So far, all of the quality control and assurance has been "in house".  The quality control group is sometimes given a fancy name, such as Purity Certifiers, but their job is still vested in the company, the company's interest, and they will test to the company's standards or desires. 

Now, before releasing this lot to the public, the conscientious retailer sends one to three bottles to an independent lab.  This lab specializes in essential oils.  Not only does the independent lab verify that the metrics set by the retailer are met, they check whether this product falls within industry standards, they check this essential oil is authentic, that no synthetics have been added, that it is pure. They give their report back to the retailer detailing the unique chemical makeup of this batch of essential oils. This is called third-party testing or verification.  

The ethical retailer makes the independent report available to the consumer.  The consumer may then look at the report and decide to purchase that product from that retailer because they trust the independent lab and they appreciate the properties of the product based on the unique chemical composition represented in the report.  Ideally, there will be subtle differences in chemical composition between batches of essential oils as this reflects the variability between growing seasons and conditions.  To the consumer, this final testing is a more accurate reflection of their purchase than any report which was done at distillation or during any step of the in-house quality control process.

How should this affect consumer choices?  Consumers should demand quality.  Quality should be verified by a third-party.  A savvy consumer will purchase from reputable companies who not only have strict internal quality control, but also those who release reports from third-party labs testifying to the authenticity of their product.  It only takes a few minutes to reach out to a retailer and ask them for their third-party test results.  Ask today!

What is it?

This fizzy drink can help balance the gut's micro flora.  It has approximately 5 calories per cup, is very inexpensive to make at home, can be flavored in many fun ways, and is kid-friendly.

Do you know what it is?

(Stay tuned for more information in the next couple days!)