Myth #7: Essential oils are the most powerful living substances on earth. They are the heartbeat of the plant kingdom, the most life-giving substances we have in the world today. EOs are the "Life's Blood" of the plant and they represent in plants what blood represents in humankind.

Sorry to disappoint but essential oils are not alive. I would like to see anyone go through a 212+ degree distillation process for a few hours and come out alive on the other end! The plant material is certainly not alive after the distillation so I am not sure how anyone could believe that the oil is alive. Essential oils are a collection of volatile organic molecules, not living entities. Furthermore, since they themselves are not alive, the oils do not give life to anything (but this is not to say they don't help the plant survive). Lets just look at this logically and break it down. In order for A to give life to B, it follows that A must predate B in its timeline of existence. This is not the case for essential oils. Plants don't start producing essential oils until a certain point in their development. The oil does not give life to the plant, the plant, at some point, starts producing the oil.

As for being the "heartbeat of the plant kingdom," Most plants don't even produce essential oils so where is their heartbeat? I am not really sure what that statement is supposed to mean, I guess somebody just thought it sounded marketable and ran with it. Concerning the "life blood" claim, as I have said here before, essential oils do not have the same function in the plant that blood does in the human body. Our blood primarily performs the function of circulation and transport of oxygen and nutrients to the all the cells and organs of the body. Essential oils do not play this role in the plant.

The truth is that essential oils are an end product of the plants metabolism and emitted by the plant not circulating within the plant like blood in the body (see magnified picture of oil glands on Roman chamomile leaf). Think about what some of the end products are from human metabolism and, if you want a more accurate analogy, well you get the idea. I realize it wouldn't be as marketable to use a tag line like "the excrement of the plant" but that would be more accurate than the "life's blood." But this does not mean that these end products, these secondary metabolites known as essential oils, are not extremely useful for the survival of the plant as well as being extremely beneficial to humans.

Its unfortunate to me that the people who created these nonsensical and inaccurate slogans regarding essential oils feel that they are necessary in order to sell product. When people just use the oils they get hooked, the oils sell themselves, people don't need to be fed a bunch of airy fairy nonsense to fall in love with them. This idea of essential oils being the life blood of the plant has been around quite a while, in fact I think the alchemists might have believed the same thing (remember their belief in the "quintessential" which is where the term essential oil comes from), but hopefully we have progressed beyond 16th century knowledge and I would love to see a more responsible marketing approach in this day and age. However, I fear it may be a while before we can get everyone to let go of this one, it just sounds so darn good to the ears!

Plant under a microscope

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