Essential Oils

The final decision came after a year long intensively searching. It has been a conscious choice.

• Greek essential oils – Greek companies do not know, and are not willing to learn, how to export their oils to Norway. Norway is not an EU member state, but an EU-EEA state, which means that customs and VAT have to be calculated in Norway, and not in Greece. Though I explained all well, they stayed calculating customs and VAT for Greece / Crete, which means that I would have to pay customs twice. So, I stopped searching there. It was a sad decision.
• An own brand? – Then started the wish to create an own brand, an own label for the oils, bought via wholesale at Nature in Bottle, in India, but bottled in Norway. With a Cretan-Garden label. Then new dramas developed.
  • Bottles with a child-safe lock (EU mandated) were/are not to be found in Norway, not at Amazon, not at any Chinese company, but at the end, finally, found in The Netherlands. Again problems though with shipping: they were not up to date about customs, like in Greece, when shipping to Norway. After all was well-willingly arranged manually there was a shipping to Norway, but there was a mistake as well: I got only the child-safe locks, not the bottles, while I paid also for the bottles. A lot more went wrong, and it took about 3 months before all was solved. But I stopped with this company.
  • Found another company, also in The Netherlands: Beauty & Care, and they sent me all I asked in the perfect way.
  • The labeling in Norway became the worst experience. Because of the latest updates in the EU-CLP labeling rules, it became obvious that the labels that always have been used worldwide for essential oil bottles, will all have to be changed: not one of these existing labels is essential oil resistent: essential oils are corrosive, and affect printing ink and material. Only polypropylene (PP) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) are essential oil resistent, if not printed. Tests with essential oil on printed PP and PET labels show that these are not essential oil resistent. The only solution could be lamination of the labels. All together too expensive for small business, especially, since not one printing house in Norway knows by experience about the what and how. After one year of searching, the Cretan-Garden project to create an own brand, has been cancelled. Again a sad decision.
• Searching for the best alternative – Because of the wish to be able to offer Cretan-Garden clients the essential oils that are related with the Cretan-Garden soaps, and more, the search for an existing company, that sells certified organic essential oils, started.
• Norway has no certified companies – In Norway is not one certified essential oils company to be found.
• Florihana, France – Then Florihana was found. A company in south-east France. Since the new EU labeling rules mandate a label in the language where the oils are sold, it is impossible to sell these in the Cretan-Garden shop, but it is possible that you order the oils directly from Florihana: you are free to buy everywhere. If you search for guaranteed quality, certificates, then buy from Florihana. The website is available in all languages.

• When you enter their website you can choose your language and valuta, and create an account, to log in. Then you can make a choice out of their products, and fill your basket.
• For countries outside EU, like Norway, the Florihana invoice is free of customs (VAT), because customs (VAT and additional fees) have to be paid in Norway, to the Norwegian customs authority.
• ALERT: Choose the company that ships your order to the place where you live. When you live in Norway: do not choose the option DHL.
  • DHL calculates extremely high, dazzling, unverifiable extra costs for shipping the parcel from Oslo Gardermoen airport to your home address in Norway, if your home address is not nearby the airport. EVEN if you have paid already shipping to Florihana, or any other company in EU, or abroad, and EVEN MORE when you had a so-called FREE SHIPPING.
  • Florihana has other options: FedEx and UPS. FedEx has normal tariffs. UPS was never used by Cretan Garden, so there is no information about UPS and eventual extra costs.
• When the order is shipped to Norway, you will receive an invoice from the company that is going to transport your parcel from the airport in Norway to your address.
• These companies cooperate with your country’s customs office, in Norway this is Tolletaten, the Norwegian customs office.
• So, first you receive an invoice from Florihana, with shipping costs from France to Norway and the total of your basket, pay the invoice, and later, when the parcel has arrived in your country, let us assume Norway, you receive an invoice with VAT and additional fees from the Norwegian Tolletaten, via the transport company in Norway.

The use of aromatic plants and trees goes far back in history, to the time of the Egyptians and Babylonians, 3000 – 4000 before Christ. It is told however, that the oldest knowledge of essential oils.is to be found in China.

The Egyptians used essential oils from plants and resins to mummify the dead, because of their cleansing and anti-sceptic properties. Cleopatra used essential oils to enhance her attraction. Also, in the bible, essential oils are mentioned, like myrrh, incense, cloves, sandalwood, rose, and cedar.

Those who worked as perfumers during the Black Death plague epidemic were not contaminated by the plague: they inhaled the aerosols which were mixed with the anti-sceptic aerosols from the plants while working with them, and also the anti-sceptic properties of the plants entered the body via the skin.[Additional: The Forgotten Pollution: Dr. Schnabel’s Hepa Filter]

The use of essential oils is rather safe when using these in an aroma lamp diffuser, or in massage oils and body-oils, if one is following up the advice about the total of drops on a certain amount of water for a bath, footbath, or aroma lamp. Also, when using essential oils in a carrier oil, like olive oil, to create a body oil or a massage oil, or to dilute it to just a small spot on the skin, one must be well-informed about the total of drops of essential oil on how much carrier oil. Internal use of essential oils is dangerous, unless one follows the advice of a well-trained and certified aroma therapist.

• Safety and essential oils
• Dosage
• Do the patch test

Essential Oils are the highly concentrated, volatile, aromatic essences of plants. Essential oils are derived from the leaves, flowers, wood, seeds, roots, bark and resins of trees and plants.. Essential oils are composed of diverse aromatic volatile liquids, which are distracted from the plant parts via steam distillation. To create a one-litre essential oil one needs many kilos of aromatic plants. To create one litre of for instance, rosemary oil, one needs 50 kilos of rosemary leaves, and about 5000 kilos for a rose and jasmine oil.

There are many different brands on the market with several different essential oils, and all smell different from another brand with the same oil name, and do not all smell so nice. It can be related to your own nose, of course, and preferences, but it can happen that it is not only you who dislikes a certain smell: it can also depend on the brand, the country, the climate, the height of the area, the hours of sunshine, the soil, the pH of the soil, even the entire community of plants and trees, animals, the so-called biotope where the plants grow where the essential oil is extracted from, are creating the chemotype, the ct, and the scent. It is impossible to smell an essential oil when one orders it from the web. It is therefore wise, if possible, to buy an essential oil in a good health shop.

Steam distillation is a delicate process. It needs professional experience and constant control. The essential oil must be a hundred percent natural and may not be denaturised by half-synthetic molecules and not be mixed with essential oils with the same scent, but less expensive and of a lesser or even inferior quality.

Because of the documents, downloadable from Florihana’s website, and the organic certification, I would like to recommend Florihana.

Books

• Avicenna, born in 980 C.E., near Bukhara, Iran which is now in Uzbekistan, died in1037 C.E., Hamadan, Iran, was a medical doctor, who wrote more than hundred scientific papers about the knowledge about essential oils, and lectured the art of distilling at the by him founded universities in Spain. Book: Avicenna’s Medicine: A New Translation of the 11th-Century Canon with Practical Applications for Integrative Health Care
• René-Maurice Gattefossé, father of modern aroma-therapy. Book: Gattefossé’s Aromatherapy (1918)
• Dr. Jean Valnet – Book: The practice if aroma therapy. Article: We remember Jean Valnet (1964)
• P. Franchomme & D. Penoël – Book: L’aroma therapie exactement. In the year 1975 P. Franchommé discovered that the chemical compound of essential oils changes according to the place where the plant grows or is cultivated. This is noted with chemotype or ct. One needs to take this in consideration for optimal medical results.

Article

• What Are Essential Oils, and Do They Work? – Healthline

Scientific Research

• Why aromatherapy is showing up in hospital surgical units – Mayo Clinic
• An Overview of the Biological Effects of Some Mediterranean Essential Oils on Human Health – PubMed
• Essential oils and Health – PubMed
• Essential Oils, Part I: Introduction – PubMed
• Oregano essential oil as an antimicrobial additive to detergent for hand washing and food contact surface cleaning – ResearchGate
• Antiviral efficacy and mechanisms of action of oregano essential oil and its primary component carvacrol against murine norovirus – PubMed
• Antibacterial activity of oregano (Origanum vulgare Linn.) against gram positive bacteria – PubMed
• Essential Oils of Oregano: Biological Activity beyond Their Antimicrobial Properties – PubMed
• Carvacrol, a Plant Metabolite Targeting Viral Protease (M^pro) and ACE2 in Host Cells Can Be a Possible Candidate for COVID-19 – Frontiers in Plant Science [[oregano’s principle component is carvacrol, admin]]
• Oregano Oil and Its Principal Component, Carvacrol, Inhibit HIV-1 Fusion into Target Cells – PubMed