The Difference Between an Essential Oil and a Tincture
We always hear this term thrown around, but what is an essential oil?
We can get fat-soluble and water-soluble and even resinous phytochemicals out of a plant with alcohol, making a tincture, but does this include the essential oils?
Which is better, a tincture or an essential oil?
So what IS an essential oil? And why do they call it that?
The dictionary definition of essential oil is... well, let's forget that for now.
Sometimes, when a dictionary only tells you part of the story and different dictionaries tell you different parts of the whole story, you wind up not understanding anything, even though you ”looked it up” a hundred times.
You can repeat the words an essential oil is blah blah blah, but in your mind, you are still blank on what it is exactly.
How Essential Oils Were Originally Used
So let's start at the beginning. We know the history of tinctures goes way back to the beginnings of man, but why did he start making essential oils? Well, it wasn’t initially for anything medicinal. It was for capturing and preserving the pleasant smell of flowers and other such nice-smelling things so they could be enjoyed all year round and could make other things smell better.
They were also used in religious ceremonies because it was thought that these essentials connected humankind to the Divine. After that, it was discovered that they also had medicinal properties.
Why Are They Called “Essential Oils”?
The first methods of capturing what was known as “the essence” of a nice-smelling flower or plant had to do with soaking it in an oil to make the oil pick up the smell. This could have easily been the beginning of the term essential oil. “Essential,” not because it was necessary, but because it represented a defining characteristic of the flower: its smell.
Later methods to obtain this essence did not employ oil, and the substances called the essence of the plant were actually not bona fide oils either, but the term essential oils continued to be used. Oils are usually composed of fat of some kind, and these essential substances are not fats.
How Essential Oils Behave
But then again, these volatile and aromatic substances (both terms referring to their ability to evaporate easily and therefore be easily smelled) do have at least one of the properties of oil. They tend to separate from water. But they aren’t viscous like oil. (Viscosity refers to the thickness of a liquid). If you shake them while they are in water, they will appear to dissolve in the water easily, and don’t have that same slickness as oil. But after a time, they will tend to separate again.
The other characteristic to be considered an oil would be that it had to be combustible. Since these substances are mostly carbon structures, they all burn, some more readily than others. So it is only the lack of viscosity that has cast doubt as to whether they are true oils. Some say they are and some say they are not. But the name essential oil is agreed upon just the same.
Those who argue that essential oils are not true oils give some roundabout usage definition of “oil” that refers to the idea of meaning lifeblood, essential or core liquid without any etymological history to back it up. It’s kind of like saying essential essentials.
I leave you to decide which opinion you like better. Personally, I think the name just stuck from the first method of extraction into oil.
How Are Essential Oils Made?
So if they are not fats, then what makes up an essential oil?
Well, depending on the method of extraction, it can vary, and some can even contain some fats. Steam distillation is best known and still the most common method. It is dependent on the essential oils superior ability to evaporate faster than the other compounds found in the plant.
There are many other, more modern ways to extract the aromatic compounds, which vary in the amounts of companion things that will come out in the end product.
There is even a method of extracting with alcohol and then distilling out the alcohol. You are probably saying, but you said in the last blog that that couldn’t be done 100%, and you would be right, but the distillation can now be done under pressure, which breaks that mixture that otherwise refuses to separate and so you can do it after all. But then you tend to get a little more than just the aromatic compounds, which gives you that variation I mentioned.
A typical essential oil contains hundreds of individual compounds, most of which don’t even amount to 1% of the total mixture.
The majority of compounds found in essential oils are terpenes. I have explained terpenes in other blogs because they are found in many herbs, but I would be surprised if you remembered it, so it bears repeating. You can find an in-depth explanation here.
Which One Is Better?
So what’s the difference between a tincture and an essential oil, and which is better?
Well, a tincture gets the most out of one plant and is more of nature's recipe because it contains a bit of everything and works synergistically.
But an essential oil takes a little from a great quantity of plants and concentrates it.
A tincture is safe to consume. An essential oil is not unsafe, but the possibility of overdoing it is always there because it is an isolated thing. Generally, an herb has built-in safeties that will make you vomit if you overdo it. It’s not always easy to know when you are overdoing it with an essential oil.
That is why essential oils are not generally consumed except by inhalation or through a carrier oil on the skin. Or you can dilute them in water and make a spray. I have had some great healing from essential oils in this way. I’ve gotten over flu-like things in 3 days by inhaling the vapor instead of it going on and on, like happened with others.
So essential oils have their place. But they do not in any way replace tinctures. For nutrition, the tincture is superior. But actually eating good food is the greatest of all.
That’s why we try to provide you with the best in whole foods in convenient capsules for your busy day. Thank you for spending your valuable time with me. I hope you learned something you can use.