Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

Commercial promotions on this list are fair game. That's the way it goes down.

First, nobody's arguing all essential oils are bogus, or more ridiculous that 
food alone heals every accident and illness - as implied below. Those are 
straw man tactics.

Second, true believers find it easy to exaggerate and embellish. Yes, 
aromatherapy goes back centuries, but the history of distilled oils per se 
shows the process advanced very slowly and was limited to very few sketchy 
recorded instances like the Persian Avicenna and Hildegard of Bingen. There 
is no evidence of distilled oils ever being widely used in past centuries. 
What there is, is a long history of herbal medicine using plants for various 
ailments and conditions in almost all cultures. That is simply not the same 
as essential oils as we know them today. Modern essential oils and the 
distilling industry do not go back thousands of years. See 
http://www.aromaweb.com/articles/history.asp or many other sources. The 
sellers of modern distilled essential oils cannot honestly claim the long 
history of herbalism as the history of their distilled essential oils. All 
advertisements for their products seem to claim all herbalism as proof we 
need to buy their products. It's a long stretch to think there's no false 
advertising there.

That book (I know which book) claiming 1,000 Bible references to essential 
oils is misleading on several counts. The distillation process used today 
wasn't developed until the 20th century. Only a handful of oils were known at 
the time, and the dozen or so oils in ancient Palestine were not distilled; 
they were simple plant extracts much like extracts we find in the herbal 
supplements aisle today. More importantly, their use was largely for 
religious ritual; not meant for healing disease at all. The common mistake is 
taking a religious book and trying to make it a medical textbook. Not all 
essential oils are safe, topically or internally. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_oil

Sure there are studies showing certain essential oils show antibacterial 
properties in vitro, lab cultures. But I'll wait for double blind studies 
showing they're effective in human trials and that the plants themselves that 
they come from are not effective. I grow and use several mints and other 
herbs myself - but only because there's a lot more than traditional use to 
back them up.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 3/2/2010 at 5:38 PM Carrie Shepard wrote:

>While I would love to believe that good food and herbs were enough to
>keep us healthy, the truth is that that would be neglecting at least 1,000
>references in the Bible to essential oils and many more from Egyptian and
>Chinese sources just as old.  There have always been diseases and
>accidents from which food alone is not enough to heal the person.
>
>Superbugs are a huge problem in hospitals and healthcare facilities and
>school sports programs now.
>
>My own story is that I had radically changed my diet but not recovered
>from mold and systemic candida.   I learned how to butcher my own chickens
>and goat and milk my own goats, grow my own foods, and it was not enough.
>Thousands of dollars in herbal and whole food supplements didn't touch the
>candida and mold in my head and didn't help my numb heart.  Watching a
>child starve to death after doctors refused further care took its toll,
>but it's a beauty for ashes story now.
>
> Young Living Raindrop oils and the oils in the 12 ancient oils of
>scripture healed my brain and heart...While some foods can make a person a
>bit happier, they cannot impact the limbic center the way essential oils
>do.  Yes, trace amounts are to be found in fresh herbs, but when a person
>is in a health crisis, they need the concentrated form of the eo and
>sometimes a lot of it.
>
>My husband has a co-worker with MRSA now and his niece and nephew have
>MRSA, picked up from school sports.  Do just a tiny bit of research and
>you will find that the doctors have nothing to offer these people but
>longterm fear of sudden organ failure from mutating antibiotic resistant
>fungi, Ecoli, MRSA, and candida.  Pubmed has numerous research articles
>posted on the excellent results recieved from many essential oils, but if
>we do not teach, how do the people learn about it?   You would not expect
>to go to a college without paying for the classes, nor a massage therapy
>school, so why would you want the teaching all for free?
>
>I'm told that MRSA is now a huge problem in the foster care system, a
>number of young children have died from it.  They seem fine, develop a
>small abcess somewhere and boom, they're gone.  As a CARE Instructor, I
>now have the opportunity to teach applied aromatherapy to nurses for IACET
>credits, these nurses have the potential to save lives with this
>knowledge, and protect their own.
>
>May wisdom prevail,
>Carrie Shepard, CI
>www.tulsacareintensive.eventsbot.com
>
>
>
>
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