Hydrosols

WATER AS MEDICINE 

 Despite its importance to our health, many people just don't like to drink water. They didn't grow up drinking water and find it impossible to imagine consuming a litre or two in a single day. In fact, a litre is just short of thirty -two ounces, and what we actually need is closer to two and one-half litres, or eighty ounces, per day. Of that two and one-half litres, close to one litre will come from the foods we eat, but that still means that we must drink at least one and one-half litres of pure water daily if we are to avoid dehydration and keep our body in balance.

Modern substitutes like soda pop; teas, whether herbal, green, or black; coffee; and the endless variety of fruit juices and other beverages are not a substitute for water. Most of these drinks are actually diuretic, meaning they take water out of the system; they may contain preservatives, artificial colors and flavors, and the equivalent of several spoonfuls of sugar or, worse, corn syrup. Drinking nonwater beverages only increase your body's need and desire for the real thing.

Water is truly a medicine. For thousands of years "plain old water" has been used to treat health conditions ranging from fevers to allergies, dermatitis to migraine, nervousness to indigestion, colds and flu to pain and swelling. Water was the cure for centuries and was used hot, warm, or cold, depending on the condition.

Water was also heated to become steam and frozen to become ice, as these changes in the form and temperature, could treat a whole new range of health issues. Natural mineral and hot springs were centres for spiritual practices, and many of the great cultures of history were founded on rivers and lakes, from the Tigris and Euphrates to the Nile, Yangtze, and the Amazon. Water has been combined with herbs, massage, and heat. It has been used in baths, compresses, dips and sprays: in fact, hydrotherapy is perhaps the oldest " profession" in the world.

Reference: Hydrosols The Next Aromatherapy : Suzanne Catty

WHOLLY WATER !

It would be impossible to talk about hydrosols without addressing the issue of water. Water is one of the most critical elements in health and wellness, and unless we recognise its value and the relationship between water and hydrosols, we will be missing half the point! Water and the control of water supplies made Egyptian and Roman empires great, and some historians attribute the fall of the Roman Empire to the use of lead water pipes that slowly poisoned the population.

Water is now regarded as a commodity to be harnessed for its power or sold for its cleanliness. The temporary contamination of the Perrier springs in France several years ago, and the resulting recall of millions of bottles of spring water, was a national catastrophe causing great economic turmoil. The global policy of damming and diverting lakes, rivers, and other waterways is changing the face of the world and our weather.

When phase one of the James Bay dam in Canada was opened, it caused a shift in the earth's crust, and over a million acres of fragile environment was permanently flooded. The damage we have done to water all over the earth and the problems of supplying adequate quantities of high-quality-drinking water are two of the biggest issues facing us as we move into the twenty-first century. Consider the distribution of water on earth.

The bulk of our water is in the oceans, ice caps and glaciers, and groundwater. Over 97% of the water on earth is salty and therefore unusable by us, and 90% of the fresh water is unavailable, being deep underground or frozen. "only about 0.0001 percent of fresh water is readily accessible. " We have managed to pollute most of it in some way, and especially high concentrations of poisons are being found at the polar ice caps, where they have been building up for many years.

Of the available fresh water on the earth, nearly one-quarter is in the lakes and rivers of Canada, which has 98,667 cubic meters per person, compared with the United States with 9,277 and Russia with 30,298 per capita. Sadly most of this fresh water is in the Great Lakes and their watershed, an area of land that has become contaminated with some of the most toxic chemicals known, including huge amounts of PCB (polychlorinated biphenyl).

Such are the problems of accessing fresh water that the city of Tampa, Florida, is looking to desalination of seawater as an option in supplying the ever increasing demand of that region. Jerry L Maxwell, a leading proponent of the desalination project and general manager of the Tampa Bay Water, was quoted in a front-page story in the new York times "We are where we are because of the travesty of development in Florida." The first problem is demographic. The area has seen a fivefold increase in population in the past fifty years.

The second is environmental: "depleted aquifers, dry wetlands  and fallen trees, all casualties of pumping water from the ground to supply rapidly growing communities, often carried out with little heed for the consequences." It is just this kind of situation that illustrates the complexity of managing water supplies. Water is life. The adult human body is about 60 to 70 percent water, depending on the amount of body fat; the approximate water content in various parts of our bodies breaks down as follows.

We lose around two and one half litres of water per day just sitting still. Activity and climate can increase this water loss dramatically. Racing-car drivers sweat out several litres in a single race. "Basically, each of us is a blob of water with enough macro-molecular thickening to give us some stiffness and to keep us from dribbling away."

Reference: Hydrosols The Next Aromatherapy : Suzanne Catty

The Odor Factor

Hydrosols are aromatic compounds, and it is important to consider this when working with them. One of the frequently quoted rules of aromatherapy, is that you don't use an oil on someone if the person finds the smell unpleasant. The rationale is that a disliked odor will have detrimental effects on the health of the patient that far out-weigh the beneficial effects a particular oil would have for the individual concerned. If healing has as much to do with state of mind as with medical intervention per se, then a different approach to this problem may be in order.

If someone intensely dislikes the aroma of Eucalyptus globulus but has a bad chest cold with lots of congestion and phlegm, a mild headache, slight fever, and general body aches, there are two options: use other oils with similar therapeutic properties to effect an improvement in condition; or take the time to explain just how eucalyptus would help, validate your choice, give the individual options on how to use it (in a bath, in inhalations, topically, or internally), and help the person understand why it would be worth putting aside his or her dislike of the odor for a short period in order to "get better faster".

You will find not only that most people respond but also understand the argument  on many levels, including the unconscious and subconscious, and you also plant a seed of deeper understanding in the psyche that can have its own benefit to the healing process. You can apply the same process when using hydrosols. 

Hydrosols smell. Some are strong, others mild. Some smell nothing like the essential oil, while others are very similar to the oil. However, hydrosols never smell exactly the same as the oil or plant from which they are extracted. In some instances the hydrosol is so markedly different that you might not instantly recognize it by smell alone . This may be disappointing to some, but there are reasons for it.

Hydrosols contain only very small amounts of essential oil, and the oil in them is often not complete. GCMS (gas chromatography, mass spectometry) analysis shows that some of the non-water-soluble components of the essential oil extracted directly from the plants do not appear in the essential oils extracted from the hydrosols.

Certain trace compounds may also be absent , and some chemicals may appear in a slightly different form. Thus the odour of this solution-extracted oil is not exactly the same as that of the whole essential oil. Then there are the completely water-soluble components taht will never show up in the essential oil but are plentiful in the hydrosol. These lend their own fragrance and qualities to the water, further altering odor.

The smell of the mixture running off a still is sometimes quite unpleasant. The sweetness of lavender doesn't develop for days, often several weeks, after separation, and it takes even longer for the fragrance character of rose to fully develop. Fresh essential oils resemble hydrosols in that they exhibit a certain wetness and a slightly vague, not quite defined aroma that can be confusing. Indeed, essential oils need time to rest and coalesce after distillation before they are ready for use.

Hydrosols require time to mature as well. They begin to settle several days after distillation and will be aromatically stable four to five weeks later, with the aroma peaking anywhere from two to five months after distillation and remaining that way until degradation begins. Some hydrosols are definitely an acquired taste! If you maintain the view that you don't use smells you don't like, there will be many hydrosols that will never make it to your cupboard. If you can take the step of acknowledging that even some not-so-unpleasant smells can offer a world of benefit, then you are on your way. And life and health will be richer for it.

Reference: Hydrosols The New Aromatherapy: Suzanne Catty