Hydrosols

Distilled or Extracted Specifically For Therapeutic Use

Distillation is not a new art. Although the perfection of the process is usually credited to Avicenna (Ibn Sina) in the eleventh century, the art was known long before then. A clay still was found in Pakistan that dates back to the year 500 B.C. The Greek alchemist Zosimos described the three-legged still, or "Tribikos," of Maria Prophetissima, from the year 299 A.D. The Chinese were distilling plum wine into brandy in 500 A.D. using boiling/condensing technique, long after the emperor Wang Mang  (r.9-23 A.D.), who made alcohol by freezing wine, nationalized the brewing and fermenting industries.

As early as 2600 B.C the ancient Egyptians were boiling plant material in large pots covered with the short fleece of a sheep or a heavy cloth. The wool acted as a type of condenser, absorbing the aromatic steam and cooling it within the fibres so that it condensed. The fleece was then wrung out to extract the aromatic substances, which were allowed to separate in the clay vessels.

The wood extracts - sandalwood, cypress, myrrh, cedar, and pine - were important elements in many aspects of Egyptian life and, including, of course, the expensive and lengthy process of embalming. In all these cases it appears that hydrosols or aromatic waters were produced and considered a valuable product of the exercise. Paintings of this process have survived to this day.

There are three main types of distillation for hydrosols. Steam-distillation, water-or hydro distillation, and hydro -diffusion. I will discuss steam-distillation at length here, but the other two methods are also worth examining, as they are the subject of much debate among producers. There is a massive difference, of course, between industrial steam-distillation and all manner of therapeutic distillation. The yield from therapeutic distillation is usually about half that of industrial output.

In steam-Distillation, today's techniques differ only slightly from those of the ancients. The still design remains quite simple, although there is magic in its measurements. Basically a still is a large pot with a grate in its bottom and a removable lid that can be secured to create a hermetic seal. The height of the pot should be greater than the width of the pot to prevent the steam from channeling up only one side or the center of the plant material. Obviously, it is important that the steam travel through all of the plant material so that all of the oil can be extracted. The steam is allowed to enter at the bottom of the still in a trickle, wafting in like a light fog rolling over the land. The steam enters through a grid or cross of pipes with vent holes that face down to further slow the entry of the steam and to ensure that it fills every centimeter of the still body.

Industrial distillation forces the steam into the still under pressure and in high volumes , but therapeutic distillation prefers this gentle trickle of steam. Sometimes it can take up to two hours for the steam to make its way through all the plant material and reach the condenser. The grid is placed above the steam pipes to keep the plants away from the steam until it fills the still completely.

It was the shape of the lid and condenser that Avicenna really perfected back in the eleventh century. His design became known as a Moor's head, for its resemblance to the arches and minarets of Morrish architecture. Originally, and even today in small stills, coiled condensers were used. That is, the pipe down which the steam travels as it cools back into water is coiled like the shell of a snail. Many alchemists believed that the angle and rotation of the coil should in fact be based on the torus, a specific spiral angle of rotation that exists in nature: shells, leaves growing along a branch, the spin of a maple key as it floats to the ground . Many believed that using the sacred geometry of the torus created a more natural flow, one that would enhance the energy of the material being extracted.

But what modern aromatherapy distillers know is that many plants require specific condensing parameters, and some distillers have multiple condensers  in different shapes and sizes so the most appropriate cooling and therefore separation can be chosen for the plant material being distilled.

This knowledge is part of the art and science of the alchemy of distilling.

Read More.....Distilled or Extracted Specifically For Therapeutic Use 2

Reference: Hydrosols The Next Aromatherapy / Suzanne Catty

Sustainably Wild-Crafted and Tested For Chemical Contaminants - 2

An increasingly common situation, where dramatic harvesting practice may take place, is in areas of development or logging. It is very important to keep an eye on these locales and develop a relationship with the landowners and/or the workers. These situations may provide unusually large amounts of harvestable materials (as are generally needed for the production of essential oils). When trees are being cut or land is being cleared, everything from the branches down to undergrowth plants is plowed under, burned or left to fry in the sun.

In such cases tons of bark/or leaf material may be gathered with little additional cost to the already dramatically altered ecology. We don't see this as mercenary but as wise use. The other side of the relationships with "land developers"  is twofold. If developers are outright abusing the land, you are there to call them on it or if necessary blow the whistle. Or you can use a more subtle means of influencing the "development." For example, a landowner told us about an area which had been clear-cut and where he thought blue cohosh grew in abundance. We identified  the plant and potential harvesting area and then talked to him in order to get a picture of the land's history.

Knowing that the cohosh that was inside the cut  line (destined to be lawn) was doomed, we waited till mid-summer , when the plants had borne fruit  and were starting to fade, and then harvested 100 percent of the plant. Where other plants survived in the forest shade, we scratched up some areas and seeded at least five times as much as we had harvested. Generally in a wild area you would harvest only one in five blue cohosh.

The next year the same gentleman phoned us again and asked if we were interested in mullein, which was now growing in the spot where the cohosh had been, healing the overexposed land. We went and harvested half the aerial leaves but left all the plants to flower and seed so that they could become part of the meadow culture which the owner had now been convinced might be more profitable and beautiful than a lawn. 

In many parts of the world wild-crafting is the only way to gather plants. Either land is too expensive, the soil is too poor, or the crop is not valuable enough to make farming an option. In Madagascar, for instance, much of the island is (or was) jungle rain forest, the population predominantly rural, and wealth unevenly distributed. However Madagascar produces many unique plants  and beautiful essential oils and has some very good distillers, so a mix of approaches exists.

In 1998 one company began a special project with cinnamon leaf oil. The main impetus was not the value of the leaf oil, less than one-fourth of the value of the bark oil, but the desire to discourage the killing of the cinnamon tree. Cinnamon bark is valuable in any form, so valuable that it is common practice to uproot the tree and hack out the roots, which look and smell much like the bark and are used as a cheap adulterant of cinnamon bark products. of course, this kills the tree.

Madagascar rain forests are just as fragile as any other, and the widespread destruction of cinnamon trees and all that grew near them allowed severe erosion and other environmental damage to occur. The solution was to give value to something that only a living tree produced... the leaves. Now pickers can be convinced to harvest leaf and bark in a sustainable manner and leave the tree alive for future harvests. Further value has been given to the crop through the sale of Cinnamon leaf hydrosol.

It is this kind of professional integrity that we should look for in the producers of hydrosols and essential oils. Of course many countries have a difficult history that makes environmental concerns regarding wild-crafted plants take on a whole new picture. Who can say what may residue may exist in the soil, water, and plants in war-ravaged or over-industrialized countries?  Can modern testing methods ensure that the plant products from these regions are clean and truly health giving?

Can people even afford the tests? When will the law actually regulate the use of chemicals and pollutants based on a belief that people and the planet, not just profits, must be protected? When will we start to consider the complex interaction of these elements in the products we choose to use for our health? The wings of the butterfly can change the weather: the choices we make today will determine our future.

For millions of years, on average, one species became extinct every century. But most of the extinctions since prehistoric times have occurred in the last three hundred years. And most of the extinctions that have occurred in the last three hundred years have occurred in the last fifty. And most of the extinctions that have occurred in the last fifty years have occurred in the last ten.

It is the sheer rate of acceleration that is as terrifying as anything else. We are now heaving more than a thousand species of animals and plants off the planet every year.

Reference: Hydrosols The Next Aromatherapy / Suzanne Catty

Sustainably Wild-Crafted and Tested For Chemical Contaminants

If you can't find organic hydrosols and essential oils, the next-best choice is those that are sustainably  wild-crafted. Sustainable means that species can withstand harvesting and still proliferate. It does not mean we take all we can see of a species without thinking; remember the dodo! The Canadian distillers with whom I work extensively on hydrosols hire only extremely skilled pickers, people who live on and with the land, to harvest their wild plants. Unskilled and cheap labor would not only pick any old plant but pick without regard to the health of the individual plant and the plant community.

As with some animals, there is a critical mass to plant populations, and when the population falls to a certain point, it will become extinct. The Canadian distillers also discovered that although branches from trees felled for timber could be used in distilling,  the branches needed to be cut by hand, not ripped from the trunk by the huge stripping machines. The logging industry always wasted the branches, but the oil is unusable for therapy unless  some individual care has been applied to the harvest. Mechanical stripping strips the therapeutic properties from the plant and also introduces pollutants such as lubricants  from the machinery. There is more to wild crafting that meets the eye.

Nature's balance is already under threat from pollution, destruction of biospheres like the rain forest and wetlands, destruction of natural biodiversity , genetically altered plant material that kills insects, and who knows what else. If we truly wish to sustain the balance while harvesting from the wild, it is indeed a craft that we must practice. Old friends of mine who have made a sustainable business from wild-crafting are owners of the Algonquin Tea Company.

They express what we feel.
Wild-Crafters as Emissaries for Nature
We feel privileged to be wild-crafters. Jokingly, we would say we're priest and priestess, bring forth the healing spirit of the goddess Gaia for the people. Part of our inheritance, as keepers of the earth faith, is the responsibility to reciprocate. These days, with the dramatic increase in development, resource extraction, pollution, and climate change, it is debatable whether picking wild plants for commercial use should be legal.

Here we make the practical and ethical  distinction between wild-crafting and simply harvesting from the wilderness. The tradition of wild-crafting may be defined by two interlaced practices. The first movement involves catching a surplus from the land's perennial rides of abundance.The other act is to aid the earth's spontaneous regenerative cycles. In the harvest/regenerative relationship we must know when to go forward  and when to back off: the ancient and reciprocal relationship of wild-crafting draws from, and gives to, the land.

Perhaps the most obvious benefit of wild-crafting  is that it provides our huge urban family with the healing essence of the natural word. A less obvious part of the relationship is that in harvesting plants from wild areas  we give " value" to these areas, ultimately helping to ensure the preservation of these scared places.
Another, perhaps even more subtle but essential, aspect of traditional wild-crafting is that it perpetuates and preserves our primal relationship with the healing deities of the plants and land. In working with a place and its plants, we reproduce the original healing experience. From this perspective, the aromatherapy tradition owes its healing abilities to our ancestral/primordial relationship with the land and its plant expressions of healing and regenerative energy.

As humanity's gift and purpose may lie in our consciousness and role  as earth stewards, the gift and purpose of the plant people is the healing and regeneration of the earth and all her children. As we reenter this circle of relations by using the harvested plant, we can experience  the openness of desert sage, the comforting rush of a rich pine or eucalyptus forest, or the sweet, mysterious musk of pond lilies in summer bloom.

In the use of plant essences we evoke the earth's healing forces. In the traditional act of harvesting, we consummate our relationship with the plant. Wild-crafting is an art of sensitivity, care, and knowledge older than "agriculture ". These practice, which are still being carried on by native people in remote areas, are based on an environmental ethic of give-and-take.

 When we take from the land, it must be gently and reasonably; then we must give back, so the land can regenerate for future generations of life. To "take reasonably" we must be guided by our common sense  and not greed. Fir example, if we find a plot of ginseng or goldenseal and know it takes three to ten years to grow roots of harvestable size, then reason tells us that at the very most, if the plot seems healthy and productive, we may take as much  as one in three  or as little as one in ten plants per year, depending on the rate of regeneration.

Each plant in each case will dictate what should be taken. With some plants like comfrey or mint, we may be able to harvest up to half the above-ground growth four to twelve times per year, or nine out of ten plants ( always leaving ten per cent for seed).

Read More.........Sustainably Wild-Crafted and Tested For Chemical Contaminants - 2

Reference: Hydrosols The Next Aromatherapy / Suzanne Catty

Genetically Modified Plants 

Another reason to buy organic is the issue of genetic modification or engineering of foodstuffs. The hot topic as we move into the new millennium is "Frankenfoods," science's answer to modern agricultures problems of supply and demand, or so it is said. The public backlash to genetic modification of food is in full swing. In an article from the Manchester Guardian in the summer of 1999, Joanna Blythman writes, 2 recently, the Tories have intensified their efforts, demanding food labeling to be extended to cover all GM {modified} ingredients (including derivatives, and additives);

Obligatory labeling on animal feedstuffs, so that GM ingredients cannot continue to be anonymously included in feed (as is happening at present); statutory, not voluntary, regulation of field trials; a public register of these trials...All UK supermarkets and leading food brands have now deserted the sinking ship, and are pulling the plug on GM ingredients.

What started as a steady trickle has become a flood, with recent high-profile defections including Nestle, Unilever, Cadbury."The fast food chain McDonalds removed over twenty genetically modified "ingredients" from its U.K. items in response to the public protest. However , the same Gm products have not been removed in North America.

The most pertinent issue in genetic engineering seems to be the destruction of the natural biodiversity of the planet, particularly within food crops. Biologists warn of the potential problems : "Variety is not only the spice of life, but the very staff of life. Diversity is nature's failsafe mechanism against extinction. Any Banker recommends a diversified portfolio in case one stock fails."

Combine this with the increasing interdependence of chemical farming and the new bioengineered crops with a view to the bottom line and you have a complex problem for which there is no easy solution.

It is not that farmers and agribusiness companies don't deserve to make a profit: everyone does. However, no one deserves to make a profit at the expense of whole nations or, worse, the earth herself. Genetically engineered food is patented. Farmers can be fined or sent to jail for keeping seed to replant the next year. The April 1999 Issue of Harper's magazine reprinted a letter that agribusiness giant Monsanto sent to thirty thousand farmers the previous year.

The letter warned farmers  that "saving and replanting seeds from genetically engineered crops constitutes 'piracy' Now consider that sales of Roundup Ready soybeans, a GM crop, have gone from one million acres in 1996 to over thirty five million acres in 1999 and the predicament of farmers becomes clear. 

The same article also mentioned that Monsanto, "since1996, spent $6 billion acquiring seed companies like Cargill international Seed ($1.4 billion) and DeKalb Genetics ($2.3 billion). Rival Du Pont followed suit by spinning off its petroleum division, Conoco, and forming a $1.7 billion 'research alliance' with Pioneer Hi-bred International, the world's largest seed company.

" Tim Yeo, the U.K. agriculture minister, also quoted in the Manchester Guardian, says "far from GM crops being a way of improving food supplies, there is a risk that their introduction is intended mainly to enhance the market position of a small number of companies, I believe that both Britain and Europe  could secure a commercial advantage if a completely segregated source of GM crops can be preserved.

Of course, if you live in a tiny rural village in Indonesia where twenty varieties of rice have traditionally been grown, then the impact of both chemical farming and patented genetically engineered foods is even more extreme. These farmers can become permanently in debt to the owners of the seed patents, forced to buy seed that they can't afford every year, forced to buy the chemicals that these seeds need to grow: and meanwhile they lose the natural biodiversity of their habitat and diet.

The water, their drinking supply, becomes polluted with the chemicals. And either the pests develop some immunity to the chemicals over time or their natural predators, who would in most years keep the pests under check, succumb to the toxicity of the. It's a nasty vicous cycle.

It is, of course, the ultimate irony. As garrison Wilkes of the UNiversity of Massachusetts says, "The products of agro-technology are displacing the source upon which the technology is based. It is analogous to taking stones from the foundation to repair the roof. " The problems of monoculture agriculture have been devestating for humankind since they began. Here is a partial list of the human, environmental, and economic disasters that have resulted from monoculture farming and the erosion of biodiversity in agriculture:

• 1840s:Irish potato blight: 2 million die in the famine.
  1860s: Vine disaster cripple Europe's wine industry
  1870-90:Coffee rust robs Ceylon of a valuable export
  1942:Rice crop in Bengal destroyed;millions of people die
  1946: u.S. oat crop devastated by fungus epidemic
  1950s: Wheat stem rust devastates U.S. harvest
  1970: Maize fungus threatens 80 percent of U.S. corn hectarage.

Is it worth the cost, both monetary and environmental, to pursue this line of research and thinking? Surely we can read the writing on the wall, and we must have the ability to respond, to be responsible, in a more appropriate way to the demands of the future.

Reference: Hydrosols The Next Aromatherapy: Suzanne Catty