Essential oils are aromatic volatile liquids distilled from shrubs, flowers, trees, roots, bushes, and seeds.

Essential oils are some of the oldest and most powerful therapeutic agents known. Most people today are unaware that they have an impressive, multimillennium history of use in healing and anointing throughout the ancient world. Dozens of essential oils are cited repeatedly in Judeo-Christian religious texts and records show they were used to treat virtually every ailment known to man at that time. Frankincense, myrrh, lotus, cedarwood, and sandalwood oils were widely used in ancient Egyptian purification and embalming rituals. Other oils, like cinnamon, clove and lemon, were highly valued as antiseptics hundreds of years before the development of today's synthetic medicines.

With the advance of antibiotics and prescription drugs during the last century, natural therapeutic agents, especially essential oils, have been largely overlooked. Only during the last two decades have essential oils begun a resurgence in popularity in the United States, as their broad-spectrum antibacterialand therapeutic action is rediscovered by many researchers and health-care professionals. No doubt part of the reason essential oils have been slow to emerge--especially in the United States--is because they were heavily extended and adulterated for commercial use, destroying their therapeutic biochemistry and making them useful only as air-freshening or flavoring compounds.

In their pure state, essential oils are some of the most concentrated natural extracts known, exhibiting significant and immediate antiviral, anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, and hormone-balancing effects. In clinical practice, they have been shown to have a profound influence on the central nervous system, helping to reduce or eliminate pain, release muscle tension and provide strong emotional uplift.

The chemical structure of an essential oil is such that it can rapidly penetrate cell membranes, travel throughout the blood and tissues, and enhance cellular function. For those health professionals who have worked regularly with quality essential oils on patients, it has become very clear that there is a powerful life force inherent in these substances, which gives them an unmatched ability to communicate and interact with cells in the human body.

For many there is no doubt that essential oils are ordained as medicines for mankind and will provide critical medical solutions in the future. They could very well be the missing link of modern health care, bringing allopathic and holistic practice together for optimal health in the 21st century.

Healthy-minded people the world over have learned the value of using high quality natural herbs. Interestingly, most therapeutic herbs can be distilled into an essential oil. The key difference is one of concentration. The essential oil can be from 100 to 10,000 times more concentrated--and thereforemore potent--than the herb itself.

Even though they are many times more potent than natural herbs, essential oils--unlike prescription drugs--very rarely generate any negative side effects. This carries profound implications for those wanting to maintain or regain their health quickly AND naturally.

Sometimes the effects of administering essential oils are so dramatic that the patients themselves call it "miraculous." And while no one fully understands yet why or how essential oils provide such significant benefits, the fact is that they do. With pure essential oils, millions of people can find relief from disease, from infections, from pain, and even from mental difficulties. Their therapeutic potential is enormousand is only just beginning to be tapped.