I wanted to comment about something that I keep reading about: the FDA sending warning letters to essential oil companies.
Why? Because I think there is an important a point to be made.
I’m a pharmacist. My job is to sell medications to people to make them better…. Or at least that’s what I thought it was for many years. Until I started learning about more “alternative” medicines, namely nutrition, supplements and essential oils.
As a pharmacy student I recall our pharmacy garden and the plants that were grown there. Our assistant Dean used to study and isolate active chemical entities for therapeutic uses from these plants. We even had a class to study the same thing.
Fast forward 20 years and I’ve come full circle back to plants… Although plants have been used medicinally for thousands of years. (As a side note, my husband -also a pharmacist- and I spent over an hour exploring the medicinal garden at Montreal’s Botanical Gardens)
Why do I think this article is important? Because it gets to the root of the problem of our medical system: drug companies. If drug companies can’t make money patenting a potential medicine then it must be “dangerous” and they influence the FDA to issue warnings such as this and to some degree I actually agree. Which is one of the reasons why I always tell people that if you are going to use essential oils for therapeutic uses, then you MUST know the integrity and standards of the company selling the oil.
This past month, I was fortunate enough to attend a doTerra convention. It was not what I expected. There was no rah rah “we’re the best company out there”… There was no business training or other typical themes. Instead it was about the integrity and the core values of this company… It was about how they are developing a scientific medical affairs division to show “real” science about how essential oils work. They are conducting a landmark study designed the traditional way drug companies show that they have a safe and effective product. They have even partnered with a company to study the effect of the entire human genome (all 20,000+ of them) and how each component of essential oils affect each gene. (Just a note that each essential oils contain 200-300 chemical entities).
This scientific affairs department is run by people who have PhDs in Pharmacology, Pharmacognacy and Medicinal Chemistry. This is a REAL scientific research department.
I am confident that pretty soon we will be able to provide hard core science to the population at large. The practice of modern medicine is about to go back to basics with plants.
I’ll get off my soapbox now.