The CBD essential oil connection

What is the CBD essential oil link? If you’ve read the ingredient lists on the Lost Remedy products, you know they are heavy on essential oils. There’s a really good reason for that. Essential oils come from plants; the oils are extracted either by steam distillation or CO2 extraction, depending on the particular plant. These oils have been used for millennia to treat everything from anxiety to aches and pains to acne and more.

There are three ways to use essential oils: application, inhalation, ingestion. Obviously, because our products are applied topically, we use the application method. With rare exception, essential oils are not generally used full strength. The recommendation is to use a 2% strength, distilled into a carrier oil.

Each essential oil has unique properties to help us decide which product we use it for. Carrier oils also have properties that help us determine how to pair the essential and carrier oils. For instance, how easily can the carrier oil be absorbed? Does it have antioxidant properties? Anti-aging properties? Is it a humectant, which attracts and retains moisture? All these are taken into consideration before we even create the product.

Our CBD-infused products use essential oils and carrier oils to enhance the beneficial properties of cannabinoids. Both, when combined with CBD, jump-start the CBD receptors already present in our bodies (See Cannabinoids and You). Combining the essential and carrier oils with CBD makes each product most effective. Next, we’ll explain the benefits of CBD used topically and internally.

CBD, carrier and essential oils

As has already been noted, CBD on its own is a real boon to our bodies. It has been used for centuries as a nutritional supplement, among other things. Essential oils, too, have been used medicinally for centuries. But essential oils themselves are pretty strong and if you have sensitive skin, direct application could cause a reaction. Plus, diluting the essential oil in a carrier oil may increase the therapeutic benefits for two reasons.

First, essential oils are extremely volatile and tend to evaporate quickly. So, before it is even absorbed into the skin, a good chunk of it evaporates into the air. Now, given the expense of essential oils, to have most of it evaporate before the benefits can be achieved seems counterproductive. Enter the fatty carrier oil, which doesn’t evaporate at all. It will contain the essential oil and as your skin absorbs it, the benefits of all the oils are absorbed with it.

Second, by settling an essential oil into a carrier oil, such as fractionated coconut oil, sweet almond oil, avocado oil or other such oils, you can spread the essential oil over a more of your body, helping absorb it into a larger area.

When CBD oil is incorporated into any combination of carrier and essential oils, along with other healing ingredients such as aloe vera, the body’s cannabinoid receptor system is activated. This activation allows the healing properties of each element to perform more efficiently and at their peak levels.

Maybe you find it difficult to believe that essential oils can be so powerful. Well, here’s a little-known historical tale to illustrate essential oils’ value.

Bubonic plague buster: thieves oil

It seems that during an outbreak of the Bubonic Plague, four thieves would descend upon the dead or dying and rob them – without becoming ill and dying themselves.

These cavalier bandits were protected by, you guessed it, essential oils with vinegar and garlic.

How do we know? Apparently, they were caught red-handed. The constabulary at the time granted the thieves leniency for disclosing the secret of how they avoided infection. The bandits described a concoction of aromatic herbs, including vinegar, garlic, cloves and Rosemary that they smeared all over themselves before ravaging the dead and dying.

Hmmm, you might say, that doesn’t prove anything. You’d be right, except that modern scientists have scrutinized the products they used and have found that “many harmful microbes can’t survive in the presence of certain essential oils.”

As recently as 2005, Edward Close, PhD, a mold remediation expert used the thieves oil to eliminate a particularly persistent mold problem that had defied the strongest mold remediation products available. Fait accompli, with no chemicals and no harmful side effects.

Now no one is sure that there were actually four thieves; could have been 40, or maybe the thieves oil concoction came about from a man named Forthaves and the legend morphed into four thieves. Nevertheless, current-day studies have indicated the mixture of essential oils that make up thieves oil is efficacious for suppressing microbes that want to mess with our immune systems. Plus, it is chemical-free and environmentally friendly. It might be something to

pay attention to.

In the end, even though we don’t know for sure about the validity of the thieves oil story, we know the validity of essential oils is real and practical.