Have you ever seen the word “alcohol” in the ingredient list of an essential oil?

When I first started with Young Living essential oils, I was suffering from eczema flare up for months, and my aunt brought me to an Homeopathy doctor in Hong Kong. The lady uses essential oils and she is a certified aromatherapist and if I didn’t remember wrongly, she also teaches aromatherapy classes.

As I wanted to know how “recognised” YLEO is, I showed her the bottle (I had a bottle of Peace & Calming with me) and ask for her opinion, she turned to the back of the label and said “This is not good, it contains alcohol.” I was disappointed and started to doubt about what I had been using on my family! When I got home, the first thing I did was to search on the internet about the “alcohol” listed on the P&C, which is “Benzyl Alcohol”.

Firstly, what are the essentials oil inside Peace & Calming?

So what is this “Benzyl alcohol”?

Benzyl alcohol does naturally occur in green and other teas, and some essential oils including ylang ylang and jasmine.

Benzyl alcohol is a component of these essential oils, but it is a minor constituent of these essential oils.  Toxic reactions and allergies to benzyl alcohol usually occur when the isolated chemical is used in a higher concentration as a preservative (1-5% of the formulation.)

So why do P&C contains Benzyl alcohol?

Because Benzyl alcohol is naturally occur in Ylang Ylang! and that is one of the 5 ingredients in P&C!

Ok… it was a dumb shocked that I got from the homeopathy doctor and I will never go back to her again. Honestly if she is an aromatherapist, she should know that it is one of the natural component, so its either she wanted to trick me or she does not know her work well, whatever it is, that was my first and last visit to her clinic.