The Importance of Purity and Consistency - doTERRA Europe | Science Talks

<<7>> Hi, I'm Abby Stopher.

<<8>> I am the Senior Product Marketing Manager

<<10>> for dōTERRA Europe,

<<12>> and today I am joined by,

<<14>> Dr Russell Osguthorpe,

<<15>> dōTERRA's Chief Medical Officer.

<<17>> Hi, Dr O.

<<18>> - Great to be with you, Abby.

<<19>> You too.

<<21>> So today we are going to be talking about a great subject,

<<24>> which I know you're very familiar and passionate about,

<<27>> which is purity and consistency.

<<31>> - It's a very big deal to me,

<<32>> something that I've been thinking about a lot

<<34>> since I came to dōTERRA over five years ago.

<<36>> Can you tell me what we mean

<<39>> by purity and by consistency

<<41>> in the context of dōTERRA and essential oils?

<<44>> Purity needs to be defined.

<<46>> For the purposes of today,

<<47>> when I talk about purity,

<<49>> what I'm talking about is lack of adulteration,

<<52>> meaning the addition of something to an essential oil,

<<58>> or the complete fabrication of an essential oil by chemists.

<<62>> So usually that is done for the purposes

<<67>> of increasing the profit of whoever is doing that.

<<71>> So when I see a bottle of dōTERRA essential oil,

<<75>> if I pick it up, I know that it has come from

<<79>> its true source, its true origin.

<<82>> Are you telling me that there are other products

<<85>> that are available on the market

<<87>> that will tell me they are those things,

<<89>> but they'll be manipulated?

<<92>> They'll have different things added to them?

<<95>> At dōTERRA, I think most people know

<<98>> that the essential oil industry as a whole

<<101>> is riddled with adulterated products.

<<105>> And we have actually gone to great lengths to detail this.

<<110>> We've showed it with my colleague, Dr Prabodh Satyal,

<<114>> who works in our essential oil science lab.

<<117>> He has published multiple papers

<<118>> showing the extent of adulteration

<<120>> of essential oils in the marketplace

<<122>> by other companies.

<<124>> His most recent couple of papers

<<127>> have been on birch essential oil

<<128>> and frankincense essential oil,

<<130>> where we have detailed the amount of adulteration

<<134>> in those specific supply chains.

<<137>> Adulteration of birch was especially egregious.

<<142>> Birch, in the marketplace today,

<<144>> there is not a single company other than dōTERRA

<<148>> that is marketing a birch oil that is not only pure birch,

<<152>> but has any birch in it at all.

<<154>> So let me explain what that means.

<<156>> Every other company's birch that we looked at,

<<159>> prior to launching our Birch last year,

<<161>> contained no birch in it at all.

<<164>> Birch on the bottle, no birch in the bottle.

<<168>> So what was it?

<<169>> It was either fabricated from wintergreen,

<<172>> - Okay.

<<173>> or completely fabricated from aspirin,

<<177>> expired lots of aspirin.

<<180>> You can get to methyl salicylate,

<<182>> which is the main chemical component

<<183>> of both wintergreen and birch essential oil,

<<187>> by taking aspirin and doing a very simple

<<190>> organic chemistry single step

<<193>> to turn it into methyl salicylate.

<<195>> And boy is it cheap to do that.

<<198>> Very, very cheap,

<<199>> and so you can put it in the bottle, it'll smell like it,

<<202>> but it has nothing to do with birch at all.

<<204>> - How would someone know?

<<206>> They wouldn't, and that's really one of the problems

<<210>> in the essential oil industry.

<<211>> Many people who are buying,

<<216>> I'll just say cheap essential oils,

<<219>> or even mid-price to expensive essential oils,

<<222>> don't know what they're buying.

<<225>> The secondary market is so rife

<<229>> with adulteration

<<232>> that essentially, nowadays,

<<234>> you cannot have a pure or a consistent oil

<<237>> if you're purchasing it on the secondary market.

<<240>> You have to own your supply chain all the way through

<<245>> to guarantee that your customer will receive

<<248>> a pure, unadulterated and consistent essential oil.

<<252>> - And how does dōTERRA do that?

<<255>> How do we make sure that it is safe

<<257>> and people know that they can trust?

<<259>> It has been an incredible journey.

<<261>> I think most of us remember the videos

<<264>> of Emily searching for pure essential oils

<<266>> when dōTERRA was just beginning,

<<268>> with Dave, and Doc, and Greg.

<<270>> Those beginnings,

<<273>> she had a hard time finding pure essential oils

<<275>> because nobody in the industry

<<278>> really wants a pure essential oil.

<<281>> They want something that is

<<284>> chemically indistinguishable

<<287>> from something that is pure and natural,

<<289>> but is not pure and natural.

<<292>> - Why do they want that though?

<<293>> So it can be as cheap as possible?

<<294>> Well, if you're a toothpaste maker,

<<296>> you want that brand of toothpaste

<<298>> to never, ever vary any

<<302>> tiny amount from one tube of toothpaste to the next.

<<307>> Peppermint essential oil is used in thousands of products,

<<310>> tens of thousands of products.

<<312>> And peppermint essential oil is totally deconstructed

<<315>> in the industry down to its root components,

<<319>> through very fractional distillation tools

<<323>> that allow single chemical compounds

<<325>> to be taken out of the plant essential oil.

<<330>> And then they take all of these test tubes

<<333>> of single chemical compounds

<<335>> and reconstitute them back to this fake,

<<339>> resynthesized, unnatural product.

<<342>> But it isn't what it started out as,

<<346>> and I have huge problems with that,

<<349>> from a transparency, safety, and efficacy perspective.

<<354>> And I think that our customers should be educated on it

<<357>> because we make a big deal

<<360>> about delivering to the marketplace

<<362>> a pure and consistent essential oil, free of adulteration,

<<367>> and with consistent chemistry that you can rely on,

<<370>> bottle to bottle, and batch to batch, and year to year.

<<373>> - With the amount of essential oils

<<375>> that dōTERRA is able to provide,

<<379>> how do we make sure from a consistency point of view,

<<383>> that they're all safe, that they're all the same?

<<388>> Well, we do that through Co-Impact Sourcing.

<<391>> And I can describe that through some of our huge products

<<396>> like Wild Orange oil, Peppermint oil, Lavender.

<<400>> We have fields of lavender all over the world.

<<403>> We also do, with Co-Impact Sourcing,

<<407>> we have farmers in developing countries like Kenya

<<412>> where they have three acre farms.

<<414>> And we bring 500 farmers' growth

<<417>> of Geranium essential oil or Tea Tree essential oil

<<420>> into a common distillery.

<<423>> And then at dōTERRA, when you distil an essential oil,

<<428>> people need to understand this,

<<430>> it's more of an art worldwide than it is a science.

<<433>> dōTERRA has made it a science.

<<436>> When we distil lavender at Esseterre,

<<438>> or when we distil geranium essential oil in Kenya,

<<441>> we are distilling it under the exact same conditions

<<444>> every single time.

<<447>> We have the same amount of product in the vat,

<<449>> we have the same temperature, the same pressure,

<<451>> and the same time.

<<453>> That results in an essential oil

<<455>> coming out of that distillation

<<458>> which is very, very similar to the last time we did it.

<<462>> Then we bring all that together,

<<463>> and whether it's Co-Impact Sourced,

<<465>> or sourced from huge fields of lavender all over the world,

<<469>> we blend those together.

<<471>> And that ends up with reducing the variation

<<474>> of the chemistry year to year.

<<476>> So when you look at the average

<<478>> linalool content in Lavender

<<479>> over the last eight years at dōTERRA,

<<482>> it's very, very similar.

<<484>> So we are delivering not only a pure Lavender

<<488>> to the marketplace,

<<490>> but to our current understanding,

<<492>> we are delivering

<<493>> the only consistent Lavender to the marketplace.

<<497>> Every other company

<<498>> is buying their lavender from other places,

<<501>> and their linalool content can vary tremendously.

<<505>> The International Standards Organisation

<<507>> tells the industry what a good Lavender should be,

<<512>> and their good Lavender range for linalool is 20 to 40%.

<<518>> That's big enough you can drive a truck through it.

<<521>> dōTERRA's linalool content of its Lavender

<<525>> is around 33%,

<<527>> with 1% variation on either side of that number

<<531>> over the last eight years of production.

<<533>> That type of consistency is done

<<536>> through those methods that I just described,

<<539>> Co-Impact Sourced, blending to reduce variation,

<<543>> making distillation a science and not an art.

<<546>> - It's incredible,

<<547>> and I think there'll be some people watching this

<<550>> that are already in the know of much of this information,

<<555>> and will feel equally passionately about it.

<<557>> It'll be maybe products that they take internally,

<<560>> that they apply to their skin,

<<562>> and they're very conscientious

<<564>> about their choice.

<<566>> - Yep.

<<567>> However, there will also maybe be others that are watching

<<570>> that want a nice smell for their home,

<<574>> and might not understand how

<<577>> the differences between what kind of products

<<580>> they can get from the market,

<<582>> and they may be happier paying that smaller price

<<585>> for that nice smell in their home.

<<588>> - Well, can I break in here?

<<590>> - Please.

<<591>> - Would you buy a car without brakes that worked?

<<594>> - No.

<<595>> - You should not buy a cheap essential oil.

<<598>> Cheap essential oils are fabricated.

<<600>> They are not pure, they are not consistent.

<<603>> You will not get safe and efficacious results by using them.

<<607>> In fact, quite the opposite.

<<610>> You cannot have safety without purity and consistency.

<<619>> Without purity, you don't know

<<621>> what you're putting on or into your body.

<<624>> That nice smell, it's going into your lungs.

<<628>> - But it's hard for people to know.

<<630>> - I know, because it smells nice.

<<632>> - Because it smells nice, but also,

<<633>> it's not something that is visual.

<<637>> You know, you can't look at two bottles

<<638>> and go, "Okay, well I can see that this one

<<640>> is going to maybe do me harm, or this one's good."

<<643>> We know from hearing from you for dōTERRA

<<646>> of the work that goes into making that a reality

<<649>> to having that purity and consistency,

<<651>> but for the person who's making a decision

<<655>> and is looking at products on the shelf, they wouldn't know.

<<659>> - Yeah, I think that you bring up a perfect point, Abby,

<<663>> and I think that most people need to be much more engaged

<<672>> in choosing what goes in or on their bodies.

<<675>> I know that our friends in Europe are very, very choosy,

<<678>> and very, very careful

<<680>> about these kinds of things in their homes.

<<686>> I think that our Wellness Advocates and our customers

<<689>> need to educate the world about this.

<<691>> And they need to help people to understand

<<694>> that cheap bottle of essential oil

<<697>> that comes in your hotel shampoo,

<<702>> because everything's got essential oils in it now.

<<705>> It's become a commodity.

<<706>> But the problem is, because it's been a commodity

<<709>> and because it's grown so tremendously

<<712>> over the past 15 to some odd years,

<<715>> unscrupulous business has taken over

<<718>> the essential oil universe and you get what you pay for.

<<723>> And people need to be very, very choosy,

<<726>> because these essential oils go in our lungs,

<<730>> on our skin, and in our bodies.

<<731>> Without knowing what is in the bottle, you're not safe.

<<737>> - So people need to do their research.

<<739>> - People do. I mean,

<<740>> you told me earlier that you have a little one at home.

<<742>> - I do.

<<743>> How old?

<<744>> - He's two, George.

<<745>> So you've got to be careful, right?

<<746>> - Absolutely.

<<747>> You're very careful

<<748>> about what food you give him,

<<751>> you're very careful about

<<752>> what clothes he wears,

<<754>> you're very careful about all of those things.

<<756>> Essential oils are even more important

<<760>> because they go into and on our bodies.

<<763>> They affect our chemistry.

<<765>> These plants have been with us a long time,

<<768>> and if we do these plants, these essential oils right,

<<771>> they will help improve our health and wellness,

<<774>> but we have to be using a pure, unadulterated,

<<777>> and consistent product.

<<780>> - Dr O, before we wrap up, is there anything

<<782>> in the realms of purity or consistency

<<784>> that you don't feel like we've touched on today

<<786>> that you think is important to share?

<<789>> - Well, I think that probably the most important thing

<<792>> that we've touched on is this purity piece,

<<794>> but I think most of us that are at dōTERRA get it.

<<796>> Yes.

<<797>> I just need people to share it.

<<799>> The second piece that we haven't spent

<<801>> as much time on is consistency.

<<803>> I, as a physician, understand dosing.

<<806>> I understand that the number of milligrams

<<810>> I prescribe as a paediatrician to a 2-year-old

<<813>> will vary greatly if that child is 18 years old.

<<818>> Their body size is so wildly different

<<821>> that I have to very specifically dose

<<824>> the same drug for those two different people.

<<827>> Essential oils have chemistry within them

<<831>> that is very powerful.

<<834>> And if a manufacturer of essential oils

<<837>> does not have consistency, then you as a mum

<<841>> have no idea how to dose essential oils

<<846>> to have the same effect year to year.

<<848>> Remember that 20-40% difference in lavender, in linalool?

<<854>> One day you could buy a bottle from a company that was 20%,

<<858>> the next day 40%, and then vice versa.

<<861>> So you could be underdosing one bottle,

<<863>> and the next you're overdosing and you wouldn't know.

<<866>> That is why consistency is so important to me

<<869>> for our Wellness Advocates to understand,

<<872>> because at dōTERRA, we have because of Co-Impact Sourcing,

<<876>> consistency that allows you to know

<<879>> that the potency of the chemistry in every drop

<<883>> is for all intents and purposes the same.

<<885>> Year to year,

<<886>> and batch to batch.

<<888>> And that's really important.

<<890>> So thank you for asking that.

<<891>> - That's okay.

<<892>> Dr O, thank you so much.

<<893>> It's been an absolute privilege

<<895>> to talk with you today.

<<897>> Thank you so much for sharing.

<<898>> - Loved talking with you.

<<899>> - Sharing what you know, what you love,

<<901>> and the passion behind it as well.

<<902>> - Appreciate it too.