What is Hydrosol?
The distillation of plant products produces essential oil and hydrosol. Hydrosol is the distilled plant waters or "water solution” from the steam distillation process. A common example is rose water or orange water. In an average distillation of one acre of lavender, you may produce 10 litres of essential oil and up to 40 Litres of lavender hydrosol.
What is hydrosol used for?
The hydrosol contains all of the water soluble components from the plant material, so they are therapeutic and often used in compresses, soaks, and can be taken internally once they have been diluted in water. Professional aromatherapists in Canada do not have the authority to prescribe essential oils for internal use – so the hydrosols are the only internal ‘aromatherapy’ application that is used.
How is hydrosol used?
Many aromatherapists have herbal training, with a more plant based focus, so they can utilize many different forms of the plant and choose the medium that is the best fit for the client such as external application of essential oil or hydrosol, internal use of hydrosol, internal use of herbal tea, or internal use of herbal extracts.
Hydrosols also have an energetic aspect to them and can be used similarly to homeopathy; hydrosols in dilution work best with animal clients, as they are more gentle, subtle and because they are water soluble, the hydrosols will not affect the animal’s liver. For example, there have been reported cases where cats have become gravely ill or even died due to toxic build up in the liver from essential oils such as tea tree.
What are the precautions to using essential oils or hydrosols?
It is always best to check with a qualified aromatherapist prior to using essential oils on babies, the elderly, pregnant women and animals; essential oils are highly concentrated and require dilutions of 1% – 3% in external applications. Hydrosols are much safer to use for the general public. In fact, hydrosols of peppermint, spearmint, wildrose, red current, tamarack etc. can be used as flavourings in cooking.
Article provided by: Holly Caine
Email: afcoop@shaw.ca
