YoungLiving produces high quality essential oils. All of their oils are tested to be sure that they are of optimum potency and have retained their healing properties throughout the extraction process. You can find essential oils at your local health food store and they might work, (see below for my experience with health food store oils). But in my experience, those oils are usually only good as perfume and no longer contain the healing properties necessary to truly benefit from using the oils. All the tips and info that I write on my blog are in reference to Young Living essential oils unless specifically described otherwise.
I first heard of essential oils several years ago. We had read that lavender oil helped with PMS and worked as a flea repellent (two things that are not at all related to each other, but lavender is one oil that is useful for just about anything that you could imagine!) My Mom bought some lavender essential oil at a local health food store. It did nothing for us except smell nice (actually, it didn't even smell all that great to people who don't care so much for lavender) so we stopped using it. It sat in a cabinet for 1-2 years or so and I decided to try using it again. This time, not only did it still not work, but I noticed that it had started to smell a little rancid. I have since learned that a truly pure essential oil should last indefinitely and still be just as potent, (I recently used some Copaiba oil that I have had for well over a year after my upline had also had it for a long time and it was still very effective). I now use Young Living's lavender oil on a regular basis for the things that I mentioned along with a host of other things including allergies, skin care and burns. It works great!
