Shelf Life of your Oils cont…

Aging an oil like wine is also appropriate for many essential oils, especially the bottom noted woods, such as sandalwood. Although storage in the right conditions allow you to stretch your oils much further.

I have a bottle of Clary sage that is 28 years old now and it is out of this world, so velvety and smooth, so it’s worth hanging onto your good ones, for further down the track (bit like cellaring wine).

The citrus essential oils have a much shorter life span especially if it’s a cold pressed version as it’s got lots of roughage if it, but that natural roughage is part of the citrus’s beauty so it’s worth the shelf life sacrifice.

Have you ever done the smell test with a cheap wine and a beautifully aged wine, I have and the former nearly ripping out my throat and the later leaving me salivating to taste. Cheap and quality essential oils can be just like that.

In putting together my range I had criteria that needed to be met and boy my nose at the end of the months of testing was well and truly ready to leave home. I figured out early on I had to not over do it so I wouldn’t end up damaging my poor nose.

“Nose blows” or what happens when you smell to many scents!

Olfactory fatigue or a “Nose Blow” (as I like to call them) happens when you smell to many things at once or your nose just stops smelling the scent altogether.

Our nervous system detects change much more readily than constant stimuli, so your brain filters out signals from your nerves to stop it overloading. This applies to any of the senses, say for instance you don’t really notice your clothes all the time as the nerves in your skin aren’t constantly firing.

So the human nose starts to “fatigue” after around six seconds and so a pause may be needed between sniffs.

And if you are smelling many essential oils in a row, depending on your nervous system you aren’t going to be able to differentiate or pick out subtle nuances in a scent after anywhere up to 5-6 different scents.

There are a couple of ways to reset your nose: a) smelling coffee beans; b) taking a walk out in the fresh air for 10-20mins, c) salt on the tongue as our taste and smell are directly linked.