Volcano vaporizers are the industry leaders for home vapour treatments – but there are other brands that work just as well and are cheaper. Things to consider are – portable or static and digital or analogue vaporizers. This website details the how, why and what of buying and using them as well as the science behind what is becoming a revolution in home herbal treatments. The vaporizer shop can be found here
Many natropaths and herbal doctors now recommended using a vaporizer for treatments requiring medication with volatile herb compounds.
To understand what a vaporizer does you first need to understand how herbal medicines work. An herbal medicine is a natural substance that contains tens, hundreds or even thousands of active compounds. In order for your body to benefit from the properties of these chemicals then it needs to be able to process them. Prior to the invention of herbal vaporizers traditionally this was done by simple chewing, eating, inhaling or burning the plant. Each of these processes has pros and cons – for example when you eat a plant then there may be some elements within that make it taste unpleasant – also your stomach acid might have a detrimental effect upon the strength or efficacy of the components. Inhaling or “snorting” a dried up plant or plant component can be a fast way to get it into your blood stream however the thin membranes of the nasal passages that allow the elements into the blood stream are also extremely susceptible to damage. Burning the plants and inhaling the smoke was carried out in a variety of ways; in a bowl placed over heat, directly in a flame (throwing medicinal herbs into a fire) or by smoking in a pipe. Each of these methods has individual negative qualities that affect their efficacy eg. Throwing herbs onto a fire will result in a great deal of smoke in the room but not necessarily in the patient. Also, inhaling directly the smoke from a burning pipe can be unpleasant and is certainly not possible for children.
There are also some very important reasons why a vaporizer is more beneficial (or less harmful) than burning and inhaling herbal medicines.
- Burning can actually destroy or chemically alter the very compounds you require as medicine.
- Tars can be produced by burning substances – these are collateral damage and are not even produced from the very chemicals you require just from many of the other 1000s of substances present in plants.
- Hot gasses are harmful to your lips, mouth throat and lungs.
- Particulate matter is contained in the smoke – these are burned and unburned materials that can cause irritation to the lining of the lungs and diseases such as emphysema.
Modern, allopathic, medicine is often based around the idea of separating natural materials into their components. For example aspiring is an extract from the bark of the willow tree. The same compound can simply be obtained by chewing the bark directly – although it tasted awful and you need to chew quite a lot of it. The very nature of natural or herbal medicine requires that you need the entire herb – whether it is the leaf, seed, root or bark – to gain the maximum benefits, remember each plant contains 1000s of compounds and you need all of them the work together in a cohesive fashion – not just the one that is placed into a pill.
Vaporization is simply a method of turning chemicals into a gaseous form that can be inhaled but WITHOUT the harmful effects of burning. Although vaporizers are new – the process is not, a simple and traditional method would be to place eg. mint or eucalyptus leaves into boiling water and inhale the vapours.
Different vapours are formed at different temperatures – but for almost all of them they are formed at a lower temperature than the flashpoint where the material actually combusts. The mint and eucalyptus leaves mentioned above are very volatile so will form vapours at low temperature (less than 100 degrees) so can be volatilised in hot water.
Vaporization is better than combustion of medicines because it produces no smoke and no microscopic particles of dust or soot. The active substances simply boil into a gas – they are not chemically altered in any way. They are also not destroyed – as much as 90% of the active compounds are actually destroyed as part of the burning process, this neither healthy nor financially sensible. No burning means no tar and no carcinogens.
So how does a vaporizer work?
The theory is simple and so, in essence are the vaporizers. They all are basically the same design in that they have a chamber where the medicine can be heated and some method of delivering it to the recipient.
The Heating – The most common method is convection vaporization, although there are others – contact vaporization and radiant vaporization.
Contact Vaporization
This is very much the homemade and DIY method of vaporization but is the least precise. It simply involves placing the materials onto a hot surface, which could be metal glass or ceramic. You could easily replicate this by simple heating a spoon saucepan or frying pan and placing the herbs into it – don’t use non-stich surfaces because the Teflon coating itself will emit toxic fumes.
Pros: cheap.
Cons: Not very controllable, difficult to heat substance evenly – the bottom layer will tend to burn whilst the uppermost surface is still cold.
Radiant Vaporization
This involves placing the substance to be vaporized being placed near – but not on or in – a radiant heat source.
Pros: this works well on large scales
Cons: difficult to control and operate on a small scale.
Convection Vaporization
This is the current favourite method and works well on even tiny amounts. The process involves hot air being passed, sucked or blown over the material to be vaporized. The indirect heat allows for optimum temperature control – the hot air does not even need to pass over the medicine until it is exactly the correct temperature. The gasses are then already mixed into the air making their transport and use by the patient even easier. Most modern vaporizers use the convection method and have precise microprocessor controlled digital temperature grades.
Pros: Easy, precise, manageable, and controllable.
Cons: More expensive equipment.
After it has been created then the vapour can either be directly passed to the consumer via a tube or collected in a bag and then inhaled.
Some of the more expensive vaporizers have a cooling mechanism to reduce the temperature of the gas before it is inhaled. The bag delivery method gives a natural break and time for the gasses to cool down. Cooling the gas down too much could have the negative effect of turning elements of it back into a liquid/solid, if carefully controlled this cooling can be used to clean the vapour of some of the fractions that were introduced at lower temperatures.
Room Vaporizers
These are intended generally more for incenses and aromatherapy then medicines – but with the correct essential oils they can benefit the entire environment.
Personal Vaporizers
These are for the direct delivery of herbs and herbal medicines and can by digital or analogue. They can also be heated by electricity (mains or battery) or gas.
Portable Vaporizers
If your prescription requires regular doses then consider a small, pocket sized system. There are also vaporizers that are designed to be powered by a standard 12V car cigarette lighter socket.
Vaporizers for the kitchen
The simplicity and versatility of the process are now being used by molecular gastronomists to keep the scent and essential essences of the food intact all of the way from the kitchen to the table. A chef vaporized tiny amounts of the food and then stored it in a bag. The diner could then puncture the bag to enjoy the aroma as they enjoyed the food!