The term “aromatherapy” gets a laugh from many people, and of course many physicians. They hear the word and think “nice smelly things that make me feel good — right”. What they don’t know is that for many years, scientists around the globe have been at work researching the medical effects of essential oils. Interestingly, it is the “aroma” part of aromatherapy that’s somewhat lacking in data. There’s a few studies showing stress reduction in animals, but really very little noting that “aroma” therapy works in humans — and just as importantly, how it works (medical science needs a mechanism before it considers a therapy valid in most cases). As a result, the medical establishment has a hard time accepting the use of essential oils for really any therapeutic application.
Fortunately, a very interesting study validating aromatherapy’s aroma-therapeutic action has recently been published. It gets directly to the heart of the matter: the brain. It is within the brain that a response first occurs from smelling an scent. Our smell sense is the only one of the five with the direct connection to the brain; all the others have their signal first travel through another physiological structure to get there. And the smell sense is wired right to our most primitive centers, the ones that control emotions and unconscious activity.
Scientists in Italy have elucidated the way bergamot oil lowers stress-induced anxiety, and affects mild depression. They note that there is a firing of brain cells in such a way that the essential oil “is able to interfere with normal synaptic plasticity”. This process occurs in the area of long-term memory formation. That means that the inhalation of the oil interferes with the process of making a neural connection stronger when repeatedly expose to stress.
For example, think about feeling a familiar stress over and over. Like a sound that you particularly dislike: a lawnmower running, a dog barking, something like that. Here it only once or twice, or for not an extended duration, that’s fine. But hearing it over and over, or continuously for hours, that’s different. It doesn’t get easier to take, in-fact that stress becomes unbearable. That’s because the neural-pathway has been made stronger and stronger, so the same stress seems more intense. Bergamot essential oil makes it so that strengthening of the pathway doesn’t occur, or is lessened anyway.
This may elucidate the stress-reducing effect found in an earlier Korean study. In this study, adolescents wore an amulet emitting the aroma of either bergamot or a placebo. Those wearing the amulet with bergamot reported significantly lower stress levels during the study’s duration.
In the conclusion, the Italian researchers state that now the anti-stress mechanism of the oil’s aroma is understood, there is a rational basis for the practical use of bergamot in complementary medicine. Complementary medicine is really alternative medicine that’s been accepted as valid by the medical community.
This leads to much bigger implications for aromatherapy. Many oils are used aromatically for various purposes: stress reduction, relaxation, mental stimulation and the like. These oils are also more than likely eliciting measurable effects in the brain. For example, several essential oils have been shown to prevent the breakdown of acetylcholine in the laboratory, an effect that is likely happening within the body as well when these oils are inhaled.
There’s so much data published on the great many medicinal actions of essential oils that they’re likely catching the eye of some in the conventional medical community. It’s not a reach at all for much of aromatherapy’s more researched oils and actions to be given the same stamp of approval as bergamot. A search of the database of the National Institute of Health for “essential oils” yields pages and pages of results. Now with the affirmation that even the “aroma” part of aromatherapy has valid therapeutic actions, perhaps the use of essential oils will be more quickly embraced.
The author is the owner of Ananda Aromatherapy, a source for equisite german chamomile essential oil, and supplies like an essential oil nebulizer.
Tags:Alternative Medicine,anxiety,aromatherapy,disease,essential oils,illness,natural health,natural medicine,science,stress
lavender Essential OilsCopyright Information Goes Here © 2010. All Rights Reserved.