They’ve Known It All Along
Aromatherapy always conjured up for me simple ideas of nice smelling things to relax you. I truly had little interest in those racks of little bottles in the health food store. But some friends of mine encouraged me to have a look at the science as to essential oils being healing medicines. Never in all my schooling were the volatile components of plants mentioned, or if they were, it was cursory, within a look at plant physiology. Now I’ve been through a series of science-based aromatherapy books and research papers, and here’s my discovery of aroma-medicine, something practitioners using aromatic oils have known all along.
More than Just a Scent
In the many years that I have been interested in natural medicine, I have only vaguely associated aromatherapy with getting a massage or putting lavender on my pillow for a better night’s sleep. What I did not realize is that there have been centuries of usage of aromatherapy and currently used in medical facilities in France. Now, with a rising interest and even demand for alternative and complementary medicine, research is actively being conducted on the benefits of aromatherapy for infections, psyche, nerves, hormones and to some extent inflammation, allergies and metabolic conditions.
Uses of Aromatherapy
Contrary to my own vague association, aromatherapy is more than smelling certain scents. Jane Buckle, RN, Ph.D. concludes that there are four main types of aromatherapy: clinical, stress management, beauty therapy and environmental fragrancing. I think many of us have an association of aromatherapy when it comes to beauty therapy and good smelling fragrances from the aroma of essential oils, yet the clinical and stress management aspects of aromatherapy have been hidden from view.
Still, to wrap my science-slanted mind around what truly is aromatherapy, I needed to get more of a workable definition. The gist of the meaning of aromatherapy is that it is therapeutic uses of essential oils of aromatic plants. These oils, usually extracted from plants using water or steam distillation, are mainly used in diffusers as well as topically. Once the aromatic essential oils are extracted, the oils are quite volatile. When the oils are exposed to air, they change from a potent liquid into an aromatic vapor within seconds.
In Advanced Aromatherapy, Dr. Schnaubelt explains that the main chemical component of essential oils are terpenes and it higher homologues as well as phenylpropane derivatives. Yet it must be pointed out that the synergy of each oil has it own unique qualities as well as specific chemical components.
Reacquainting with Nature
The affects of this high-tech civilization that we live in are far reaching. Yet, one that is often overlooked or forgotten is the loss of nature – both in our surroundings and in personal knowledge and interaction. In this modern age, it seems that humans have separated mind from body and body from soul. Aromatherapy simply is nature in a bottle.
Pulling my biology textbook of the shelf, I re- read about plant defenses and thought of it in a whole new way. Plants produce chemical compounds, mostly terpenoid compounds, in order to defend themselves against predators such as insects and animal as well as against fungi and other microbes. These chemical compounds also are used in plant to plant competition, where established plants inhibit germination of other plant species. Also, plants use these terpenoids to attract beneficial insect and bat pollinators. Thus, it is evident that the creation of essential oils in plants is vital to their continual survival.
Lessons from Animals
Remembering my general observation of various animals, I wonder now why the usage and medicinal properties of plants is so unfamiliar in our culture. I have known for years that horses select various plants to facilitate detoxing of metabolic toxic buildup, as well as select certain plants for antiviral and antiparasitic uses. I remember in learning in one of my graduate classes about Chimpanzees eating certain plants to cleanse their accumulation of internal parasites.
I also know from my graduate work in entomology that insects have fairly well developed chemoreception and some are attracted to plants by their scents. It seems strange thinking about it now (the light bulb just turned on) why plants and their essential oils are not more widely used in everyday life, but as I have pointed out above that is now changing. In part two of this paper, I will investigate the physiological pathways of absorption into the human body and the current research on clinical and stress management uses of aromatherapy.
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