Aroma-Medicine is Growing Strong: Debunking the Critiques of Aromatherapy

Do a search for the term ‘aromatherapy’, and what do you find? In amongst several respectable and useful websites is a smattering of scathing reviews of aromatherapy’s therapeutic value. It seems, once again, the baby has gone out with the bathwater (if you’re too old to know what this means, look it up :-) Though to the uninitiated reader, these reviews from physicians trained specifically in Western conventional medicine seem authoritative, and may even sway a few folks to believe their ‘dubious’ claims about the ‘dubiousness’ of aromatherapy. But as natural medicines in general are gaining significantly in popular opinion, those in the know about the true value of essential oils are demanding a new assessment of these important medicines. Let’s look into what the word aromatherapy really means, and how we can bridge the gap between the popular concept of aromatherapy and its true medical potential.

How about we’ll start be agreeing on this: That SOME of aromatherapy is in-fact a ’soft science’? That SOME people may feel more relaxed when inhaling Lavender, for example, and some will not? Aromatherapists will not disagree on this point — they will however put up a defense when the medical applications of essential oils are thrown out with the soft side of ‘aroma’ therapy. Science IS BACKING UP many of aromatherapy’s claims with valid data, even on the ’soft-science’ of the practice. Here’s a look at the science behind aromatherapy, the holes in arguments of the popular debunkers, and why aroma-medicine has it’s place in today’s medical practices.

Aromatherapy’s image problem is this: Most people hear the word, and believe it has really to do with ‘the smell of things’ rather than with ‘things that smell’. Its a small but very important distinction. Aromatherapy is really the complete branch of medicine that uses the chemically-volatile (easily evaporated) constituents of plants for treatment of a wide variety of ailments. IT DOES NOT only have to do with the effects these plant chemicals have on people that smell them. Virtually every professional aromatherapist will tell you that the great medicinal promise of aromatherapy does not reside in their pleasing aromas, but rather in their abilities to successfully treat a wide range of infectious illnesses (like MRSA, the ‘Superbug’), their action as chemotherapy agents, anti-inflammatory agents, wound-healing agents, and other ‘hard’ medical applications.

You can read these research abstracts yourself by Googling ‘Pub Med’, and searching for ‘essential oil’ and things like ‘cancer’ or ’staphylococcus’ or ‘axiolytic’. You’ll find a few studies too that were inconclusive, like inhalation of a certain oil did not change the immune system stress marker researchers use. But there’s also another showing that EVERY OTHER marker of stress WAS changed. It may be the study chose the right oil, or the study population was better treated with the selected oil in some studies and not in others (one showed a stress reduction in women from lavender essential oil, but not in men). You’ll find a full page of results showing a statistically significant effect on stress from lavender and linalool. Try other combinations of pharmaceutical preparations and see if there are more significant results than that!

Many practitioners of conventional medicine have decided that natural medicines in general are ineffective at best, and at worst they are considered a cruel hoax. What seems to be the challenge is the availability of well educated natural therapists — our medical system is not set up to give these practitioners the respect (and payment) they deserve. So most folks go at it themselves, valiantly attempting self-diagnosis and treatment., while FDA demands the instructions for these treatments be in the most vague form possible! The result is comments like “It (aromatherapy) is a mixture of folklore, trial and error, anecdote, testimonial, New Age spiritualism and fantasy” (Stephen Barrett, M.D. of Quackwatch). Another popular site points to a few inconclusive studies and claims all of aromatherapy to be dubious. What if we used these same guidelines investigating conventional medicine? How many deaths occur each year from properly prescribed and used drugs? From medical mistakes? The combined total makes these about the third leading cause of death in America (after heart disease and cancer, but before auto fatalities and cigarette use — See Mercola.com, ‘Death by Medicine’). Guess the number caused by mis-use (or any use for that matter) of essential oils. What’s the smallest non-negative number you can think of? That’s the currently accepted statistic.

On to the cutting edge of aroma-medicine: The big news is that essential oils, yes very the same used in aromatherapy (this IS the idea we’re trying to get across!), are highly effective antibiotics and antivirals. Again, we invite you to search for ‘essential oil’ and ‘mrsa’ — this is the staphylococcus aureus bacteria ’superbug’ that has become resistant to commonly available antibiotics (the MR in the name stands for ‘methicillin resistant’). You’ll find studies showing the efficacy of Tea Tree essential oil in clinical applications, and positive results in the lab using several other oils. And thus far it is thought that these oils have no adverse effects at effective doses.

There’s a huge body of data affirming the strong anti-tumorial effects of essential oils. Linalool has been shown to completely destroy certain liver cancers. Frankincense has other powerful anticancer action — cellular toxicity that’s specific to tumors! (One of the great challenges of chemotherapy is killing the cancer cells without killing the rest of the human). Lemongrass too has “promising anticancer activity”. Search for yourself and you’ll find more pages than you can get through any time soon.

So why are these criticisms of aromatherapy so popular, at least in Google’s eyes? Why do some folks like horror flicks and car crashes — not sure, really. It might have to do with there being a closer relationship between ‘aromatherapy’ and ‘Glade Plug-in Air Freshener (TM)’ in many people’s minds than there is between ‘aromatherapy’ ‘frankincense’ and ‘tumor cell specific cytotoxicity’. One reality is that there’s a lot more money pushing the Glad Plug-In concept. Because essential oils cannot be patented as medicines, the amount of money to be made by Really Big Business is negligible. So it’s up to small natural health companies, individual practitioners, and the wonderful education and research facilities doing the technical work to get the word out. And particularly to rock the boat a bit when so-called authorities make truly dubious claims about the dubious nature of aromatherapy. Plant medicine has kept human beings alive for millennia — essential oils are just very active molecules produced by plants, and aromatherapy is so-called as it deals with the therapeutic applications of these aromatic molecules. Aroma-therapy. Get the word out!

More information on using pure organic essential oil and therapeutic formulas can be found through www.anandaapothecary.com

→ Posted in Category: Skin Care ::

Comments

Leave a Reply



(optional)

Your comment:

Suscribe to LifestyleExaminer.com
Don't miss out on anything new that we post on our site!

Free Health and Fitness Lifestyle RSS Feeds



What if you could stop hunger and cravings? See how Phentramin-d works before you waste money on other pills.