Friday 10 July 2009

Revealing The Medical Uses of Essential Oils

By Janet Milton

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.

We can start by conceding that there is a soft-science side to a portion of aromatherapy's practices. Really pinning-down whether inhaling lavender makes a statistically-significant difference in people's emotional status seems pretty tricky anyway. How about we just leave this part up to the people that are into it? If lavender makes you feel good, whose to tell you differently? Aromatherapists are not out to convince the world inhaling plant scents will make you feel better -- they're just offering it as a possibility. Maybe it'll work for you and maybe it won't. Do try another aroma before you give up, but hey, maybe it won't work for you, no big deal. AT THE SAME TIME, there are A GREAT MANY VALID SCIENTIFIC STUDIES showing statistically significant results regarding the psycho-emotional effects of lavender (and other essential oils). Along with those are even more studies testing essential oils on a wide variety of serious illnesses. Here's a peek into the hard-science aspect of aromatherapy, and why the debunker's of this medicine should really have another look.

The image problem of aromatherapy has everything to do with the prevailing idea that the practice is all about 'smelling things', whereas the science really about 'things that smell'. Smelling things is very subjective, and may have little medical effect at all (though we'll see that it MAY as well). Aromatherapy is defined as the complete practice of the branch of natural medicine using the volatile liquids distilled from plants. Authors of the hard-science aromatherapy texts available today, professionally-trained aromatherapists (one with a PhD in Chemistry) note that the future of aroma medicine is with the treatment of serious infectious illnesses and cancer treatment. You don't even have to smell them for them to work! Other effects of essential oils also being successfully investigated include speeding wound healing, reducing inflammation, and acting as analgesics.

A quick look at the research available on Pub Med, a database of thousands of peer-reviewed life-science and medical journals freely available on-line reveals thousands of citations of research performed using essential oils. Yes, there are in fact some studies that did not result in convincing evidence that hand massages with lavender cream didn't make people feel better than hand massages with unscented lotion. But there is studies that show people sleep better after lavender inhalation. And there's a study that show stress makers of the immune system remained unchanged after inhaling linalool (an isolated constituent of Lavender), but there's also 15 studies (upon last count) showing positive significant results if one searches for 'lavender' and 'axiolytic' (the technical term for stress reducer). The results for 'acetaminophen' and 'pain' MAY be as strong; those for 'minoxidil' and 'hair' are almost certainly not.

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.

Really, the medical, therapeutic applications of essential oils (repeat: aroma-therapy!) are making huge advances in acceptance in the scientific community -- among the labs and scientists that do independent and educationally funded research. Important studies are released every month showing the strong efficacy of certain essential oils in treating serious bacterial infections. Try a Pub Med search on 'staphylococcus' and 'essential oil' or 'tea tree', or 'mrsa' and 'essential oil'. You'll find pages of results. The big test will be whether these result in protocols for medical use. The most important factor in this may be how much we all demand that natural 'alternatives' are available in the main-stream, as the profit-driven conventional medical system is just not designed to utilize very low cost natural treatments.

Then there's the myriad of studies showing essential oils' efficacy in destroying cancers. A recent study in the journal of "Chemico-Biological Interactions" noted that linalool, a common essential oil constituent, completely eradicated a particular liver cancer cell line at very, very small concentrations. Try 'essential oil' and 'cancer' in Pub Med and you'll get results like "Frankincense oil derived from Boswellia carteri induces tumor cell specific cytotoxicity"(perhaps this is terminology of "New Age spiritualism" I'm yet unaware of). Another result is "Anticancer activity of an essential oil from Cymbopogon flexuosus" (Lemongrass essential oil) with a conclusion of "Our results indicate that the oil has a promising anticancer activity and causes loss in tumor cell viability by activating the apoptotic process as identified by electron microscopy." The list, of course, goes on (there are in fact 388 results today for this search).

So what makes aromatherapy the bearer of such nonchalant, baseless accusations of lack of efficacy? It may really all lay in the name. Aromatherapy does have a very 'new-age' ring to it. The trick of changing this perception from 'smell good, feel good' to 'potent aromatic medicine' will be presentation of hard data at every opportunity. Educate yourself on these studies and therapeutic use of essential oils in general. Make waves wherever possible for the acceptance of natural medicine in the big leagues of Western medicine. It's up to the users and the therapeutic grade essential oil suppliers to make an effort and bringing about this change in perception. Nearly everyone uses Tea Tree or has experienced 'Vicks Vapor Rub' -- these ARE aromatherapy, and so are all the studies using essential oils in cases of serious illness and disease. Using these examples as a segue can change someone's mind about essential oils and the real medicine of their wonderful aromas.

About the Author:

No comments:

Post a Comment