Aromatherapy is a form of alternative medicine that uses volatile plant materials, known as essential oils, and similar aromatic compounds from plants, for the purpose of improving a person's mood, cognitive function or health. Preliminary scientific evidence is growing in all these areas. An aroma therapist is the person who performs the aromatherapy.
Aromatherapy is a generic term. It is used by manufacturers (of personal care, wellness and hygiene products) as well as practitioners, including massage therapists, chiropractors, nurses and doctors. Over-the-counter products that make use of essential oils (or their constituents, such as menthol and methyl salicylate) include mouthwashes, liniments and "rubbing ointments", such as Listerine, Mentholatum Deep Heat and Vicks VapoRub. However, aromatherapy purists insist that neither essential oil constituents as such, nor synthetic fragrant chemicals, should ever be used.
Because many essential oils are potent antimicrobials, they can be useful in the treatment of infectious disease. They are used as medicines, often in combination with other herbal preparations, by a small group of doctors in France. In nursing, essential oils are increasingly used in pain management, anxiety/depression, and Alzheimer's disease. Aromatherapy may be used in combination with other forms of alternative medicine. Terms such as 'essential oil therapy' 'clinical aromatherapy' and 'medical aromatherapy' have been used by some journals, educational institutions and practitioners, in order to distance themselves from association with the commercial aspects.
History
Aromatherapy has origins in antiquity with the use of infused aromatic oils, made by macerating dried plant material in fatty oil, heating and then filtering. Many such oils, and their healing properties, are described by Dioscorides in his De Materia Medica , written in the first century. Distilled essential oils have been employed as medicines since the invention of distillation in the eleventh century, when Avicenna isolated essential oils using steam distillation.
The concept of aromatherapy was first mooted by a small number of European scientists and doctors, in about 1907. In 1937, the word first appeared in print in a French book on the subject: Aromathérapie: Les Huiles Essentielles, Hormones Végétales by René-Maurice Gattefossé, a chemist. An English version was published in 1993. In 1910, Gattefossé burned a hand very badly in a laboratory explosion. The hand developed gas gangrene, which he successfully, and intentionally, treated with lavender oil. This helped greatly to fire an already existing interest in aromatherapy, though it was not the "lucky accident" that is sometimes recounted by others.
A French surgeon, Jean Valnet, pioneered the medicinal uses of essential oils, which he used as antiseptics in the treatment of wounded soldiers during World War II.
Modes of application
The modes of application of aromatherapy include:
- Aerial diffusion : for environmental fragrancing or aerial disinfection
- Direct inhalation : for respiratory disinfection, decongestion, expectoration as well as psychological effects
- Topical applications : for general massage, baths, compresses, therapeutic skin care
Materials
Some of the materials employed include:
- Essential oils : Fragrant oils extracted from plants chiefly through steam distillation (e.g. eucalyptus oil) or expression (grapefruit oil). However, the term is also occasionally used to describe fragrant oils extracted from plant material by any solvent extraction.
- Absolutes : Fragrant oils extracted primarily from flowers or delicate plant tissues through solvent or supercritical fluid extraction (e.g. rose absolute). The term is also used to describe oils extracted from fragrant butters, concretes, and enfleurage pommades using ethanol.
- Phytoncides : Various volatile organic compounds from plants that kill microbes. Many terpene-based fragrant oils and sulfuric compounds from plants in the genus " Allium " are phytoncides, though the latter are likely less commonly used in aromatherapy due to their disagreeable odors.
- Herbal distillates or hydrosols: The aqueous by-products of the distillation process (e.g. rosewater). There are many herbs that make herbal distillates and they have culinary uses, medicinal uses and skin care uses. Common herbal distillates are rose, lemon balm and chamomile.
- Infusions : Aqueous extracts of various plant material (e.g. infusion of chamomile)
- Carrier oils : Typically oily plant base triacylglycerides that dilute essential oils for use on the skin (e.g. sweet almond oil)
Theory
Aromatherapy is the treatment or prevention of disease by use of essential oils. Two basic mechanisms are offered to explain the purported effects. One is the influence of aroma on the brain, especially the limbic system through the olfactory system. The other is the direct pharmacological effects of the essential oils. While precise knowledge of the synergy between the body and aromatic oils is often claimed by aromatherapists, the efficacy of aromatherapy remains to be proven. However, some preliminary clinical studies show positive effects.
In the English-speaking world, practitioners tend to emphasize the use of oils in massage. Aromatherapy tends to be regarded as a complementary modality at best and a pseudoscientific fraud at worst.
On the continent, especially in France, where it originated, aromatherapy is incorporated into mainstream medicine. There, the use of the antiseptic, antiviral, antifungal, and antibacterial properties of oils in the control of infections is emphasized over the approaches familiar to North Americans. In France some essential oils are regulated as prescription drugs, and thus administered by a physician. French doctors use a technique called the aromatogram to guide their decision on which essential oil to use. First the doctor cultures a sample of infected tissue or secretion from the patient. Next the growing culture is divided among petri dishes supplied with agar. Each petri dish is inoculated with a different essential oil to determine which have the most activity against the target strain of microorganism. The antiseptic activity manifests as a pattern of inhibited growth.
In many countries, essential oils are included in the national pharmacopoeia, but aromatherapy as science has never been recognized as a valid branch of medicine in the United States, Russia, Germany, or Japan.
Essential oils (EOs), phytoncides, and other natural VOCs work in different ways. At the scent level they activate the limbic system and emotional centers of the brain. When applied to the skin (commonly in form of "massage oils," i.e., 1%–10% solutions of EO in carrier oil) they activate thermal receptors and kill microbes and fungi. Internal application of essential oil preparations (mainly in pharmacological drugs; generally not recommended for home use apart from dilution—1%–5% in fats or mineral oils, or hydrosoles) may stimulate the immune system.
Choice and purchase
Oils with standardized content of components (marked FCC, for Food Chemical Codex) have to contain a specified amount of certain aroma chemicals that normally occur in the oil. But there is no law that the chemicals cannot be added in synthetic form in order to meet the criteria established by the FCC for that oil. For instance, lemongrass essential oil has to contain 75% aldehyde to meet the FCC profile for that oil, but that aldehyde can come from a chemical refinery instead of from lemongrass. To say that FCC oils are "food grade" then makes them seem natural when in fact they are not necessarily so.
Undiluted essential oils suitable for aromatherapy are termed therapeutic grade, but in countries where the industry is not regulated, therapeutic grade is based on industry consensus and is not a regulatory category. Some aromatherapists take advantage of this situation to make misleading claims about the origin and even content of the oils they use. Likewise, claims that an oil's purity is vetted by mass spectrometry or gas chromatography have limited value, since all such testing can do is show that various chemicals occur in the oil. Many of the chemicals that occur naturally in essential oils are manufactured by the perfume industry and adulterate essential oils because they are cheaper. There is no way to distinguish between these synthetic additives and the naturally occurring chemicals.
The best instrument for determining whether an essential oil is adulterated is an educated nose. Many people can distinguish between natural and synthetic scents, but it takes experience.
Price
Oils vary in price based on the amount of the harvest, the country of origin, the type of extraction used (steam distillation, CO 2 extract, enfleurage), and how desirable the oil is. Indian Sandalwood ( Santalum album ) is considered more desirable than Australian Sandalwood ( Santalum spicatum ), based upon the aroma, and is twice as costly, mainly because the tree that yields Indian Sandalwood essential oils is endangered, and because S. Spicatum essential oil contains only about 17% α-santalol and 7% β-santalol - much less than S. Album oil. Organic and wild harvested essential oils also tend to be more expensive.
Price is also determined by whether the oil is 'cut' or not. T
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