By: Ozren Podnar |
Aromatherapy – treatment with healing scents |
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Aromatherapy is a branch of alternative medicine that uses essential oils and herbal extracts for treating health problems.
Therapy is performed via inhalation, skin ointments and sometimes via oral application of essential oils.
Essential oils are used in medicinal and cosmetic purposes for thousands of years.
They were used by Egyptians, Indians, Chinese, Greeks and Romans.
Old Egyptians added essential oils to facial crèmes and skin care mixture 5 000 years ago, so we can say that old Egyptians were the first aromatherapists in recorded history.
Essential oil application
Although herbal essentials have been used in therapeutic purposes for thousands of years, the term aromatherapy was coined in the previous century.
French chemist Rene-Maurice Gattefosse used the term in his book titled “Aromatherapy” which he wrote in 1928.
Gattefosse had an accident in a laboratory in 1910 and burned his hand.
After he treated the burn with lavender essential oil, he noticed astonishing results so he devoted his life to further research of essential oil efficiency.
Before the First World War he managed to register their application on burns, infections, inflammations and boils on soldiers.
In coming decades many massage therapist, cosmetics, physiotherapists, alternatives and a large number of physicians and doctors started using essential oils for treating various health problems.
Frenchman Jean Valnet continued Gattefosse’s work and he used aromatherapy for treating gangrene on wounded soldiers during the World War Two.
In the West, aromatherapy achieved its renaissance 35 years ago. Prince Charles, a great believer in this therapy, convinced the British government to include aromatherapy into official public health care system.
Essential oils can be used in several methods.
By massaging and rubbing essential oils in the skin, we allow the oils to be absorbed into our bodies and thus influence the cause of disease.
Inhalation has immediate effect on the nervous system via the sense of smell.
Baths in which we add 8 to 15 drops of essential oil provide combined effects of inhalation and skin absorption.
Scent has the fastest effect
Oils have the fastest effect when they are introduced into our organism via inhalation.
Experts conducted research with the help of electroencephalogram in which volunteers inhaled essential oils and the device showed which parts of the brain were activated and at what speed.
It showed that since the moment of inhalation, it only took 4 seconds for a brain to react.
Thousands of olfactory nerve cells in nasal cavity quickly transport scent molecules into the brain. That is why intensive scents sometimes cause headaches.
Our sense of scent is thousands time more sensitive than any other sense we have.
Other stimuli, such as touch, have to travel through our bodies via long neural networks and trough our spinal cord before they reach the brain, while scent reaction is instant.
Scents are spread via molecules that are emanated by creatures or objects and the effects of those molecules are possible even if we are unable to recognize any scent at all.
Scents bypass neocortex – conscious brain – and directly affect our limbic system and hypothalamus where they activate neuron receptors and affect our moods and feelings.
If you wish to inhale oils, put several drops of essential oil into the warm water during your next bath or into a bowl that is heated by a candle. You can also smell essential oils directly from the container.
In exterior application via massages, oils penetrate the pores and small capillaries and are transmitted all around our organism via blood flow, thus reaching all cells in our body.
Aromatherapists believe that our whole organism is supplied with healing compounds found in oils after just 20 minutes.
Oils used for massages and exterior application are always diluted with herbal oils or water since they are highly concentrated in their natural form which makes them potentially dangerous.
Two aromatherapy schools
There are two aromatherapy schools – French and English.
The French aromatherapy school is based on the work of Rene Maurice Gattefosse and his followers Valnet and Penoel.
This school uses oral, dermal, rectal and inhalation insertion of essential oils into the human organism and they generally use higher dosages.
Apart from that, they are greatly concerned with clear definition of the biochemical content of oils since various herbal species of the same sort sometimes produce essential oils with different chemical contents.
The founder of an English aromatherapy school is Marguerite Maury, who was a student of Gattefosse.
Anglo-Saxon type of aromatherapy is mostly used for massages, relaxation and lifting mood.
Oils are applied exclusively dermally and via inhalation and in low concentrations so only 2 to 5% of essential oil is added into a neutral oil mixture.
This is an introductory chapter from our guide “Aromatherapy”. In the following articles I will inform you about the regular application of essential oils and their healing properties. In order to receive those articles, please subscribe to our E-magazine (if you already had not done so).
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