Essential Oils
Support Physical and Emotional Well-Being
September 04, 2014
Story at-a-glance
-
Your sense of smell is your most primal sense and exerts
surprising influence over your thoughts, emotions, moods,
memories, and behaviors
-
Aromatherapy allows you to harness the olfactory power of
plants, using their essential oils to enhance your physical
and emotional health
-
Essential oils have been scientifically shown to be
particularly helpful in treating stress, mood, sleep, pain,
nausea, memory, and energy
-
A recent study revealed that humans can distinguish more
than one trillion sensory stimuli, instead of 10,000 as
previously thought
-
There is recent evidence that humans do indeed produce
pheromones, contrary to prior belief. For example, you can
actually smell fear or disgust
By Dr. Mercola
Your sense of smell is your most primal sense and exerts
surprising influence over your thoughts, emotions, moods,
memories, and behaviors. Scents are experienced long before
words.
This is why it's nearly impossible to describe them with
language. Olfaction is different from your other senses,
processed through different pathways in your brain.
For other sensations such as sounds and visual images,
sensory input is delivered straight to your thalamus, which you
can think of as "the big switchboard" in your head. From there,
data goes out to your primary sensory cortices.
But smells are different. Before reaching your thalamus, they
first wind their way through other regions of your brain,
including areas controlling memory and emotion. So with scents,
you have all this extra processing even before you have
conscious awareness of the scent.1
For this reason, scents can have a powerful influence over
how you think, feel, and behave. Aromatherapy allows you to
harness the olfactory power of plants for healing, or simply to
enhance your state of well-being.
Essential oils carry biologically active volatile compounds
in a highly concentrated form that can provide therapeutic
benefits in very small amounts. Please understand that I am
referring to pure, therapeutic grade essential oils from plants,
NOT synthetic fragrances and
perfumes, which can be toxic and are typically loaded with
allergenic compounds.
Aromatherapy Was Used to Treat the Plague
The use of fragrances has been around for thousands of years,
although traditions and methodologies have changed through the
ages. According to "The Smell Report,"2
the process of extracting and preserving a flower's scent using
alcohol distillation was discovered by Avicenna.
Avicenna was an 11th century Arabian alchemist and
physician, who sort of stumbled upon it while "trying to isolate
for Islam the soul of its holy rose." Before this, perfumes
consisted only of thick resins, gums, and gooey unguents.
Back in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, physicians
promoted the therapeutic use of scents, including Hippocrates,
Galen, and Crito. Even the plague was treated with fragrances!3
It wasn't until the early nineteenth century that the
medicinal use of aromatics was largely discredited by scientists
who favored drugs. Fortunately, aromatherapy is now making a
strong comeback, moving steadily in the direction of mainstream.
How Essential Oils Can Help with Several Common Maladies
There are probably as many uses for aromatherapy as there are
essential oils, but research shows particular promise in
relieving stress, stabilizing your mood, improving sleep, pain,
and nausea relief, and improving your memory and energy level.
An important element of aromatherapy is synergy, which is why
using a combination of oils often creates a much more powerful
effect than any one particular oil. With a skilled
aromatherapist, the possibilities are nearly endless!
In order to give you an idea of the versatility of
aromatherapy, the following table lists some of the therapeutic
uses of several oils for a few of today's most common
complaints. As you can see, there are some real "multitaskers,"
like
lavender and
peppermint—oils that treat more than one problem.4
Many of these are discussed in an excellent article in The
Huffington Post5
about scents that can enhance your well-being. For further
information, refer to the resource section at the bottom of this
article.
The Science of Smell
Why does the fishy scent of a beach make one person retch
while evoking feelings of expansiveness and joy in another?
These variations in responses to scents tie into the special
brain pathways of your olfactory system. Olfactory information
is stored or encoded with all sorts of memories and associations
in your brain.
The neurological substrates of olfaction are especially geared
for associative learning (in your hippocampus) and emotional
processing (in your amygdala).11Kate
Fox explains it well in "The Smell Report":12
"Our olfactory receptors are directly connected to
the limbic system, the most ancient and primitive part of
the brain, which is thought to be the seat of emotion. Smell
sensations are relayed to the cortex, where 'cognitive'
recognition occurs, only after the deepest parts of our
brains have been stimulated. Thus, by the time we correctly
name a particular scent as, for example, 'vanilla,' the
scent has already activated the limbic system, triggering
more deep-seated emotional responses."
A number of studies have shown that odor learning begins
before birth. A fetus detects flavor/odor compounds in its
amniotic fluid, from the mother's diet. In studies where a
mothers' consumption of distinctive smelling substances such as
garlic, alcohol, or cigarette smoke were monitored during
pregnancy, their infants were found to prefer these scents more
than infants who had not been exposed to them.13
After birth, newborns locate their mothers' nipples by smell.
Breastfeeding also influences scent preferences; babies will
associate breastfeeding smells with maternal bonding and the
comfort of their mothers' arms. According to a recent study14,
babies can even smell their mothers' fears and learn the dangers
of the world, just days after birth. When mother's experience
stress, their body releases a scent that their baby detects and
responds to.
Scent preferences change along with developmental stages.
Studies show that three-year-olds have essentially the same
likes and dislikes as adults. Children do not develop
sensitivity to certain odors until they reach puberty.
Researchers have also found that olfactory receptors differ by
as much as 30 percent between any two individuals.15 On
tests of smelling ability, women consistently score higher than
men, and this gender difference holds true even for newborns!16
In summary, your responses to scents are largely "learned" as
a function of the emotional context in which they were first
experienced, and then the association influences your mood and
behavior later in life. Naturally, there are genetic differences
as well. Do you LOVE the smell of cilantro—or do you think
it smells like soap? If the latter is true, you may be an
olfactory mutant... literally.17
We Are MUCH Better Smellers Than We Thought
Since the 1920s, scientists have believed that the human nose
was capable of detecting about 10,000 odors, but a new study
published in the journal Science shows this estimate is
way off the mark. In the first empirical study ever done,
researchers at Rockefeller University discovered the human nose
can discriminate more than one trillion olfactory
stimuli!18
The least successful smeller is now thought to be capable of
smelling about 80 million unique scents, but if you're a
super-sniffer, you can detect a spectacular one thousand
trillion scents.19
This discovery begins to explain why studies are now finding
that the human olfactory system is able to detect factors such
as fear, disgust, age,20
and gender.21
Yes, studies show you can identify the age or gender of another
person simply by his or her smell. A mother can identify an
infant by smell alone after holding the child for just one hour,
even others than her own.
It used to be thought that humans did not produce (or sense)
pheromones, but many scent scientists are revising their
beliefs about this. A study out of New York's Stony Brook
University found people who are scared do indeed give off "fear
pheromones" in their sweat—hormones that trigger parts of your
brain that are subconsciously associated with fear. This may
explain why an individual with a fear of flying can trigger
anxiety in other passengers who would not normally be afraid—the
fear pheromone can trigger similar emotions in others who happen
to catch a whiff.22
The same researchers also found that disgust can be
"contagious."23
Scents Can Alter Your Nervous System
Scents can actually change your nervous system biochemistry.
A Japanese study found that inhaling essential oils can modulate
your sympathetic nervous system activity. Certain oils were
found to be stimulating, while others were found to be calming.
For example:24
- Black pepper, fennel, and grapefruit oil caused a 1.5-to
2.5-fold increase in sympathetic nervous system activity (as
measured by an increase in systolic blood pressure)
- Rose and patchouli oil resulted in a 40 percent decrease
in sympathetic nervous system activity
- Pepper oil induced a 1.7-fold increase in plasma
adrenaline concentration, while rose oil caused adrenaline
to drop by 30 percent
- Other oils have been shown to measurably
decrease stress hormones—inhaling lavender and rosemary
were shown to reduce cortisol levels.25
As mentioned earlier, scents play a powerful role in
memories, especially emotional memories. Olfactory input is
routed through your amygdala and hippocampus (which process
emotion), but bypasses your brain's higher cortical areas, the
"thinking parts."26
This suggests aromatherapy might possibly be helpful to those
with dementia, although research thus far has produced mixed
results.
From Onions to Cow Manure: Smell Is in the Nose of the Beholder
As you might expect, cultural differences contribute to what
smells enhance your feelings of happiness, versus making you
want to flee to the nearest open window. Scent preferences
differ dramatically across cultural lines. In many non-Western
cultures, smell is regarded with much more importance and even
reverence. For example, among the Ongee of the Andaman Islands,
the universe and everything in it is defined by smell.
Their calendar is based on the aromas of flowers that bloom
at different times of the year. When greeting someone, the Ongee
do not ask, "How are you?" but rather, "Konyune
onorange-tanka?" which translates to, "How is your nose?"27
For the cattle-raising Dassanetch of Ethiopia, no bouquet is
more beautiful than a herd of cows. The men wash their hands in
cattle urine and smear their bodies with manure to make
themselves more attractive to the ladies. The Dogon of Mali rub
fried onions all over their bodies, as it's the most highly
desirable perfume!
Although we have convincing evidence that pleasant fragrances
can improve your sense of well-being, some recent studies
suggest it's your expectation about an odor, rather
than the odor itself, that may be responsible for the mood and
effects produced—essentially the
placebo effect. Could merely thinking about
lavender oil make you calm? In one experiment, researchers found
that just telling subjects that a pleasant or unpleasant odor
was being administered, which they might not be able to smell,
affected their mood, symptoms, and sense of well-being.28
A Few Resources I've Sniffed Out for You
Aromatherapy can be a beneficial adjunct to your overall
health plan. It's not a replacement for wise lifestyle choices
like good nutrition and exercise, but it is an excellent way to
further enhance your physical and emotional health. Aromatherapy
is also one more tool you can keep in your tool bag for managing
everyday stress, balancing out mood swings, and improving your
sleep. Your nose is probably an underappreciated resource, so
perhaps it's time to make some use of it! Whether you seek out a
trained aromatherapist or adopt a DIY approach, the following
are a few resources you might find useful.
- National
Association for Holistic Aromatherapy (NAHA):
Everything about the medicinal use of aromatic plants and
the holistic practice of aromatherapy
-
Aroma Web: A directory of aromatherapy
information, tips, recipes, sources, including a regional
aromatherapy business directory
- American
Botanical Council: Herbal medicine information
that includes an herb library and clinical guide to herbs
- Herb Med:
Interactive electronic herb database (some information is
free, but full access requires a fee)
Copyright 1997- 2014 Dr. Joseph Mercola. All Rights Reserved.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/09/04/essential-oils-aromatherapy.aspx
|