Aromatherapy
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Aromatherapy is the use of essential oils, fragrance oils, absolutes, carrier oils, and other fragrances from plants to affect someone's mood or health, and is commonly associated with alternative medicine.
One of the best known essential oils for aromatherapy is lavender, which is recommended by practitioners for treating wounds, to enhance memory and to aid sleep by combating anxiety and insomnia. Other popular scents include eucalyptus, rose, jasmine and bergamot.
While pleasant scents can make a room a nicer place to be in and therefore relaxing, lowering stress and related effects, there is no scientific basis at all for aromatherapy or any form of proof it does anything other than make a room smell nice. There are some that give a form of relief for the airways when having a cold or the flu, such as most citrus-based essential oils. While there is no scientific proof that essential oils cure diseases, many people have found great success in their usage.
Fragrances can have a relaxing effect measured as an increase in alpha brain waves.
While many essential oils have antimicrobial activity if applied directly, these effects are not related to aromatherapy where the mere smell is claimed to have medicinal properties.
Criticism
The term "aromatherapy" has been applied to such a wide range of products that almost anything which contains essential oils is likely to be called an "aromatherapy product", rendering the term somewhat meaningless.
Some proponents of aromatherapy believe that the claimed effect of each type of oil is not caused by the chemicals in the oil interacting with the senses, but that the oil is contains a distillation of the "life force" of the plant from which it is derived. This form of aromatherapy lapses into the realm of pseudoscience, in that it is claimed that the oils will "balance the energies" of the body and promote healing/wellbeing by purging negative vibrations from the body's energy field.
When used in the latter sense (the oils having mystical healing properties) most scientists, health professionals, skeptics and others consider aromatherapy to be a pseudoscientific quack therapy, noting that there is no scientific evidence that healing can be achieved by it or that the claimed "energies" even exist.
References
- Smell Research by Tim Jacob: Aromatherapy - does it work? (http://www.cf.ac.uk/biosi/staff/jacob/teaching/sensory/olfactres.html#aromatherapy)
- Avraham Sand on Aromatherapy Principles and Practice (http://www.tiferetonline.com)
- Aromatherapy Associations and Research Bodies (http://www.oilganic.com/associations-research-trade.htm)
- Skepdic: aromatherapy (http://www.skepdic.com/aroma.html)
External Links
- Aromatherapy (http://www.holisticjunction.com/categories/HAD/aromatherapy.html)
de:Aromatherapie es:Aromaterapia it:Aromaterapia et:Aroomiteraapia fr:Aromathérapie ja:アロマセラピー pl:Aromaterapia