Lavender oil for anxiety disorders

Improve anxiety disorders with lavender oil

31/01/2014

Lavender oil capsules help against anxiety disorders better than a modern antidepressant. Researchers report this in the January issue of the specialist journal „International Journal for Neuropsychopharmacology. "According to this, the subjects' mental health problems were significantly reduced by the lavender oil, and the antidepressant also had a positive effect, but the improvement in anxiety disorders was somewhat less pronounced.

Lavender oil works better as an antidepressant for anxiety disorders
539 subjects participated in the large-scale German-Austrian study. They had to take either 160 or 80 milligrams of lavender oil or 20 milligrams of the antidepressant paroxetine per day. There was also a control group that received a placebo daily. All study participants had at least one minor anxiety disorder as measured by the HAMA scale at baseline. The scale indicates the severity of symptoms such as anxiety, depressive mood, sleep disturbances, tension, restlessness, difficulty breathing and palpitations. Subjects were scored 18 or higher on the HAMA scale. HAMA levels of 17 to 24 are considered a mild to moderate form of anxiety disorder, higher values ​​indicate correspondingly more severe manifestations.

After the treatment with the different agents, the complaints of the study participants were reduced as follows: Subjects who took 160 milligrams of lavender oil gave a value of 14.1 points and 80 milligrams a decrease of 12.8 points on the HAMA scale , The antidepressant decreased by 11.3 points and the placebo median by 9.5 points. Accordingly, the high-dose lavender oil capsules worked best. But even a smaller amount of the oil leads to a clearer improvement of the anxiety disorder. The antidepressant was comparatively less effective.

The positive effect of lavender oil is also confirmed by another analysis. In 60.3 percent of the study participants, the higher dose caused symptom relief by more than 50 percent, the lower dose 51.9 percent, and the antidepressant 43.2 percent.

Lavender oil is an effective natural medicine
Lavender oil has been used in naturopathy for millennia. Thus, the ancient Romans took advantage of the calming effect of lavender. To this day, lavender scent is an important component of many personal care products and perfumes. As a remedy lavender is mainly used to treat restlessness in anxiety. Lavender oil also works against skin and nail fungus, according to Portuguese researchers. (Ag)

Picture: Alfred Arnold