How good are aromatherapy treatments for diseases?

Aromatherapy: Essential oils for illness and wellbeing

08/06/2014

Aromatherapy is a therapy in which essential oils are used as medicines or for a better well-being. In Germany, both non-medical practitioners and physicians with an additional qualification treat their patients with it. But some still have doubts about such alternative medicines.

Hospital uses Aromapflege as a supporting measure
Unfortunately, there are still reservations about aromatherapy, which uses essential oils to combat disease and improve well-being. So much the better that more and more people deal with it critically. Also „Mirror online“ is currently dealing with the topic and reports, inter alia, Gudrun Motzny from the Protestant Hospital Wesel, which is convinced that aroma oils can actually help with diseases. The 44-year-old nurse and diabetes assistant established the aroma care in the clinic. Since then, fragrant essences have been used in the treatment of patients. The hospital on the Lower Rhine is the first in Germany to offer aroma care as a supportive measure in addition to medical therapy.

Aromatherapy shows effect
According to Motzny were first „many skeptical if that works.“ Apparently, however, the first tests showed effect: „After second-degree burns, we helped a patient recover with healing lavender essential oil and lavender hydrolate“, so the nurse. In addition, a treatment with grapefruit oil in the positive behavioral change helped dementer and seriously ill patients. Scientists are now increasingly dealing with the well-scented oils, which until recently were more associated with wellness or esoteric. Last year, for example, a study by American researchers came to the conclusion that aromatherapy with ginger oil essence or a mixture of various essences such as ginger, spearmint, peppermint and cardamom oils in patients with nausea after one Operation effect shows.

Effects of aromatherapy can be demonstrated in clinical studies
Loud „Mirror online“ Hanns Hatt from the Bochum Ruhr University is among those scientists who are convinced of the positive effects of the essences. The professor of cell physiology has been researching with colleagues since 1992 on the subject. His team found out in 2010 that the smell of jasmine perfume „Gardenia Acetal“ at the cellular level in the brain, it has the same molecular mechanisms as tranquillizers from the benzodiazepine group. „Aromatherapy effects can be demonstrated today and demonstrated in volunteers in clinical trials“, so did. Moreover, it is undisputed that these oils have a strong antibacterial or antifungal effect, „because for that they are produced in the plants.“

Far from all esotericism
Japanese researchers have also tackled the issue and, as early as 2001, tested 14 essential oils and their antibacterial effects on various bacteria under laboratory conditions, including pneumococci, which cause severe infections such as lung or meningitis. In particular, oils from cinnamon bark, lemongrass and thyme had a strong antibacterial effect. However, there is the problem that for some oils not all ingredients are known and it is very complex to attribute any positive effects to individual substances. For example, rose oil, in which 120 of the 550 vegetable ingredients have not been identified, as Dietrich Wabner in his book „aromatherapy“ writes. The emeritus professor of chemistry, who spent more than 40 years researching natural substances and lecturing at the TU München on essential oils, says: „Aromatherapy is a rational therapy with vegetable oils and far from all esotericism.“

Effect on cancer patients is being investigated
Also in the treatment of cancer, the essential oils may possibly have a positive effect. In 2011, researchers from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and the Mexican University in Monterrey investigated the toxic effects of 50 essential oils on cancer cells. Of these, ten, at least in tests with healthy and pathologically proliferating pancreatic cells, appeared to be effective. Although initial investigations would start at the moment, clinical studies that can prove this effect in cancer patients are still pending.

Lavender for anxiety disorders
Several years ago, researchers looked into the question of whether natural oils could possibly also help with mental illness. German scientists compared the effect of lavender oil in anxiety disorders with that of the active ingredient lorazepam, a benzodiazepine, in a double study involving a manufacturer of herbal medicines. Like the study authors in the trade magazine „Phytomedicine“ Accordingly, lavender oil capsules were as effective as lorazepam, but in contrast, the natural active did not make you tired or addicted „and is therefore well suited for the treatment of an anxiety disorder.“ The beginning of the year was also in the trade magazine „International Journal for Neuropsychopharmacology "from a large-scale German-Austrian study that concluded that lavender oil is effective against anxiety disorders.

Skepticism about alternative healing methods
Basically, there is the problem with aromatherapy that there are still too few scientific studies that clearly show a causal and specific effect on humans and certain diseases. In natural medicine, for example, the essential oils are used to reduce stress, to treat tinnitus or to strengthen the immune system. However, experts suggest that aromatherapy should only be used to help treat patients. Essential oils may also present hazards, such as to children, or may cause allergic reactions. The Bochum Professor Hatt has a possible explanation why many physicians are still skeptical about an aroma oil treatment: „The higher the number of physicians in the hierarchy, the less inclined they are to alternative healing methods.“ This has to do with the fact that aromatherapy plays no role in training or „moved into the esoteric corner.“ (Ad)