A great many people have a very skewed perception of aromatherapy, so many in-fact that a weak critique of the practice currently shows up on the first page of search results for the term. Somehow aromatherapy got labeled as some “new age” foolishness, and that view pervades much of the Western world. Working in the background, scientists have been validating the use of essential oils for quite some time, for many medical applications. However, the data showing the effects of just aromas is somewhat limited — and this data is really what’s needed to change the way people think about essential oils.

Fortunately, a very interesting study validating aromatherapy’s aroma-therapeutic action has recently been published. It gets directly to the heart of the matter: the brain. It is within the brain that a response first occurs from smelling an scent. Our smell sense is the only one of the five with the direct connection to the brain; all the others have their signal first travel through another physiological structure to get there. And the smell sense is wired right to our most primitive centers, the ones that control emotions and unconscious activity.

Scientists in Italy have elucidated the way bergamot oil lowers stress-induced anxiety, and affects mild depression. They note that there is a firing of brain cells in such a way that the essential oil “is able to interfere with normal synaptic plasticity”. This process occurs in the area of long-term memory formation. That means that the inhalation of the oil interferes with the process of making a neural connection stronger when repeatedly expose to stress.

For example, think about feeling a familiar stress over and over. Like a sound that you particularly dislike: a lawnmower running, a dog barking, something like that. Here it only once or twice, or for not an extended duration, that’s fine. But hearing it over and over, or continuously for hours, that’s different. It doesn’t get easier to take, in-fact that stress becomes unbearable. That’s because the neural-pathway has been made stronger and stronger, so the same stress seems more intense. Bergamot essential oil makes it so that strengthening of the pathway doesn’t occur, or is lessened anyway.

This may elucidate the stress-reducing effect found in an earlier Korean study. In this study, adolescents wore an amulet emitting the aroma of either bergamot or a placebo. Those wearing the amulet with bergamot reported significantly lower stress levels during the study’s duration.

The Italian researchers note that the essential oil is considered to have a variety of potentially important effects: it is mood lifting, stress-reducing, and actually helps people bear physical pain. At the end of their research abstract, they state that because they now know how it works, bergamot essential oil has a place in doctors offices as a complementary medicine.

So what to do about the rest of aromatherapy? It’d be fantastic to see essential oils at your doctor’s office, not only for their obvious antiviral and antibacterial activity, but for they psycho-emotional actions of the aromas as well. Most certainly their are similar mechanisms for many essential oils which consistently elicit similar user responses — lavender is relaxing, lemon stimulating, etc.

With all the published research that’s available, and this new elucidation of the mechanism of the aromatic aspect of aromatherapy, natural medicine practitioners hope we’ll see more recommendations for “complementary” status. A great place to have a look at all the available data is pubmed.gov — just search for “essential oils” and start scrolling through the pages. You’ll see tons of papers regarding the antimicrobial actions of so many oils on so many microbes. There’s research that shows immune system function being boosted at the same time. Then there’s the very promising anti cancer research that’s just getting underway. As aromatherapy in all its forms can no longer reasonably be laughed at, it may not be long for essential oils to finally be used for the wonderful medicines they are.

For more on the therapeutic value of organic essential oil, and one of many important oils individually such as Patchouli oil, visit The Ananda Apothecary online.