Aromatherapy Overview

Aromatherapy refers to the use of essential oils extracted from herbs, trees and plants for therapeutic purposes. Today, most practitioners of aromatherapy use about 40 different scents, either on their own or in various combinations, to relieve stress, invigorate the body and promote well-being. Generally, the scent is mixed with a neutral oil (like vegetable oil) and spread over the body via massage, added to bathwater or inhaled.

There is no scientific evidence that aromatherapy has curative abilities as a treatment on its own, but it has been shown to provide therapeutic benefits when coupled with other forms of medical treatment. For example, a study found that patients who had undergone heart surgery while receiving a foot massage with orange-scented oil were less anxious than those who had received the massage with unscented oil.

Aromatherapists can recommend personally tailored scents for specific ailments. Plus, aromatherapists stress that only natural, unadulterated oils have medicinal benefits. As good as perfumes and shampoos may smell, they are not typically considered therapeutic.

In practice, aromatherapy has been around for thousands of years, but the term wasn't coined until 1928, when French chemist Rene-Maurice Gattefosse first used it after noticing the curative effects of essential oils during his work treating the wounded in World War I.