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About Aromatherapy What Is Aromatherapy? Is Aromatherapy Right for Me? How Do I Choose?

Glossary Treatment Applications Types of Aromatherapy Credentials

How Can Aromatherapy Help Me?

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.

Some experts believe that lemon, for example, may reduce the urge to smoke, while peppermint can trigger a sense of fullness after meals. Memory researchers have found that sniffing scents that were present when students learned information helps them do better taking exams. The point being is that our sense of smell is connected to our brain’s memory and emotional centers in ways scientists are still mapping out.

Aromatherapists can recommend personally tailored scents for your specific ailments such as aches and pains, a lack of energy, or plain old stress. But there are many types of aromatherapy for many types of ailments. Are you stressed? Needing a mood boost? Chronic pain? Aromatherapy massage, for example, is the most common method to address many of these ailments. A practitioner of this combined specialization must be well versed in massage and understand the varied properties of oils. For this reason, extensive training is necessary. Other methods include cosmetic aromatherapy, which is the use of essential oils in hair and skin creams, and psycho-aromatherapy, where oils bring about certain emotional states and moods.