There are many reasons for
someone to use aromatherapy in their everyday lives. Aromatherapy can be used
in different settings from the medical field as a form of medicine to improve
someone’s physical health to the psychology field where aromatherapy can be
used to improve mental and emotional health. In fact, probably the most popular
reason for using aromatherapy is for its ability to make people relax. In
today’s society, stress is part of everyone’s daily life. Whether it is stress
from school, work, friends, or even family, stress is something that is
unavoidable and that everyone often experiences it. When used specifically through inhalation, the
essential oils used in aromatherapy can allow one to feel more calmed and relaxed.
What’s so great about aromatherapy is that you do not need to be in a hospital
or be licensed psychologist to use aromatherapy to help you relax. You can
literally use aromatherapy anywhere and anytime as long as you have an
essential oil. Research has shown that essential oils can significantly trigger
physical or emotional effects on their own (Aromatherapy.com). It is also
proven that aromatherapy can help fasten the physical healing process due to
the relaxation and relief of stress of essential oils (M. Lis-Balchin, 2007). In
fact, when discussing the future of aromatherapy in the medical field, author
Maria Lis-Balchin argues in her article that many medical professionals have been
using aromatherapy as an alternative medicine, “As it is useful in the
treatment of patients whose symptoms are largely based on stress and who do not
respond to conventional medicine.” (M. Lis-Balchin, 2007) Therefore, pouring a
few drops of an essential oil into a diffuser in an office or into a cotton
ball while stuck in traffic is proven help one become relaxed and more at ease
when having a stressful day.
What’s lavender got to do with it?
Case Study: Reported bias on aromatherapy
Whenever anyone
talks about aromatherapy and lavender in the same sentence, it is usually
associated with its benefit of relaxation. After all, much talk is given to the
relaxation benefits that the lavender essential oil gives to individuals who
use it for aromatherapy. However, recent study shows that using lavender oils
in aromatherapy does not cause one to relax and, in fact, it is the
expectancies of feeling relaxed when smelling lavender that causes someone to
actually feel relaxed. Siobhán Howard and Brian M. Hughes conducted a research study
where they investigated if it was actually the smell of lavender, or
expectancies, that allowed one to become more relaxed during aromatherapy.
After administrating their study to 96 healthy undergraduate women at a local university,
using lavender essential oil, a placebo aroma, and an odourless substance, they
concluded that, “Relaxation patterns were not influenced by aromatherapeutic
lavender oil but were very much influenced by participant expectancies.”
(Howard and Hughes, 2008) According to their findings, when participants were
specifically told that the scent that they were about to smell was going to
allow them to feel relaxed, the participants in their studies reached greater
levels of relaxation. On the other hand, when participants were told that the
scent they were smelling was supposed to make them more anxious they reached
lower levels of relaxations or did not even try to relax (Howard and Hughes,
2008). Both authors of this research study conclude that the studies that prove
that lavender aromatherapy has relaxation benefits are inaccurate due to a number
of problems on how they are conducted. Since many people are turning to
aromatherapy as an alternative medicine to improve mental and physical
well-being, it can be argued that more scientific research needs to be
conducted in order to fully, and accurately, understand the effects that
aromatherapy has on an individual.
By: Ivan Gonzalez ______________________________________________________________________
References
Chait, Jennifer. "The Sensational Health Benefits of Lavender
Aromatherapy." HubPages. Web. 28 May 2012.
<http://jenniferchait.hubpages.com/hub/Aromatherapy_With_Lavender>.
Hausauer,
Nancy. "Aromatherapy Essential Oils for Relaxation." The Energy Healing Site.
Web. 28 May 2012.
<http://www.the-energy-healing-site.com/aromatherapy-essential-oils.html>.
Howard, Siobhán, and Brian M. Hughes.
"Expectancies, Not Aroma, Explain Impact of Lavender Aromatherapy on
Psychophysiological Indices of Relaxation in Young Healthy Women." British
Journal of Health Psychology 13.4 (2008): 603-17. Web.
Lis-Balchin, Maria. "Essential Oils and
’aromatherapy’: Their Modern Role in Healing." The Journal of the
Royal Society for the Promotion of Health 117.5 (1997): 324-29.
Shiina,
Y., N. Funabashi, K. Lee, T. Toyoda, T. Sekine, S. Honjo, R. Hasegawa, T.
Kawata, Y. Wakatsuki, and S. Hayashi. "Relaxation Effects of Lavender
Aromatherapy Improve Coronary Flow Velocity Reserve in Healthy Men Evaluated by
Transthoracic Doppler Echocardiography." International Journal of Cardiology 129.2 (2008):
193-97. Web.
As I was reading this post, it struck me that not only do people have scent identities but certain scents themselves (i.e. the scent of lavender) have identities that we commonly associate them with. Here it seems that we are stuck construing scents in a particular way. For example lavender to soothe and citrus to revitalize. I wonder if these scents could be utilized in ways contradictory to their "identities," and if these identities themselves are influenced by sensory factors other than smell ( such as how they look, feel, or taste).
ReplyDeleteI have always used lavender type lotions and body wash because I knew the aromatherapy involved with its scent. I can say for myself that lavender smell has helped me through a lot sleepless and restless nights. There was one particular summer where every night I wouldn't be able to fall asleep unless I lied their for a few hours. But after remembering an aromatherapy lotion at bath and body works with lavender and vanilla, I decided to invest in some from crabtree and evelyn. Results: sleep within the first hour of my slumber. I was so shocked to see how it really worked. I am a test to the results of the many studies of aromatherapy. It is true that Lavender is used to allow people to relax. It helps them calm down, and thats exactly what it did for me. But it was interesting to see the last part about how people get relaxed when using lavender as aromatherapy because our minds believes it to work. Maybe it was just my mind telling myself that it will work and then I saw the results instead of it actually working. Well what ever the case it...I'm still using lavender to help me relax. AROMATHERAPY For The Win!
ReplyDeleteWithout any retrains on the use of aromatherapy, isn’t it possible for someone to be addicted to it? If aromatherapy can trigger physical or emotional effects that act positive on someone, and he or she constantly uses aromatherapy for that positive effect, wouldn’t that individual be addicted to it? Even overdosing on medicine is dangerous so wouldn’t aromatherapy that is used as a medicine also have the same effect when overdosed? Further reading this post, the recent study about how lavender oils does not cause one to relax, but the expectancies of feeling relaxed when smelling lavender causes someone to actually feel relaxed surprised me. It might work the same way like how a particular smell can trigger certain memories. So if someone smells the odor of lavender and he or she remembers that it helped him or her feel relaxed, wouldn’t it bring the same effect every time he or she encounters the fragrance of lavender? But certainly, reading this post makes me want to try aromatherapy!
ReplyDeleteReading this post was interesting in that it strongly underscores the theme of scent possessing the power to affect and alter our states of mind. In the case of aromatherapy, scent can be regarded as having a beginning, middle, and end process. We begin by consuming the essential oil, the oil navigates in easing our bodies, and the subsequent calm moods that we experience after this fragrant intake. Seen in this light, smell can be thought of as an instrument that human beings consciously utilize to enhance the well-being of their mind and body. This in a way relates to Bruno Latour's discussion of body talk; we can think of ourselves as bodies that learn, through a application and consummation process, to become more sensitive to specific to our specific environment through these fresh and relaxing smells. Through lavender, we learn to become relaxed. The case study you mentioned reminds me of the air freshener that I have in my car. Whenever I enter my car, the smell of 'fresh cotton' envelops my nose and it smells incredibly new and clean. I feel revitalized and it seems to enhance my overall driving experience. Although the smell is good, I feel that part of this has to with the fact that I know the freshener is supposed to make my car smell more fresh and this feeling of newness breeds my subsequent pleasure. Also the idea of "cotton" creates certain images of cleanness in my head. I think aromatherapy has a lot to do with this too, with the idea, context and concept of the smell that make us believe its purpose and produces for us the "end effect". With lavender, we think of flowers and possibly imagine how refreshing it is and that may be why we feel relaxed. It may be less with the essential oil itself, but more of the images we conjure up in our head. This goes back to the ideas presented throughout the quarter about how scent is intimately connected to our memories and the site of memory and image-making in our lived, embodied experiences.
ReplyDelete