Clinical Aromatherapy
What is clinical aromatherapy?
Clinical aromatherapy is the controlled use of essential oils to provide therapeutic responses for the improvement of physical, emotional and spiritual wellbeing. There are more than 400 different essential oils in global market and more than 3000 aromatic molecules have been identified. Each of those aromatic molecules give different therapeutic effects in the body and also contribute in indication or safety precaution uses. So, it is important to describe the chemical constituents in every essential oils.
Essential oil is secondary metabolic which has many roles in plant such as attract pollinator, detect predator and protect plant from harmful pathogen. Essential oil is soluble in oil (lipophilic), volatile and is composed by small molecules. Smaller molecules, faster to dissipate. So, orange and lemon essential oils which have small molecules dissipate faster than other essential oils.
Because the size of molecule is really small, essential oil can enter blood vessels, cross placenta or blood brain barrier so it is easier to interact with the body chemical receptors. Essential oil is the complex mixture of chemical component and constituent. The smallest molecule is the active component, medium molecule is the secondary component and largest component is the trace component. The combination of those three components produce therapeutic effects.
Chemical component in essential oils is made from many functional group usually terpenes. Terpenes are large and diverse class of naturally occurring organic chemicals derived from the 5-carbon compound isoprene. Its building blocks are Carbon ( C), Hydrogen (H), and Oxygen (O). Besides, there are other functional group in essential oils such as alcohol, aldehyde, ester, ether, ketone, lactones, phenol, etc. Knowing the amount and type of functional group in essential oils helps to predict its therapeutic properties. For example, one of large chemical component in lavender is ester and it has sedative properties. That means lavender can be used for sedative effects like calming, relaxation, sleep disorder (insomnia) etc.
The higher location where lavender was planted, more sedative its essential oils.
We could know the chemical component of essential oils by their monograph or datasheet. Essential oils monograph is different with herbal monograph. This document contain : plant botanical name & synonyms, extraction method and which plant parts to be extracted, characteristic products, description & area growth, main chemical components, main therapeutic properties and its safety considerations.
Reference :
https://www.coursera.org/learn/aromatherapy-clinical-use-essential-oils?
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