Childcare services Company cash plans Dental care Health checks Medical insurance Occupational health Physiotherapy Travel insurance Healthy living Health features. It seems that aromatherapy really does have a beneficial effect on some ailments - read on to find out more. Aromatherapy is now a widely practised complementary medicine, using aromatic plant, flower, leaf, seed, bark and fruit essential oils to aid healing.
Aromatherapy works on our sense of smell and by absorption into the bloodstream.
About 15 per cent of the air we inhale goes to the roof of the nose, where olfactory receptors transport odours straight to a part of the brain called the limbic system. It's thought that ancient civilisations used 'aromatherapy' in many ways and for many reasons such as massage, bathing, medicinally, even for embalming bodies. The concept was probably originally used at around the same time in China, Egypt, the Middle East and by Native Americans, then brought to Europe by the Romans. The practice of modern aromatherapy is largely attributed to a French chemist, Ren -Maurice Gattefoss . He began investigating the healing powers of essential oils in the first quarter of this century after noting how lavender oil seemed to aid the healing of a severe burn on his hand.