One of the biggest benefits of aromatherapy is that it works quickly, says integrative medicine specialist Dr. Tasneem Bhatia. To find out how to use the power of scent for immediate stress relief, watch the video.
So there are a lot of benefits to aromatherapy. To understand why aromatherapy works, it has a lot to do with the brain and how the brain functions in an anxiety state. What aromatherapy is doing is when you inhale the different essential oils, that smell is travelling right to your amygdala which is siting in the brain, but you're by passing the digestive track which medications and supplements need.
You're bypassing other brain centers, so that the brain instantly calms down, sort of an instant quick fix verses some of the other things we talked about that take longer to work on. So that's the way Aromatherapy works, now there's some oils obviously that are going to work better than others.
So my personal favorites are lavender, eucalyptus, bergamot, sandalwood, these are all very healing oils that if you carry them around or you know you have a big event or you know you have really bad week coming up, you can sort of inhale those throughout the day there's really not a limitation on how often you can or can not inhale them, and it helps to sort of ease the mind and calm down anxiety and excessive worry.
Tasneem Bhatia, MD, is medical director of the Atlanta Center for Holistic and Integrative Medicine. She is a pediatrician and emergency medicine physician.
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