Aromatherapy is an alternative health methodology founded on a more holistic approach to coping with health problems and complaints. It is a completely natural, non-invasive treatment that treats the person as a whole as opposed to treating a disease or illness in isolation. On the whole, Western medicine tends to isolate a patient's problem areas and health concerns and treats them alone. Whereas Eastern medicine, which is considered alternative medicine in the West, tends to use a more holistic approach. That is, it views the body as an integrated system so that when there is a medical problem in one area, the practitioner of alternative medicine determines the best way to return to proper whole-body function.
Aromatherapy combines both art and science by utilizing naturally occuring aromatic plant extracts to promote mind, body, and spiritual health. Essential oils and essences used in aromatherapy seek to harmonize and rebalance the body while enhancing the body's own healing process so to promote the body's self-regulating, maintaining, and healing capabilities. Aromatherapy also seeks to bring relief on emotional as well as physical levels.
Aromatherapy has provided relief and beneficial results for a vast array of conditions. These include treatment of skincare complaints such as dermatitis, acne, eczema, psoriasis, cellulite, varicose veins and stretch marks, among others. Aromatherapy can also provide emotional benefits to combat depression, hysteria, irritability, panic attacks, difficulty with concentration, insomnia and moodiness. Additionally, aromatherapy has been utilized successfully to treat burns, bruises, sprains and strains, asthma, bronchitis, flu, muscular aches and pains, skin inflammation, and digestive problems such as constipation.
Aromatherapy utilizes essential oils and essences to promote health. In fact it is an art which must be learned properly to be used successfully. If one is seeking aromatherapy treatments, it is essential that one is dealing with a qualified aromatherapy practitioner because using essential oils is a precise and learned science. Further, if used incorrectly, essential oils can do more harm than good. They tend to be highly concentrated extracts which are harvested by distilling a variety of plant materials including, but not limited to, flowers, leaves, fruit peel, wood, and grasses. An essential oil can be distilled a number of ways, most commonly by either using water or steam or by mechanically processing it, particularly in the case of citrus rinds, or by dry distillation of natural materials. Following the distillation process, the essential oil is then physically separated from the water. Essential oils generally do not feel greasy and many of them do not leave an oily residue. These oils penetrate the skin very easily and get absorbed into the bloodstream where they will then be reabsorbed at different rates by different organs throughout the body. |
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