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Chronic pain consumes approximately $70 billion per year and affects some 80 million Americans, Increasingly, aromatherapy has been used as part of an integrated, multidisciplinary approach to pain management. This therapy is thought to enhance the parasympathetic response through the effects of touch and smell, encouraging relaxation at a deep level. Relaxation has been shown to alter perceptions of pain. Even if one ignores the possibility that essential oils have pharmacologically active ingredients-or the potential pharmacokinetic potentization of conventional drugs by essential oils-aroma therapy might possibly play a role in the management of chronic pain through relaxation. Clinical trials are in the early stages, but evidence suggests that aromatherapy might be used as a complementary therapy for managing chronic pain. As such, this article examines the potential role of clinical aromatherapy as a complementary therapy in the care of patients with chronic pain. Although the use of aromatherapy is not restricted to nursing, at least I state board of nursing has recognized the therapeutic value of aromatherapy and voted to accept it as part of holistic nursing care. (Altern Ther Health Med. 1999;5(5):42-51)
Smell is a potent wizard that transports us across a thousand miles and all the years we have lived.
-Helen Keller1
Aromatherapy is thought to work at psychological, physiological, and molecular levels, "reintegrating" mind, body, and spirit through touch and smell. The effects of aroma and touch can occur rapidly, and be either relaxing or stimulating depending on one's previous experience as well as the chemistry of the essential oils used. Aromatherapy is used in pain management and to help enhance quality of life.
This article aims to assess the use of aromatherapy in pain management. It begins the defining aromatherapy, then follows with an explanation of how aromatherapy could be used with or without touch. A discussion of trials involving aromatherapy and their effects on pain is presented, with a table of essential oils thought to have analgesic properties.
AROMATHERAPY
Two thousand years ago, plants such as Salix (willow) and Populus (poplar), which is part of the willow family, were used to ease pain.2 Although R. M. Gattefosse,3 the grandfather of modern aromatherapy, writes that "almost all essential oils have some analgesic properties," some essential oils appear to provide...