Even hospitals are looking at the benefits of aromatherapy. When Robin Hemond checked into the Landmark Medical Center in Woonsocket, R.I., to give birth to her son, she recalled having read that the hospital was offering aromatherapy to help expectant mothers relax.
She didn’t know much about the program, except that it involved using the scent of lavender in the labor and delivery rooms. Because she liked lavender, she figured it couldn’t hurt. She decided, “I might as well try it.”
The next day, after more than eight hours of labor, Hemond, who lives in Woonsocket, declared that aromatherapy definitely made childbirth easier.
She said the fresh, light scent of lavender in her room made her much more relaxed delivering her son, Jeffrey, than she had been when she delivered her daughter, Melissa, eight years ago.
It even helped her husband, Ernie, who said he usually breaks out in rashes or hives when he gets nervous. “Yesterday was game day,” he said of the day his son was born, “and nothing.”
Denise Vachon, acting nurse manager of the Precious Beginnings maternity unit at Landmark, said she doesn’t know of any studies proving that aromatherapy relieves physical symptoms.
But psychologically, at least, it seems to help, and “anything that helps the patients, we’re willing to try,” she said.
Landmark Medical Center has joined a growing number of hospitals across the country offering aromatherapy and other “alternative” or “complementary care” options to some patients.
Lavender in the delivery room is another example of Western medicine’s growing acceptance of the idea of treating the mind as well as the body. Non-traditional therapies that once seemed unimaginable in modern medical care–from encouraging patients to laugh to bringing in dogs for them to pet–are being looked at with as much interest as skepticism.
Pawtucket Memorial Hospital, Newport Hospital and Women & Infants Hospital in Providence, all in Rhode Island, offer aromatherapy–the use of “essential oils” distilled from flowers, plants and trees that are absorbed in a bath or diffused through the air in their maternity units. Women & Infants Hospital also offers it to cancer patients, in the form of air fragrances or massages with scented oils.
“I don’t know of any studies saying that it helps (relieve labor pain or other ailments), but it certainly doesn’t hurt,” said Mary Dowd Struck, senior vice president for patient care at Women & Infants Hospital.
Dr. Cornelius “Skip” Granai, the director of the Program in Women’s Oncology at Women & Infants Hospital who helped introduce aromatherapy and other forms of complementary care there several years ago, emphasized that the hospital isn’t saying these programs have any tangible medical benefits but instead are another way of making patients feel more comfortable.
While most medical experts wait for scientific proof that something actually helps patients before offering a new medicine, therapy or treatment idea, Granai’s opinion is that if an aroma or a foot massage helps a person feel better, why not give it a try?
As far as Granai is concerned, the least doctors and hospitals can do is give patients the option: “It’s just common sense.”
Aromatherapy, or the use of essential oils as a treatment for mind, body and spirit, dates to ancient civilizations and continues to play an important role in many cultural and religious ceremonies around the world.
Many cultures have long touted its medicinal values, and some European countries have gone so far as to incorporate it into the mainstream medical field by licensing aromatherapists to prescribe the use of essential oils for treatments in addition to or in place of traditional medicines. (There are no such licensing standards in the United States, where anyone can declare himself or herself an aromatherapist.)
While the American culture hasn’t embraced its therapeutic values the way other countries have, aromatherapy has gradually become part of the popular culture here over the past 20 years or so, said Judy Marcellot, manager of the 7 Arrows Herb Farm in Attleboro, Mass.
It started in the late 1970s when health food stores, specialty shops and salons began offering essential oils as a recipe for relaxation–a whiff of peppermint as an afternoon pick-me-up, a few drops of lavender in a bubble bath or a touch of clary sage in a massage ointment.
As American consumers caught on to de-stressing by lighting scented candles and taking perfumed baths, many also began taking an interest in aromatherapy’s long history of use in the medical arena.
Items promoted for use in aromatherapy now seem to be available everywhere, including candle stores, health and beauty specialty stores and even grocery stores.
