A Sweet Way To Go To Sleep
My favorite way to put people to sleep is Aromatherapy. To help a person sleep, the requisite molecules have to get to the brain. They certainly to not have to drag around the circulation of the entire body. The sense of smell is perhaps the most sensitive of all senses. You need to smell only a few molecules of something, compared to how much it takes to see and hear, they say. I have heard it said many times, although it does sound a bit like comparing apples and oranges.
At any rate, there is the ethmoid sinus above the chambers that are above the nostrils. Things seem to do a pretty good job of getting into the brain. This includes getting into the brain with surgical instruments. If someone needs to get to a pituitary gland or any of the marvelously complex surrounding structures, this a good way to get there. Up your nose!
You don’t have to be a neuroanatomist to know aromatherapy works, and it works well. Essential oils” are actually pretty potent stuff. They can burn the skin, and certainly should never be in contact with the skin unless they have been diluted 50% with water. The best thing to do, as far as I am concerned, is to sniff them. This is a “no-brainer.” They go straight from the nose to the brain and although a respiratory allergy might be a problem for some, theoretically, nobody has ever complained to me about that one, not ever.
People sometimes complain about the prices of “expensive, high quality” oils. This might have something to do with them being sold as luxury items in the first place, and should not make any difference. I always tell my patients to get the cheapest they can find. There are laws on labeling in these United States. Although some “essential oils” go back to antiquity, and you can find a wealth of information on the internet, I have learned only recently about the French “father of Aromatherapy” Rene Maurice Gatefosse.
During my medical studies in France I learned about this cosmetic chemist who burned his hand (in 1910, mind you) in a laboratory fire, and whose hand healed nicely (such burns can have all sorts of scarring and healing problems) after he plunged it into some lavender essential oil that happened to be sitting around. He was so happy with the results that he developed the lavender industry in the Provence region of France.
Me, I have delightful (female) patients whose insomnia I have cured with essential oil in a diffuser, or sprayed over their beds, or even growing outside their windows. Sometimes it just takes a few drops of lavender essential oil on their pillows. Men usually do not like lavender as much as oil pf patchouli, a Mediterranean plant transplanted not too long ago to California. As always, there are more stories to tell, and many solutions to life’s problems that just don’t happen to be prescription drugs.
Filed under Alternative Medicine, Brain, News, prescription drugs by on May 13th, 2017. 
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