By Madeline Kennedy
Reuters Health

Inhaling the scents of lavender or peppermint oils can help to reduce stress, but the evidence supporting that make claims wrong in size weak to depend on, reported by a whole new analysis.

Researchers reviewed the couple of previous clinical trials testing whether aromatherapy can reduce stress, and discovered most to remain biased, although most also did show one advantage.

\”Aromatherapy is apparently effective for reducing stress in healthy people. However, there (is) still some possibility it\’s a placebo or perhaps not great for reducing stress,\” said Dr. Myeong Soo Lee from the Korea Institute of Oriental Medicine in Daejeon, the study\’s senior author.

If aromatherapy does reduce stress, it may be a crucial health intervention, the analysis team writes inside journal Maturitas. They understand that stress can lead to heart related illnesses, stomach ulcers, hypertension along with other illnesses.

To study the evidence for aromatherapy as a stress-management tool, the study analyzed comes from five randomized controlled trials testing aromatherapy against dummy substances or against no treatment by any means. All the trials measured participants\’ feelings of stress and three of these also searched for modifications in the so-called stress hormone cortisol.

Lee\’s team chose to include only studies testing healthy people, plus the five studies a total of 147 participants.

Overall, case study learned that \”aroma inhalation has favorable effects on stress management.\” But the studies that tested cortisol levels found no differences with aromatherapy.

Most with the experiments were also controlled by bias, Lee\’s team notes, because of the way the trials were designed.

For example, four on the five studies still did not conceal from each subjects and the experimenters the way in which subjects were receiving aromatherapy or were from the control group. Labeling will help you harder to eliminate the placebo effect since the cause of the difference in level of stress, particularly when subjects are asked to assess their own levels of stress.

Because of which weaknesses, they were hesitant to draw a good conclusion if aromatherapy works.

Lee said that the studies asking patients to guage their own stress levels \”showed beneficial effects of aromatherapy on reducing level of stress when compared with no treatment.\”

Dr. Wolfgang Steflitsch, a pulmonologist at the Otto Wagner Hospital in Vienna who wasn’t involved with the research, told Reuters within a email that aromatherapy \”is a valuable decision for lowering of stress, anxiety, depression, sleep disturbance and burnout.\”

He agrees the studies as of yet are restricted through the chance of bias, but notes that study design continues to be improving over the last decade.

Although this review raises some doubts around the effectiveness of aromatherapy, Steflitsch said he thinks there is no harm within the practice.

Patients with an allergic history needs to do a tolerance test beforehand, he noted, but said otherwise, \”If top quality essential oils widely-used from an aromatherapy expert, gone will be the harm.\”

Other scientists have raised some concerns about whether aromatherapy included in environments like spas can cause injury. One example is, an investigation in Taiwan saw that essential oils can complement air particles and irritate eyes and air pathways.

Lee asserted that participants inside trials her team reviewed would not experience any harm, however other reviews have indicated that essential oils could be toxic at high concentrations, specially when taken orally.

Steflitsch recommends that individuals intending to use aromatherapy should first visit a medical doctor for diagnosis. If aromatherapy is needed, he said, it ought to be used in addition to almost every other necessary medical interventions.

The researchers conclude how the current evidence would not conclusively show aromatherapy to become an efficient method for managing stress and future studies should target designing proper control groups.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1rtDnD1 Maturitas, online August 20, 2014.