Safety guidelines

If you are already taking medication from your doctor and with a qualified aroma therapist whether it is safe to use essential oils alongside allopathic remedies. For example, if you have a chest infection and have been prescribed antibiotics, it is helpful to use essential oils in steam inhalations, local chest rubs and in the bath, alongside the antibiotics. However, if you are taking other, less familiar medication and do not fully understand its purpose, you must check with your medical practitioner to ensure it is safe to use essential oils alongside with your prescription.

We have already emphasized that you must never take essential oils orally. Another area to avoid is in the inner ear, and you should never attempt to pour essential oils (either neat or diluted) into the ear itself. However, essential oils can be used to great effect in compresses and local massage on the outer ear, for pain relief and to help prevent any infection spreading.

If you have a minor accident, such as cutting your finger with a knife, it is important not to panic. There is always an element of shock or panic present – however mild – with accidents and this needs to be taken into account. However, if you act calmly and do not panic, you can apply the appropriate aromatherapy remedy safely and well.

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This section looks at the healing properties of essential oils, and how they can help us regain and maintain health and wellbeing. A large part of this section comprises of common ailments and minor injuries, together with advice on how to treat them using essential oils. This aspect of aromatherapy, which focuses on physical wellbeing, is of great benefit in daily life.

As well as helping to heal on a physical level, a corresponding feeling of satisfaction and empowerment arises from treating yourself, your friends and family with aromatherapy. Working within an holistic framework, aromatherapy helps you take responsibility for everyday health care. This harks back a few generations, to a time when it was commonplace for the mother or grandmother of the family to keep a store of herbal remedies at home and look after the family’s health.

Medical aromatherapy

The healing power of essential oils is utilized in a medical context in France where some doctors undertake postgraduate specialization in aromatherapy. They practice medical aromatherapy, which is quite different from the way aromatherapy is practiced in the more common therapeutic context.

Medical aromatherapy largely uses prescriptions of essential oils for internal use. The oils are measured and encapsulated in a gelatine capsule and taken orally, according to the prescription. Although this is clearly not within the remit of therapeutic aromatherapy, which never prescribes the internal use of essential oils (except garlic capsules), medical aromatherapy nonetheless demonstrates the extensive range and power of essential oils to aid the healing process.

In this section you will also learn how to use aromatherapy for babies, children, pregnant women and the elderly. All these groups of people are slightly vulnerable, and require gentler and sometimes slightly different treatment from healthy adults. The essential oils used on them are often considerably more diluted. However, once you have learned the guidelines for working with these groups of people, aromatherapy can be of great benefit for them.

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