Posted by Elaine R. Ferguson, MD on April 4, 2010
After having emotionally challenging experiences, healthy, well-adjusted people can possess unprocessed emotions for many years, be it childhood angst, conflicts with family and friends, or remorse over missteps and lost opportunities. During several scientific studies, researchers asked participants to write about a disturbing experience for 15 to 20 minutes a day for three or four consecutive days. The reason for the exercise is not to craft a perfect essay, but to dig deeply into one’s emotional baggage, then translate the experience into language on the page.
Interestingly, an analysis of participants’ writing about trauma found that those whose health improves most tend to use a higher proportion of negative emotion words than those associated with positive emotions. The escalating use of insight, and associated cognitive words over several days of writing is also linked to health improvement. The creation of a coherent story, with the expression of negative emotions, work together in therapeutic writing. Evidence of these processes are seen in the immediate improvement in autonomic nervous system activity.
I believe this research confirms the ancient truth, “to thine own self be true.” Self-honesty allows the realization that we have the inherent capacity to define every experience, regardless of the depths of emotional pain it may have caused, rather than allow the experience to define us. We possess the psychological and spiritual wherewithal to survive all experiences, and equally have the ability to heal and to thrive.
Investigators are unsure of the exact way writing effects the body and makes it effective medicine. Until 1999, research in this area had focused on healthy individuals. Dr. Joshua Smyth and colleagues studied the effects of journaling in individuals experiencing asthma and rheumatoid arthritis. This study is probably the first using standardized, quantitative outcome measures to examine how writing about stressful events affects specific illnesses.
The study included 112 patients, 61 asthmatics, and 51 rheumatoid arthritics. 58 asthmatics and 49 arthritics completed the study. Patients were assigned to write either about the most the most stressful event of their lives or emotionally neutral events for only three days, 20 minutes each day. Four months later, nearly half of those who wrote about stressful events such as car accidents, abuse, divorce, or sexuality, had improved significantly. Asthma patients improved lung function by 19% on average. Patients with rheumatoid arthritis, had a 28% improvement of symptoms.
“We can do a good job with medication, but we can do a better job if we also pay attention to people’s psychological needs,” said Dr. Smyth, now an assistant professor of psychology at North Dakota State University.
“This indicates that a very minimal psychological social interaction can have very substantial medical effects. And it indicates that stress may play a role in the progression of illnesses like arthritis and asthma.”
The article was published in the April 14, 1999, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Dr. Smyth stated, “Were the authors to have provided similar outcome evidence about a new drug, it likely would be in widespread use within a short time. Why? We would think we understood the ‘mechanism’ (whether we did or not) and there would be a mediating industry to promote its use.
“Manufacturers of paper and pencils are not likely to push journaling as a treatment addition for the management of asthma and rheumatoid arthritis. But the authors have provided evidence that medical treatment is more effective when standard pharmacological intervention is combined with the management of emotional distress. Ventilation of negative emotions, even just to an unknown reader, seems to have helped these patients acknowledge, bear, and put into perspective their distress.
Learn more about holistic health. Stop by Elaine R. Ferguson, MD’s site where you can find out more about journaling and what it can do for you.
Posted by Joan Kelly on November 25, 2009
They’ve Known It All Along
I consider myself fairly well- educated and read intelligent magazines and newspapers, but for some reason, I have had little acquaintance with aromatherapy, or aroma-botanicals as my friend prefers to call them. I have spent many university classroom hours reading about the interactions between plants and insects, plants and other plants and of course plants and humans. Yet, what was not offered in all the lectures I attended and books I read were the wide-variety of medicinal properties of aromatherapy. Below is brief synopsis of my discovery of aromatherapy and the science that confirms what has been right under our noses for centuries.
So Much More Than Just Aroma
I have been using natural and alternative wellness treatments for my health for years, yet I had only associated aromatherapy with getting a massage or putting lavender on my pillow for a better night’s sleep. Unbeknownst to me, aromatherapy has been used for centuries and currently used in medical facilities in France. Now, with a rising interest and even demand for alternative and complementary medicine (CAM), research is being conducted on the benefits of aromatherapy for infections, psyche, nerves, hormones and to some extent inflammation, allergies and metabolic conditions.
New Meaning and Association for Aromatherapy
Contrary to my own vague association, aromatherapy is more than smelling certain scents. Jane Buckle, RN, Ph.D. concludes that there are four main types of aromatherapy: clinical, stress management, beauty therapy and environmental fragrancing. I think many of us have an association of aromatherapy when it comes to beauty therapy and good smelling fragrances from the aroma of essential oils, yet the clinical and stress management aspects of aromatherapy have been hidden from view.
To wrap my investigative mind around what truly is aromatherapy, I needed to get more of a simplistic definition. The general idea of the meaning of aromatherapy is that it is therapeutic uses of essential oils from aromatic (fragrant) plants. These oils are usually extracted from plants using water or steam distillation and typically used in diffusers as well as topically. Once the aromatic essential oils are extracted, the oils are rather unstable in nature – when the oils are exposed to air, they change from a potent liquid into an aromatic vapor within seconds.
In his book Advanced Aromatherapy: The Science of Essential Oil, Kurt Schnaubelt, Ph.D., explains that the main chemical component of essential oils are terpenes and it higher homologues as well as phenylpropane derivatives. Yet it must be pointed out that the synergy of each oil has it own unique qualities as well as specific chemical components.
Nature’s Own Synergies
Each of us is aware of the far reaching affects of the high-tech civilization that we live. Yet, one that is often overlooked or forgotten is the loss of nature – both in our surrounding environment and in personal knowledge. In this modern age, it seems that humans have separated mind from body and body from soul. If we were to look at the essence of what aromatherapy is, it is simply nature in a bottle.
Probing into my biology textbook, I read about plant defenses in a whole new light. Plants produce chemical compounds, mostly terpenoid compounds, in order to defend themselves against predators such as insects and animal herbivores as well as against fungai and other microbes. These terpenoid compounds also are used in plant to plant competition, where established plants inhibit germination of other plants. And of course plants use scent in attracting beneficial insect and bat pollinators. (4) (5) Thus, it is evident that the role of essential oils is vital to the continual establishment and growth of plants.
Observing Animals
Remembering my general observation of various animals, I wonder now why the usage and medicinal properties of plants is so unfamiliar in our culture. I have known for years that horses select various plants to facilitate detoxing of metabolic toxic buildup, as well as select certain plants for antiviral and antiparasitic uses. I remember in learning in one of my graduate classes about Chimpanzees eating certain plants to cleanse their accumulation of internal parasites.
And, I know from my graduate work in entomology that insects have fairly well developed chemoreception and some are attracted to plants by their scents. It tugs at my reasoning why plants and their essential oils are not more widely used in everyday life, but as I have pointed out above that is now changing. In part two of this paper, I will dive into the physiological aspects of how aromatherapy is absorbed into the human body and the current research on clinical and stress management uses.
Learn more about aromatherapy from the author’s blog.
Posted by qpen on October 25, 2009
From Publishers Weekly
Flaherty (The Massachusetts General Handbook of Neurology) mixes memoir, meditation, compendium and scholarly reportage in an odd but absorbing look at the neurological basis of writing and its pathologies. Like Oliver Sacks, Flaherty has her own story to tell a postpartum episode involving hypergraphia and depression that eventually hospitalized her. But what holds this great variety of material together is not the medical authority of a doctor, the personal (more…)
