Essential oils have a very small size and of the chemical weight of less than 1000m (m = weight of molecule). According to scientific testing, any substance with a molecular weight below 1000m should be absorbed by the skin.
This means that essential oils are able to penetrate the skin and pass into the blood stream and into different areas of the body for internal therapeutic benefits.
There is great evidence that essential oils are absorbed into the bloodstream when inhaled. The large amount of blood vessels in the lungs absorb the oils and then circulate them throughout the body.
Essential Oils Used In Hospitals
Many hospitals such as Vanderbilt University Hospital, the Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins (see list) use essential oils for the treatment of anxiety, depression and infections in hospitalized patients. Over 50 hospitals nationwide are using oils for increased healing benefits such as germ-fighting and the well-known mood-lifting properties of these amazing natural tools.
Vanderbilt University Hospital in Tennessee is using therapeutic grade essential oils in their emergency room to boost productivity and health.
Essential oils are also being used at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York city for the relaxation and pain relief benefits assisting cancer patients. A 2009 study found that pre-operative patients who received aromatherapy with lavandin oil were significantly less anxious about their surgery than controls.
The properties of essential oils are being recognized more and more as antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria are challenging health providers. According to Annie Wong-Beringer, Pharm.D., Associate Professor of Clinical Pharmacy at the USC School of Pharmacy, “Inappropriate antibiotic use may kill beneficial bacteria, opening the door for harmful bacteria to establish themselves in their place. It also may toughen up some bacteria by encouraging them to mutate and develop drug resistance.” Essential oils can actually reduce germs and are not ‘recognizable’ by bacteria due to their complex nature.
Essential oils are well documented for their powerful anti-microbials effect against infections like MRSA, VRE, Hepatitis, and many more. Essential oils are even being used to fight cancer and there is research on the use of frankincense to shrink brain tumors. Not only do they essential oils smell good, removing that unfriendly ‘hospital odor’ that seems to turn everyone off, but they are healing and stress reducing as well. Both patients and workers alike are welcoming the use of essential oils in hospitals everywhere in order to boost morale and productivity as well as speed healing and prevent the spread of disease. After experiencing oils in the hospital environment, many workers and patients decide to take the idea home and start using essential oils for personal use. However you approach it, essential oils are big news for everybody’s nose and immune system.
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THE BLOOD-BRAIN BARRIER –
By David Stewart, Ph.D.,R.A.
It was thought for years that the interstitial tissues of the brain served as a barrier to keep damaging substances from reaching the neurons of the brain and the cerebrospinal fluid. Instead of a barrier, it would be more accurate to consider it as a sieve or filter through which only molecules of a certain size or smaller can pass.
Most of the molecules of the substances used in chemotherapy are too large to pass through the blood-brain filter, which is why doctors say that chemotherapy doesn’t work on brain cancer. Some of the smaller molecules get through, but not the whole suite of drugs intended.
Doctors don’t know for sure, but it seems that in order to cross the blood-brain barrier, only molecules less than 800-1000 atomic mass units (amu) in molecular weight can get through. Lipid solubility seems to be another factor which facilitates passing through the blood-brain barrier. Water soluble molecules don’t usually penetrate into brain tissue, even when very small. The molecules of essential oils are all not only small, but lipid soluble as well.
In fact, when it comes to essential oils, small molecules (less than 500 amu) are what they are made of. That is why they are aromatic. The only way for something to be aromatic is for the molecules to be so small that they readily leap into the air so they can enter our noses and be detected as odor and smell.
That is why oils for cooking or massage, such as corn, peanut, sesame seed, safflower, walnut, almond, canola, olive and other oils pressed from seeds are not aromatic. Sure, they have a smell, but you can’t smell them across the room in minutes as one can when you opens a bottle of peppermint, hyssop, or cinnamon oil. Essential oils of every species cross the blood-brain barrier.
This makes them uniquely able to address disease, not only from a physical level, but from a more basic and fundamental level-that of the emotions which are often the root cause of physical illness.
A QUICK COURSE IN CHEMISTRY
Because of the tiny molecular structure of the components of an essential oil, they are extremely concentrated. One drop contains approximately 40 million-trillion molecules. Numerically that is a 4 with 19 zeros after it: 40,000,000,000,000,000,000. We have 100 trillion cells in our bodies, and that’s a lot. But one drop of essential oil contains enough molecules to cover every cell in our bodies with 40,000 molecules. Considering that it only takes one molecule of the right kind to open a receptor site and communicate with the DNA to alter cellular function, you can see why even inhaling a small amount of oil vapor can have profound effects on the body, brain, and emotions. Sometimes too many oil molecules overload the receptor sites, and they freeze up without responding at all, when a smaller amount would have been just right. This is why we say that when using oils, “sometimes less is better.” Sometimes more is better, too. Knowing the difference is the art of aromatherapy.
Essential oils are mixtures of dozens, even hundreds, of constituents, all of which are composed of carbon and hydrogen and sometimes oxygen. All essential oils are principally composed of a class of organic compounds built of “isoprene units.”
An isoprene unit is a set of five connected carbon atoms with eight hydrogens attached. Their molecular weight is only 68 amu, which is very small, indeed. Molecules built of isoprene units are all classified as “terpenes.” Terpenes are what make essential oils unique in the world of natural substances.
PHENYLPROPANOIDS
Phenylpropanoids are compounds of carbon-ring molecules incorporating one isoprene unit. They are also called hemiterpenes. There are dozens of varieties of phenylpropanoids.
They are found in Clove (90%), Cassia (80%), Basil (75%), Cinnamon (73%), Oregano (60%), Anise (50%), Peppermint (25%). While they can create conditions where unfriendly viruses and bacteria cannot live, the most important function performed byphenylpropanoids is that they clean the receptor sites on the cells. Without clean receptor sites, cells cannot communicate, and the body malfunctions, resulting in sickness.
MONOTERPENES
Monoterpenes are compounds of two isoprene units, which is ten carbon atoms and sixteen hydrogen atoms per molecule- molecular weight 136 amu. There are an estimated 2,000 varieties of monoterpenes.
Monoterpenes are found in most essential oils: Galbanum (80%), Angelica (73%), Hyssop ((70%), Rose of Sharon (54%), Peppermint (45%), Juniper (42%), Frankincense (40%), Spruce (38%), Pine (30%), Cypress (28%), and Myrtle (25%).
While offering a variety of healing properties, the most important ability of the monoterpenes is that they canreprogram miswritten information in the cellular memory. With improper coding in the DNA, cells malfunction and diseases result, including lethal ones such as cancer.
SESQUITERPENES
Sesquiterpenes are compounds of three isoprene units, which is fifteen carbons and twenty-four hydrogens per molecule- molecular weight 204 amu. There are more than 10,000 kinds of sesquiterpenes. Sesquiterpenes are the principal constituents of Cedarwood (98%), Vetiver (97%), Spikenard (93%), Sandalwood (Aloes) 90%, Black Pepper (74%), Patchouli (71%), Myrrh (62%), and Ginger (59%). They are also found in Galbanum, Onycha, and Frankincense (8%).
Sesquiterpene molecules deliver oxygen molecules to cells, like hemoglobin does in the blood. Sesquiterpenes can also erase or deprogram miswritten codes in the DNA. Sesquiterpenes are thought to be especially effective in fighting cancer because the root problem with a cancer cell is that it contains misinformation, and sesquiterpenes can erase that garbled information. At the same time the oxygen carried by sesquiterpene molecules creates an environment where cancer cells can’t reproduce. Hence, sesquiterpenes deliver cancer cells a double punch-onethat disables their coded misbehavior and a second that stops their growth.
The American Medical Association (AMA) has said that if they could find an agent that would pass the blood-brain barrier, they would be able to find cures for ailments such as Lou Gehrig’s disease, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, and Parkinson’s disease. Such agents already exist and have been available since Biblical times. The agents, of course, are essential oils-particularly those containing the brain oxygenating molecules of sesquiterpenes.
THE TRIPLE WHAMMY
The big triple punch combination of “PMS” (Phenylpropanoids, Monoterpenes, and Sesquiterpenes) found in essential oils is very powerful in addressing many illnesses, injuries, and disease conditions. That is because this combination offers the following:
First, you clean the receptor sites allowing the proper transfer of hormones, peptides, neurotransmitters, steroids, and other intracellular messengers. (The Phenylpropanoids do that.)
Second, you deprogram or erase the wrong information from cellular memory stored in the DNA. (The Sesquiterpenes take care of that.)
Third, you reprogram the cells with the correct information so they can function properly. (The Monoterpenes do this.)
These three classes of chemical components are why essential oils can sometimes affect a healing that is nearly instant and also permanent. What they simply do is to restore the body back to its natural state of balance and health. While a specific oil may have one or two of these three classes of compounds as its predominant chemistry, all the Biblical oils contain some of all of them. This is one secret to their amazing healing abilities.
So there you have it in a nutshell: The way the blood-brain barrier works and the biochemistry of one of the ways essential oils can help achieve a healing.
Natural Products Derived From Plants as a Source of Drugs
US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of HealthJournal of Advanced Pharmaceutical Technology & Research 2012 Oct-Dec; 3(4): 200–201. `Prof. (Dr.) Ciddi Veeresham
Excerpt:
- It has been well documented that natural products played critical roles in modern drug development, especially for antibacterial and antitumor agents.
- Plants were an important source of novel pharmacologically active compounds with many blockbuster drugs being derived directly or indirectly from plants. Despite the current preoccupation with synthetic chemistry as a vehicle to discover and manufacture drugs, the contribution of plants to disease treatment and prevention is still enormous.
- Up to 50% the approved drugs during the last 30 years are from either directly or indirectly from natural products especially in the area of cancer.
- To date, 35,000-70,000 plant species have been screened for their medicinal use. Plants especially those with ethnopharmacological uses have been the primary sources of medicine for early drug discovery.
- Fabricant and Farnsworth, (2001) reported that, 80% of 122 plant derived drugs were related to their original ethnopharmacological purposes.
Natural products have played a vital role in improving the human health and have been the drugs of choice despite facing a tough competition from compounds derived from computational and combinatorial chemistry …
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