Why Am I So Anxious? by Tracey Marks

Author:Tracey Marks
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780744061475
Publisher: DK Publishing

My Take on Cannabis

I believe that cannabis has medicinal properties similar to other aromatic plants, like lavender. But the science just isn’t advanced enough to detail the medically beneficial ingredients and how much of them we need to get the therapeutic benefit. CBD gummies are very popular, and it’s hard not to want to try them. Using CBD for pain management is probably your best bet, but you still have the obstacle of finding a commercial product that works.

Aromatherapy

I’ve been a fan of essential oils for years. My family calls me the “potions master” because I like to whip up oil concoctions for almost any purpose, including sleep, bug bites, burns, and muscle soreness.

I think that essential oils can be very effective for calming mild anxiety, but how strong an effect you get and how long it lasts depends on several variables. These include the quality of the oil, the length of time you’re exposed to it, the route of exposure (inhalation vs. skin absorption), and how often you use it. I’ll address some of these issues in this section.

Let me begin by explaining how aromatherapy works. Aromatherapy is the practice of using essential oils for therapeutic purposes, like reducing anxiety and promoting relaxation. Essential oils are extracted from plants using a distillation process. You can use many plant parts, including flowers, leaves, stalks, bark, rind, and roots. The term essential doesn’t mean that these oils are required for physiological functions, like essential nutrients. They’re called this because they contain the essential elements, or essence, of a plant.

The oil is volatile, which means that it can become a vapor at room temperature and be inhaled. You can mix the oil with another substance, such as a carrier oil, alcohol, or lotion. You can then apply the oil mixture to your skin or spray it into the air. You can also put the oil in a diffuser that creates a continuous scented mist. Aromatherapy is commonly used in a therapeutic massage.

It’s generally not recommended to consume essential oils orally because of their high concentration of organic compounds. Silexan (lavender) is an exception, because it’s specially formulated for oral ingestion.

Many oils have a relaxing and sedating effect, but some are stimulating. They can also have other effects, like relieving pain or killing potentially dangerous microbes. For this discussion, we’ll focus on the relaxing effects of the oils.

The main chemical constituents of the essential oils that have a therapeutic effect are the terpene compounds. We discussed earlier how lavender contains the terpenes linalool and linalyl acetate. There are terpenes in other oils, such as limene, geraniol, and citronellol, to name just a few. These chemical compounds give the oil its scent.

There are scores of scientific papers demonstrating the therapeutic benefits of essential oils. Much of this research was performed with animals, but there are enough human controlled trials to make aromatherapy a legitimate alternative approach to anxiety.

Here’s how inhaling the oil affects your brain. Smell is one of your five senses, and it’s controlled by the olfactory nerve.

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