Peppermint Aromatherapy for Nausea Video Lecture | Aroma Therapy: An Essential Training - Health & Fitness

one of the most common fears patients
express when facing surgery is
post-operative nausea which ranges from
minor queasiness to protracted periods
of vomiting feeling 6:1 stomach and
throwing up after surgery is a common
problem affecting between a quarter and
a half of those placed under general
anesthesia and more than half of those
at high risk who's at high risk women
who don't smoke and have a history of
motion sickness I've explored the
science behind treating nausea with
ginger but if you're too nauseous to eat
what do you do well people are often
sent home with anti nausea rectal
suppositories however surveys show that
cultural and sexual attitudes may make a
number of people sensitive to anything
involving the rectum but the wording of
the survey question they asked was are
you happy to have a drug put up your
back passage and I can imagine many of
the respondents thinking well maybe I
wouldn't mind so much but wouldn't
exactly be happy about it especially
when you're feeling sick and throwing up
and for women after a c-section they
might not want to take drugs regardless
of the orifice if they're breastfeeding
so researchers decided to put
aromatherapy to the test research has
shown that essential oils of both
spearmint and peppermint are effective
in reducing nausea and vomiting after
chemotherapy but this was after taking
them internally swallowing them with
just the smell of peppermint help with
nausea that women take deep whiffs of
peppermint extract like you buy at the
store and it seemed to work while none
sniffing plain water with green food
coloring the placebo and none in the
control group who didn't sniff anything
none of them felt better 80% of the mint
sniffers felt better within just a few
minutes now the study was criticized for
being small and for not using pure
peppermint oil peppermint extract is pet
manoa plus alcohol maybe it was just the
smell of alcohol that made people feel
better
and that's actually not too much of a
stretch in 1997 researchers reported a
simple inoculation inexpensive treatment
for post-operative nausea and vomiting
the smell of isopropyl alcohol which is
what's found in those alcohol wipes the
little prep pads that nurses swab you
with before you shots they found out
that they could just effectively tear
one open wave it under someone's nose
and relieve nausea and vomiting more
than eighty percent of folks after
surgery it's been since shown to work as
well as a leading anti-nausea drug and
may even work faster cutting nausea in
half within ten to fifteen minutes
rather than twenty or twenty five so was
it the alcohol the peppermint or both we
didn't know until it was put to the test
patients were instructed to take three
slow deep breaths inhaling through their
nose exhaling through their mouth
smelling alcohol peppermint or nothing
the smell the peppermint cut nausea in
half within five minutes and so did the
alcohol but so did smelling nothing so
maybe had nothing to do with the scent
maybe it was just the instruction to
take slow deep breaths that would make
it a really cost-effective intervention
all right if all we have to do is tell
people how to breathe though maybe it
shouldn't be so surprising given the
proximity of the vomiting and breathing
centers within our brain and indeed
controlled breathing was effective with
or without any scent so next time you
feel nauseous inhale deeply through your
nose to the count of three hold your
breath to the count of three and then
exhale out the mouth to the count of
three and do that three times
ironically the researchers continue to
advocate using that nasty smelling
alcohol pad even though they showed it
wasn't any more effective than breathing
alone why would they do that because
since isopropyl alcohol has a readily
detectable odor patients are more likely
to think that their post-operative
nausea vomiting is being actively
treated when they inhale alcohol vapors
rather than just engaging in breathing
actress
Isis
you