The Aromatic Triad or.... HOW Essential Oils Work!

In his book, Natural Home Health Care Using Essential Oils, Daniel Penoel, MD refers to the “Aromatic Triad” of matter, energy and information embodied in the oils. As powerful healing allies, the oils can provide help at many different levels, known and unknown, throughout the body’s total healing system. Essential oils are adaptogens. This means they have the ability to provide therapy in unanticipated or unexpected ways; they seem to understand – and the body understands – instinctively where their influence is needed and how it is best used.
Dr. Penoel considers eight realms in which the healing effects of essential oils can have an influence. I’ve listed them here with brief descriptions for reference:

• The Congenital Realm – refers to issues of heredity or as a result of complications during pregnancy. What Penoel refers to as “aromatic treatment” focuses here on alleviating the consequences of damaged DNA replication or from events occurring during conception or fetus development.
  
• The Organic Realm – refers to the organic systems of the body including the liver, kidneys, lungs, spleen, cardiovascular system, digestive system, etc. Aromatic molecules provide properties that promote improved functioning of the organs.
  
• The Bioelectronic Realm – refers to the biochemical and the electromagnetic systems of the body. Essential oils have an uncanny capacity to balance the pH, increase the electrical resistance, and reduce the oxidation within body fluids. Added to this biochemical action is their electromagnetic action - which can create an inhospitable environment for pathogens.
  
• The Microbial Realm - This refers to the flora and fauna co-existing within our bodies including pathogens as well as the friendly allies. Within the digestive tract alone, we harbor more bacteria than there are cells in our body. Certain essential oils have the ability to eliminate the unwanted inhabitants while preserving those that are helpful.
  
• The Immunity Realm - refers to the immune functions of the body. Effects of essential oils treatment are known to stimulate, regulate, or modulate immune system response.
  
• The Structural Realm – refers to bone, joint, and muscle systems of the body, especially the spine. Aromatherapy can play a support role to corrective, energy, or structure techniques that is extremely valuable.
  
• The Glandular Realm - refers to the system of glands in the body which produce a vast and interrelated group of hormones to regulate most body functions and many psychological mechanisms. Like essential oil molecules, these hormones are highly complex and have a tremendous influence on the growth, healing, health, and regulation of body systems. Either by direct action or by more subtle biochemical processes (molecules which are precursors to hormone structures), essential oils can be used here also to stimulate, moderate, or regulate glandular performance.
  
• The Neuro-Psychic Realm - refers to the functions related directly to and controlled by the brain - or “human central computer.” This includes pain response, controlling the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, production of endorphins, the functions of the subconscious and the memory, and the libido, among others. The effects of essential oils can stimulate, moderate, or regulate these functions with this realm providing one of the highest response levels to aromatic molecules.

What we observe and experience as the healing effects of essential oils are a result of the aromatic triad (matter, energy and information) interacting within these eight realms.

More Cancer Fighting Facts About Frankincense

The gift given by the wise men to the baby Jesus probably came across the deserts from Oman. The BBC's Jeremy Howell visits the country to ask whether a commodity that was once worth its weight in gold could be reborn as a treatment for cancer.

Oman's Land of Frankincense is an 11-hour drive southwards from the capital, Muscat.
Most of the journey is through Arabia's Empty Quarter - hundreds of kilometres of flat, dun-coloured desert. Just when you are starting to think this is the only scenery you will ever see again, the Dhofar mountains appear in the distance.

On the other side are green valleys, with cows grazing in them. The Dhofar region catches the tail-end of India's summer monsoons, and they make this the most verdant place on the Arabian peninsula.

Warm winters and showery summers are the perfect conditions for the Boswellia sacra tree to produce the sap called frankincense. These trees grow wild in Dhofar. A tour guide, Mohammed Al-Shahri took me to Wadi Dawkah, a valley 20 km inland from the main city of Salalah, to see a forest of them.

"The records show that frankincense was produced here as far back as 7,000 BC," he says. He produces an army knife. He used to be a member of the Sultan's Special Forces. With a practised flick, he cuts a strip of bark from the trunk of one of the Boswellia sacra trees. Pinpricks of milky-white sap appear on the wood and, very slowly, start to ooze out.

"This is the first cut. But you don't gather this sap," he says. "It releases whatever impurities are in the wood. The farmers return after two or three weeks and make a second, and a third, cut. Then the sap comes out yellow, or bright green, or brown or even black. They take this."
Shortly afterwards, a frankincense farmer arrives in a pick-up truck. He is white-bearded, wearing a brown thobe and the traditional Omani, paisley-patterned turban. He is 67-year-old Salem Mohammed from the Gidad family. Most of the Boswellia sacra trees grow on public land, but custom dictates that each forest is given to one of the local families to farm, and Wadi Dawkah is his turf.

He has an old, black, iron chisel with which he gouges out clumps of dried frankincense.
"We learnt about frankincense from our forefathers and they learnt it from theirs" he says. "The practice has been passed down through the generations. We exported the frankincense, and that's how the families in Dhofar made their livings."And what an export trade it was. Frankincense was sent by camel train to Egypt, and from there to Europe. It was shipped from the ancient port of Sumharan to Persia, India and China. Religions adopted frankincense as a burnt offering.

That is why, according to Matthew's Gospel in the Bible, the Wise Men brought it as a gift to the infant Jesus. Gold: for a king. Frankincense: for God. Myrrh: to embalm Jesus' body after death.
The Roman Empire coveted the frankincense trade. In the first century BCE, Augustus Caesar sent 10,000 troops to invade what the Romans called Arabia Felix to find the source of frankincense and to control its production. The legions, marching from Yemen, were driven back by the heat and the aridity of the desert. They never found their Eldorado. Oman's frankincense trade went into decline three centuries ago, when Portugal fought Oman for dominance of the sea routes in the Indian and the Pacific Oceans.

Nowadays, hardly any Omani frankincense is exported. Partly, this is because bulk buyers, such as the Roman Catholic Church, buy cheaper Somalian varieties. Partly, it is because Omanis now produce so little.
"Years ago, 20 families farmed frankincense in this area," says Salem Mohammed Gidad. "But the younger generation can get well-paid jobs in the government and the oil companies, with pensions. Now, only three people still produce frankincense around here. The trade is really, really tiny!"

Cancer hope

But immunologist Mahmoud Suhail is hoping to open a new chapter in the history of frankincense.
Scientists have observed that there is some agent within frankincense which stops cancer spreading, and which induces cancerous cells to close themselves down. He is trying to find out what this is.

"Cancer starts when the DNA code within the cell's nucleus becomes corrupted," he says. "It seems frankincense has a re-set function. It can tell the cell what the right DNA code should be.
"Frankincense separates the 'brain' of the cancerous cell - the nucleus - from the 'body' - the cytoplasm, and closes down the nucleus to stop it reproducing corrupted DNA codes."
Working with frankincense could revolutionise the treatment of cancer. Currently, with chemotherapy, doctors blast the area around a tumour to kill the cancer, but that also kills healthy cells, and weakens the patient. Treatment with frankincense could eradicate the cancerous cells alone and let the others live. The task now is to isolate the agent within frankincense which, apparently, works this wonder. Some ingredients of frankincense are allergenic, so you cannot give a patient the whole thing. *(Jen's note: Many people have used frankincense essential oil in its complete form to fight cancer with no allergenic reaction. It would be more accurate to say that you cannot give some patients the whole thing in my opinion.)

Dr Suhail (who is originally from Iraq) has teamed up with medical scientists from the University of Oklahoma for the task. In his laboratory in Salalah, he extracts the essential oil from locally produced frankincense. Then, he separates the oil into its constituent agents, such as Boswellic acid.
"There are 17 active agents in frankincense essential oil," says Dr Suhail. "We are using a process of elimination. We have cancer sufferers - for example, a horse in South Africa - and we are giving them tiny doses of each agent until we find the one which works."
"Some scientists think Boswellic acid is the key ingredient. But I think this is wrong. Many other essential oils - like oil from sandalwood - contain Boswellic acid, but they don't have this effect on cancer cells. So we are starting afresh."

The trials will take months to conduct and whatever results come out of them will take longer still to be verified. But this is a blink of the eye in the history of frankincense.
Nine thousand years ago, Omanis gathered it and burnt it for its curative and cleansing properties. It could be a key to the medical science of tomorrow.

Jeremy Howell reports for Middle East Business Report on BBC World News.

Frankincense Used to Treat Bladder Cancer

From News.com.au, March 2009

FRANKINCENSE, an aromatic tree oil and in Christian tradition one of the three wise men's gifts to the baby Jesus, may be a helpful treatment for bladder cancer, according to a study published today.

US scientists tested an enriched extract of the frankincense herb boswellia carteri on both human bladder cancer cells and normal bladder cells in laboratory experiments.

The oil suppressed cancer growth and activated mechanisms which kill the dangerous cells, they said.

"Frankincense oil can discriminate bladder cancer cells and normal urothelial cells in culture. The oil suppresses cell survival and induces apoptosis in cultured bladder cancer cells," said the study.

Lead researcher Doctor Hsueh-Kung Lin of the University of Oklahoma said: "Frankincense oil may represent an inexpensive alternative therapy for patients currently suffering from bladder cancer."

The study noted that the oil originated from Africa, India and the Middle East and has been "important both socially and economically as an ingredient in incense and perfumes for thousands of years".

According to the Bible, it was presented to the infant Jesus by the three wise men, along with gold and myrrh.

The study was published in the online British Medical Council journal Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

Thyme Oil Can Suppress Inflammation

ScienceDaily (Jan. 13, 2010) — For those who do not drink, researchers have found that six essential oils -from thyme, clove, rose, eucalyptus, fennel and bergamot -- can suppress the inflammatory COX-2 enzyme, in a manner similar to resveratrol, the chemical linked with the health benefits of red wine. They also identified that the chemical carvacrol was primarily responsible for this suppressive activity.
These findings, appearing in the January issue of Journal of Lipid Research, provide more understanding of the health benefits of many botanical oils and provide a new avenue for anti-inflammatory drugs.

Essential oils from plants have long been a component of home remedies, and even today are used for their aromatherapy, analgesic (e.g. cough drops), or antibacterial properties. Of course, the exact way they work is not completely understood. However, Hiroyasu Inoue and colleagues in Japan believed that many essential oils might target COX-2 much like compounds in wine and tea.

So, they screened a wide range of commercially available oils and identified six (thyme, clove, rose, eucalyptus, fennel and bergamot) that reduced COX-2 expression in cells by at least 25%. Of these, thyme oil proved the most active, reducing COX-2 levels by almost 75%.
When Inoue and colleagues analyzed thyme oil, they found that the major component -carvacrol- was the primary active agent; in fact when they use pure carvacrol extracts in their tests COX-2 levels decreased by over 80%.

Story Source:
Adapted from materials provided by American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Journal Reference:
Mariko Hotta, Rieko Nakata, Michiko Katsukawa, Kazuyuki Hori, Saori Takahashi, and Hiroyasu Inoue. Carvacrol, a component of thyme oil, activates PPAR-gamma and suppresses COX-2 expression. Journal of Lipid Research, January, 2010

*Jen's Note: This very exciting scientific research is yet another source which validates the therapeutic use of Thyme essential oil! Thyme is one of the many oils used in the Raindrop Technique massage which I will be posting more about in the near future.

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