Modern medicine seems to have reached its peak of being (or pretending to be) THE solution for the multiple ailments of man on Earth. The figures of serious medicine related problems are rising constantly and they are more and more frightening. It is high time to come back to the age old healing methods of Nature which have accompanied human evolution on planet Earth since hundreds of thousands of years.
We have reached the summit of our collective arrogance and ignorance with respect to the secrets of true medicine, true healing. Why waste our time with old concepts, doubtful prescriptions and costly methods instead of embracing what Nature has already – and always had – to offer us, and this for free? We definitely need an alternative paradigm for a new understanding of health and disease.
“Medication errors alone cost an estimated US$42 billion annually. Unsafe surgical care procedures cause complications in up to 25% of patients resulting in 1 million deaths during or immediately after surgery annually,” notes the WHO. “No one should be harmed while receiving health care. And yet globally, at least 5 patients die every minute because of unsafe care”
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, MD.
“We are burying a population the size of Miami every year from medical errors that can be prevented”
Leah Binder, CEO of the health care watchdog organization „The Leapfrog Group“
Can we still afford to ignore the truth of essential oils – the “power mongers” of Mother Nature?
Medicinal plants and their essential oils have been with us since thousands of years.
Unfortunately the development of chemical drugs which started in the 19th century has compromised the age old alliance of man with Nature. The synthetical medical approach to healing – it is true – has also led to the discovery of hundreds of thousands of bio-chemical compounds, but since they were and are not patentable, it was obvious that new purely synthetic compounds, often on the basis of those from Nature, had to be developed in the pharmaceutical labs with the advantage that they can:
- be produced in any desirable volume
- be patented
- be produced more cheaply
…than any of the herbals or essential oils from Nature. But we know: No synthetic drug can replace a natural approach to healing. Synthetics are at best “emergency” medicine in the case that we cannot wait for the intrinsically holistic effects of natural medicine and other natural therapeutic approaches. But what are we really giving to the patient with this mono-molecular approach which neglects the complexity of the true healing process as such and is anyway only “symptomatic”?
Bruce Lipton speaks of a quantum approach to healing when he says:
“Conventional allopathic medicine only emphasizes that matter is affecting matter and therefore it’s focus is on drugs. Quantum mechanics has not yet been adopted by allopathic medicine for a simple reason: The business pursuits of the pharmaceutical industry do not want to have energy healing because it has no commercial value to them.“
On the other hand, even though Complementary and Alternative healthcare and Medical practices (CAM) are not yet part of conventional “western medicine”, the CAM approach to healing is constantly growing in the world because evidence is there that these approaches are safe and effective. And they include age old healing systems of mankind such as TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine), Ayurveda from India, and natural methods from Native American, Aboriginal, African, Middle-Eastern, Tibetan, Central and South American cultures etc. We can say: Folk-medicine or – in other words – ethno-medical traditions are coming back and are offering us the blessings of “Time and Nature” to help us in our precarious situation on planet Earth.
Modern Naturopathy tends to include all these traditions and shows us the overall benefits of a new “integrative Medicine” or “complementary Medicine” where conventional, also allopathic, care is combined with numerous natural healing strategies which consider the human being in its wholeness. And in this, “energy medicine” will find its priority covering all aspects of diagnosis and cure. We know today that looking only for symptoms can anyway not be the solution. We have to look “behind the curtain” in case of an ailment and be open to a multiple approach to healing in which “medicine” in form of substance or matter is just ONE aspect of the total. And this means, we have to re-educate ourselves to consider the mind-body-soul connection of the human being with its profound inner network of physical, bio-chemical and energy levels all together interwoven and “managed” by deeply hidden, non-physical forces of Nature.
Hope on the horizon
“Basic principles of integrative medicine include a partnership between the patient and the practitioner in the healing process, the appropriate use of conventional and alternative methods to facilitate the body’s innate healing response, the consideration of all factors that influence health, wellness and disease, including mind, spirit and community”
explains the “International Journal of Health Sciences” and continues – and this is already more than 20 years ago,
“The use of alternative medicine appears to be increasing. A 1998 study showed that the use of alternative medicine in the USA had risen from 33.8% in 1990 to 42.1% in 1997 [1]. The most common CAM therapies used in the USA in 2002 were prayer (45.2%), herbalism (18.9%), breathing meditation (11.6%), meditation (7.6%), chiropractic medicine (7.5%), yoga (5.1%), body work (5.0%), diet-based therapy (3.5%), progressive relaxation (3.0%), mega-vitamin therapy (2.8%) and visualization (2.1%)”
International Journal of Health Sciences
So then, there is a definite clear tendency for integrating Nature’s medicine and all kinds of successful therapies into our global health system, be it conventional or alternative, including as of today, also Aromatherapy. Ideally, there would not even be any dual system of health-giving anyway. If a system is successful in giving health to people, it should have its clear place in our societies and be part of a “corpus” of a global medical approach to health. As expressed here again by the “International Journal of Health Sciences”:
“Since many alternative remedies have recently found their way into the medical mainstream, there cannot be two kinds of medicine – conventional and alternative. There is only medicine that has been adequately tested and medicine that has not, medicine that works and medicine that may or may not work. Once a treatment has been tested rigorously, it no longer matters whether it was considered alternative at the outset. If it is found to be reasonably safe and effective, it will be accepted.”
International Journal of Health Sciences
Cf. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3068720/
And the acceptance and success are easily reportabe, transmittable, verifiable with the help of the global network of our social media. That’s also where the aspect of self-healing comes more and more into play – strengthend by the hundreds of thousands of reports and testimonials with their own healing from people all over the world on their personal experiences and journeys to better health.
Anti-oxidant power of nature – nothing can replace this
And speaking about the recent corona virus infection from China, can Aromatherapy help here? I would say: YES. And we need to start on a personal home-apothecary level. A viral infection, such as a flue for example, needs a specific protective “armour” or energy shield of essential oils massaged on our body before going out into the public, that would be the first thing to do. It also needs massive aromatic diffusion of anti-viral essential oils in all public places and often also oral application of essential oils targeting the intruder with a «lazer-beam» strategy of powerful phenolic oils such as for example Oregano, Winter Savory, Clove bud, Thyme thymol type together with different other Thyme oils, Holy Basil, Basil gratissimum type – in combination also with essential oils specially targeting the respiratory system such as Ravintsara, Tea-Tree, Eucalyptus globulus… All these would be an excellent choice.
And as in any problem of health, we need to consider the anti-oxidants or free radical scavengers in Nature in case of any health problem whatsoever. Have we forgotten that essential oils are by far the most powerful anti-oxidants known to man? Just to remember:
“Free radicals are very unstable and react quickly with other compounds, trying to capture the needed electron to gain stability. Generally, free radicals attack the nearest stable molecule, “stealing” its electron. When the “attacked” molecule loses its electron, it becomes a free radical itself, beginning a chain reaction. Once the process is started, it can cascade, finally resulting in the disruption of a living cell…” (and from there into disease).
Cf. http://www.healthchecksystems.com/antioxid.htm
When scientist from the Tufts University in the US estalished, quite a while ago, a measurement scale for defining the anti-oxidant power of any substance, called the ORAC scale (ORAC = Oxygen Radical Absorption Capacity) they probably did not know that Nature had over millions of years ago already “worked” with the most powerful “ORAC warriors” ever known to man: The essential oils. Can we remember?
Clove bud oil has an ORAC value of over 1 Million (precisely 1,078.700) – this is roughly 40 times more than the the strongest known anti-oxidant fruit in Nature, Goji berry (25,300). And Myrrh essential oil has an ORAC value of379,800, and Coriander oil 298,300 etc.
Cf. http://drericz.com/medicinal-uses-of-clove-essential-oil/
“Antioxidants are the body’s repair mechanics for the race cars! Antioxidants not only steer our electrons, but they repair the damage and keep our system healthy.”
Again to remember: Particularly essential oils and their unique antioxidant capacity can repair and prevent the damage created by free radicals. They have directly to do with our immune system response. That does not mean of course that we do not need to protect ourselves intelligently from the exposure to harmful elements attacking our system. But if we have opened ourselves to any outer dangerous intruders and want to get intact, energetic, and vibrant again, we need to strengthen the host first, that is ourselves. As in this context Louis Pasteur said on his death bed:
“Bernard was right. The germ is nothing, the host is everything.”
Louis Pasteur
With this in mind, we may want to manage any attack by first strengthening ourselves with the help of the most powerful revitalizing agents of Nature – which are the medicinal plants with their essential oils.
And again to repeat: Due to their rich bio-chemical profile essential oils are multi-functional. It is this aspect of Aromatherapy which makes essential oils so poly-valent. And makes them so different from the mono-molecular approach of modern pharma-drugs.
Rose oil contains up to 500 different compounds. Lavender not much less. Any of them we want in medical Aromatherapy. Any of them has been either created in the plant or emerged during distillation – and we trust that Nature knows best why and how… The complexity of this intrinsic balance of compounds defines the special healing effects of the plant or its oil. It makes it impossible for bacteria and viruses to become resistant to the impact of such a powerful molecular diversity.
That is also the reason why Peppermint oil, for example, helps simultaneously against nervous, hepatic, skin, circulatory, immunological, intestinal and psychological disorders etc.
The response comes from the universe
The ancient healing methods which start to be more and more integrated into a new complementary form of medicine carry with them the wisdom of the “elders”, the eternal knowledge given to humans through endless corridors of time. Yes, we can say, we are re-integrating “Time” as a value of new healing, means: We are opening ourselves up again to what was there “before”. Ancient healing methods consider plants as spiritual entities with specific healing qualities for the use of human beings. These qualities reflect universal principles of life “seen” by the seers of old through direct cognition or contact with the devic energies of the plants. These ancient healing methods are not “scientific” and objectifiable according to Western understanding, but true and not less scientific in the sense of precious repeatable experience through time. They are mainly based on meta-physical and intuitive knowledge which forms the basis of the “eternal philosophy” of mankind.
Shamanism and any direct contact with the Plant Kingdom is certainly one of the oldest methods of mankind to comunicate and receive direct help through intuition and insight from those entities which are the Plant Devas – that is: the higher intelligences of nature. It is through their contact that man has received over hundreds of thousands of years the messages of healing on all levels of his existence. And it is without doubt that the level of „psycho-spiritual opening“ of our modern time is leading us naturally to a wonderful holistic understanding of health and healing – and this with the medicinal plants as a mediators. This has always been the foremost of all curative approaches in the long history of man on Earth.
Last not least they are and should be the fundament of all true therapies – be they modern or ancient.