Aromatherapy. Being healthy is fashionable, pleasant and aesthetically pleasing.

Background: A friend brought a strange thing from Crimea as a gift - an aroma lamp and a set of tiny cones with aromatic oils. "Why do I need them?" - I thought, but, like the wise rabbit in the cartoon about Winnie the Pooh, I remained silent. I decided, I’ll figure it out myself... In our hectic age, few people have extra time to devote to their health. Chronic fatigue, stress and depression haunt us, giving us no opportunity or time to either forget or heal. Poor nutrition, sedentary lifestyle and environmental problems lead to pollution of our soul and body. And this can be dealt with through the art of aromatherapy.

Aromatherapy is not alternative medicine or a panacea. Aromatherapy is both an auxiliary and an independent medical discipline, occupying a position on a par with herbal medicine, homeopathy, acupuncture and other methods. Aromatherapy is based on the principle of the influence of natural essential oils on the human body, which have been used for the treatment and prevention of diseases since ancient times.

Essential oils are odorous substances that are produced by essential oil plants and determine their smell and practical value. Oils play an important role in the evaporation and life processes of the plants themselves and protect them from disease. They are described as the "hormones" or "life blood" of plants due to their high concentration and volatile nature. These are multicomponent mixtures of organic compounds, mainly terpenes and their oxygen derivatives - alcohols, aldehydes, ketones, esters, etc. The number of different components in one essential oil varies from 120 to 500. Essential oils can be contained in any part of the plant - in seeds, roots, leaves, fruits, wood, flowers.

Essential oils are found in plants in very small quantities. Essential oils are obtained in several ways: distillation, pressing, extraction with selective solvents and enfleurage. Interesting facts: for example, 100 kg of lavender produces 2.5 kg of oil, and 100 kg of rose petals produces 0.5 kg.

Aromatic essential oils primarily normalize the mental state by affecting the brain through olfactory receptors and providing a therapeutic, physiological and aesthetic effect on a person. Also, the substances of essential oils support and restore the natural regulators of the human body. The effect of essential oils is directly related to the high concentration of antioxidants in them - neutralizers of free radicals, which cannot always be eliminated by the use of antibiotics. Interesting facts: aromatic plants and oils have been used for thousands of years as incense in perfumery, cosmetology, cooking, medicine, psychology and neuropathology.

Plant aromas normalize mood, relieve fatigue, improve memory, strengthen sleep, they are able to regulate many processes in the body and restore its functioning, and at the same time they pose a minimal threat of possible complications when using them, they are not toxic and have no side effects.

Pleasant odors evoke positive emotions, which provide further therapeutic effects of oils, balancing vital processes in the body, increasing immunity, improving blood circulation, removing metabolic products, etc. The weakening and elimination of specific symptoms of a particular disease is the result of regulating all body systems in in general. The effect of essential oils is associated with the sum of the beneficial effects of their components on a person: there are antiviral, antimicrobial, antiparasitic effects, and a tonic (or relaxing), psychomodulatory effect.

Interesting numbers:

1. all, without exception, essential oils have bactericidal, antiseptic