Treating Chronic Pain with Aromatherapy
by Amanda H. Bazner
I use an aromatherapy soap from Bath and Body Works that has eucalyptus and spearmint essential oils, and a matching bath salt. I suffer from chronic pain due to a leg injury, which actually has wound up with me permanently disabled after 10 years. I also suffer occasional anxiety attacks, usually when the pain gets very bad.
The combination of the two essential oils is labeled as ""relaxing"", and I find it's quite effective in that respect. The eucalyptus especially is meant to help open breathing passageways, and I can tell you it's worked phenomenally well.
I usually will sit in the bathroom and soap my hands and face with really hot water, and the steam fills the room. Breathing that steam slows my breath rate, my pulse, and basically short-circuits the anxiety.
If I am actually in such bad shape that I can't go sit in the bathroom with my leg down, my dad will give me the bath salts, and I use them like smelling salts for the same purpose and with the same effect: an incipient panic attack will simply subside, and I become much more relaxed. I also bathe with those salts and soak my bad foot with them.
Overall, you could never say the eucalyptus and spearmint essential oils have cured my pain, but they've certainly made life with it easier. Bath and Body Works seems to have discontinued the soap, as they so often do with products I absolutely love, but they still sell the bath salts as of April 2008.
