the Nature of Healthcare: Essential Oils Effects, Risks and Patient Safety

By Tammy L. Davis

The focus of medicine has gone from patient care to patient satisfaction. Although satisfying the dissatisfied with another prescription or remedy is the recommended protocol, it misses the mark. 

 

A common claim with contemporary clinicians from functional medicine to complementary and alternative professionals is addressing the root cause. Dissatisfaction is a symptom of instability and is prolonged with symptom chasing. Also known as dis-ease management or bandaid medicine. 

 

Prescribing or recommending the next symptom soother is a temporary fix... an attempt to sustain a static environment. Nature, including that of the human body is an organic mechanism, designed to adapt ... not controlled. Being unable to change creates instability. Instability is a stressful / dis-eased state prolonging inflammation.

 

This book changes the contemporary practice of medicine. It closes the gap between dis-ease management and healthcare, providing timely evidence for the practical and necessary inclusion of genuine essential oils in a professional setting. It restores care while providing satisfaction and promises to safely optimize medical approaches when practiced with the individual in mind.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tammy L. Davis
• Release date: Oct 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223196570

Book preview

What are essential oils?

Short answer:

Essential oils are the plant's response to stressors albeit environmental chemicals, microbes, insects, animals, temperature, nutrient availability, the amount of light and water as well the change in season and reproduction. They’ve been used for thousands of years with several cultures documenting their use in ancient texts.

Long answer:

Essential oils are important secondary metabolites known as lipophilic chemicals which are produced by a plant to help it survive and thrive. One essential oil is a complex volatile compound that originates from a single botanical source that contributes to the flavor and fragrance of that particular plant. However, the body cannot make an essential oil constituent on its own. Hence, the reason they are called ‘essential’.

Just like essential amino acids which are required for a variety of systemic processes, the body does not produce a number of these chemicals. Therefore, they must be consumed. And in the case of essential oils ... used. 

The use of distilled oils dates back to the 10th century, when extraction processes as we know it today were first developed. Infusions prepared from aromatic plants have been used as medicines and in cosmetics for thousands of years. Solvent-extracted materials such as absolutes and resinoids were less popular until they were revisited in the 18th century. CO2 extractions are a very recent innovation.

Plants that produce essential oils belong to many different botanical species found around the world. With approximately 350,000 plant species gracing this planet, it’s estimated that 5%

of these (17,500 species) are aromatic (Lawrence 1995g, pp. 187–188), and currently, there are more than 400 being commercially processed for their aromatic raw materials. Nearly 50% of these are cultivated with the rest being obtained either as by-products of a primary industry or harvested in the wild.

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Functions:

Many of the single constituents found in essential oils are used by insects for communication, and are known as ‘insect pheromones’. Though much more complex in plants, they fulfill a similar function—communication—as attractants to insects and / or messages to other plants of the same genus / system.

Communication happens within the body. This is how the system knows when there is an injury or microbe stirring up trouble. And as Sir Isaac Newton once said, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. We provide plants with carbon dioxide as they give us oxygen. Their essential oils help the body offset the effects of stressors on our system

Biosynthesis of essential oils in plants:

Biosynthesis of essential oils occurs through two complex natural biochemical pathways involving different enzymatic reactions. Isopentenyl diphosphate (IPP) and its isomer dimethylallyl diphosphate (DMAPP) are the universal precursors of essential oil biosynthesis and are produced by the cytosolic enzymatic MVA (mevalonic acid) pathway or by plastidic and enzymatic 1-deoxy-d-xylolose-5-phosphate (DXP) pathway, also called the 2-C-methylerythritol-4-phosphate (MEP) pathway. Essential oils are the final products of these processes that are comprised of both terpenes and terpenoids which have been comprehensively studied and reported as being highly beneficial in human health.

An  example of the biosynthesis of chemicals, the human liver metabolizes caffeine, a recognized alkaloid into three secondary metabolites which are further used by