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Sandalwood — gets thumbs up
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Australian sandalwood oil has a positive effect
on self-assessed psychological well-being independent of massage, a small study has found.
"Improvements recorded in sandalwood without massage were so high that there was little ability of the scale to detect further improvement with massage," said study leader Professor Stephen Myers.
Professor Myers, director of the Australian Centre for Complementary Medicine Education and Research based at the University of Queensland and Southern Cross University, told a complementary medicine research symposium that the acute effects of essential oils alone were compared with use of oils in combination with back massage on a range of physiological and psychological parameters.
The pilot study was a randomized non-blinded study using a two-step factorial design, the two factors being essentiaI oil and massage.
Four conditions were investigated in 15 healthy volunteers aged between 18 and 65 years.
These were sandalwood oil applied with no massage, tea tree oil applied with no massage, sandalwood oil with massage, and tea tree oil with massage.
Each subject acted as their own control and was tested on all four conditions.
In all cases 10 ml of oil, consisting of 2.5 ml of active oil and 7.5 ml of almond oil, were rubbed onto the participant*s back for five minutes.
Participants then lay supine or were massaged for 30 minutes after the application of the oil.
Changes in heart rate, systolic blood pressure and temperature occurred in the experimental condition independent of massage and type of oil, Professor Myers said.
He considers that "Australian sandalwood is an effective therapeutic agent for a variety of potential implications, such as relaxation.
"It is also an anti-inflammatory agent to be used topically, and it has antimicrobial activity."
One of the target areas for use as an anti-inflammatory agent is acne, he said.
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