Treat essential oils like any medicine

Dear Dr. Roach: In a recent column, you discussed an antihistamine and montelukast for allergies. We use pure essential oil. Lavender is better than drugs.— J.O.S.

For centuries, if not millennia, the drugs in the pharmacopeia mostly were derived from plants. This might mean the whole plant leaf (such as foxglove) or powdered bark (from the willow tree), both of which still are valued and commonly used medications, only they have been purified and standardized as digoxin and aspirin, respectively.

Lavender essential oils can be made several ways, including steam distillation and enfleurage (using a solvent fat to capture the essential oil, then extracting the plant oil with alcohol).

All of the methods capture chemicals of interest from within the plant: With lavender, there are over 100 known compounds; among the most sought-after are linalool, perillyl alcohol and linalyl acetate.

If used on the skin, they are quickly absorbed into the blood. So, when you use lavender essential oil as a medication, you are using an unregulated mixture of compounds. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing: Humans have been using essential oils medicinally for centuries, and lavender is considered generally safe. Lavender as aromatherapy has been tested and found effective in reducing anxiety.

However, don’t think that natural products like lavender oil are free of side effects. Any substance has the potential for harm, inthe right personandat the right concentration. Lavender oil contains compounds that have female hormone (estrogen) activity and inhibit male hormones (androgens), so use of lavender oil on the skin has been reported to cause gynecomastia (breast development) in boys near puberty.

Lavender also has naturally occurring chemicals that are found in clover, from which warfarin, or Coumadin, are derived.

Write toDr. Roach at ToYourGoodHealth @med.cornell.edu.