Vanilla Used for Aromatherapy?

Vanilla as a form of aromatherapy? Sound too good to be true? This scent actually has a wide range of applications in aromatherapy, and this beautiful scent and cooking additive can help with a wide array of medical and psychological conditions.

Vanilla has been used in medicine for millennia. Long before we had surgical rooms and prescription medicines and a vast assortment of allopathic medical treatments, healers used herbs, plants, roots, and other forms of plant-based medicine to heal. The bean was used by various ethnic groups as a healing plant. For instance, in part of Latin America, many ethnic groups used the bean as a necklace or a headdress, to ward off illness. Like a protective necklace of other herbs used around the world, the idea was that vanilla would help to prevent illness for the wearer of the plant.

Some of the benefits believed to be true by native healers included improved circulation, increased alertness, improved respiration, and weight loss. In addition, it was believed to help reduce fevers and chills, and to open airways, so that someone experiencing a flu-like condition could use vanilla, for instance, as a medicinal plant to reduce or eliminated his or her illness.

In the 1800s Europeans used the bean as a stimulant, but also believed it helped to heal joint pain. Some doctors chose to give patients vanilla to manage female "hysteria," while others added it to foods, teas, and coffees to aid with digestion. This treatment was extremely expensive at that time, however, and was a luxury that only the well-off could afford to use as a medicinal treatment.

This treatment soon gained in popularity, and was added to foul-tasting medicines as a way to help patients to take the medicine. In Tahiti and other islands in the south Pacific, women sometimes use vanilla to help with morning sickness and pregnancy nausea.