I honestly believe that it is in a female’s nature to love beautiful scent and therefore indirectly aromatherapy, but I fear some among us might have been slightly mislead/fooled to become devotees of aromacology and not actually aromatherapy without realizing it.
Therefore to clear the air, I figured we should make the difference between the two sciences known.
Beginning with aromatherapy, which can be defined as the art and science of utilizing naturally extracted aromatic essences from plants to balance, harmonize and promote the health of body, mind and spirit, it is literally means “treatment using scents” It is a holistic treatment of caring for the body with pleasant smelling pure botanical oils such as rose and honeysuckle without diluting them (essential oils) with cheaper and stronger smelling synthetic fragrance chemicals.
On the other hand, Aromacology whilst also directly related to the art of scents and it’s effects on ones, mind, mood and health.it is quite different from aromatherapy.
By definition, Aromacology is the study of scents and their effects on ones’ mind mood and health. The largest difference between the two arts is how Aromacolory is interested only in the scent of things, regardless of their source whilst Aromatherapy insists on a pure botanical source.
This basically means that in Aromacology, these scents can be anything from lavender to dirt, musk to smoke and it wouldn’t make a difference. In fact most of the scents used in Aromacology are not that of botanicals but instead complex scents which are created in a laboratory through the composition of a number of chemicals.
Highly based on the olfactory system and its direct association to the brain which in turn can lead to varied emotions or self-healing, Aromacology is the science that uses fragrance oils as opposed to pure essential oils mandated in aromatherapy.
With that said, I suppose it is now easy to see how some of us may have been duped into believing that our practice of incorporating fragrance oils into our routine is still the practise of Aromatherapy.
To be fair, Aromacology does serve its own purpose. After all it has been said that you can forget a name, but never a scent, so I suppose Aromacology could reconstruct a scent that would bring back loving memories and from it bring about a psychological effect of happiness?
But as always with the involvement of synthetics and chemicals, you must be aware of the potential effects of it becoming an allergen and irritant.
