this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2024
293 points (98.7% liked)
Asklemmy
43466 readers
782 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Essential oil.
It's the liquid version of the crazy crystal people.
Crystals too look nice. That's about it
really? I thought they just smelled nice, like incense?
The snake oil part is companies claiming health benefits from them
ohhh, right, that would do it.
Surprisingly enough, some essential oils do have research-based actual uses, such as topical antibacterials, antifungals and antiparasitics.
While there's quite a bit of woo woo around them, there's also a lot of interesting research into phytochemicals like essential oils. Same with a few other "plant-based" things like pine resin; there's even a clinically tested pine resin salve that helps with wound healing and is used for treating difficult wounds in some hospitals in Finland.
The problem with essential oils is trying to filter out the snake oil claims from the actual research-based claims. Most vendors tend to have pretty, well, wild claims about what their products can do, so your best bet is scholar.google.com or www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov and the like
Related to pine resin, pine tar shampoos and soaps are widely used in dermatology. Diseases like seborrheic dermatitis and rosacea can be treated with these products. The scientific background comes from the antifungal, antiseptic and healing properties of some acids contained in the tar, like abietic acid.