The smell of sweet orange essential oil may have anxiety-reducing properties without the potentially addictive, sedating, and adverse effects of Valium-type benzodiazepine drugs.
“Aromatherapy is the use of concentrated essential oils extracted from…plants…to treat…disease[s],” and is “commonly used” to treat anxiety symptoms. “Anxiety disorders are the most prevalent class of psychiatric disorders in the general population. However, their treatment is still challenging, as the drugs used for the relief of anxiety symptoms can have important side-effects.”
Thankfully, “[D]ouble-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trials performed to evaluate the effect[s] of essential oils on anxiety symptoms are gradually starting to appear in the [medical] literature. However, in most of these studies, exposure to the essential oil odor was accompanied by massage. This makes it difficult to draw firm conclusions about the…effect [of the aroma itself].”…