Inhaling or diffusing concentrated plant oils, most often lavender or citrus, for calm or alertness. The trial literature on inhaled oils is low quality and mixed, and the safety record is a series of case reports rather than surveillance.
Aromatherapy is not an assessed intervention in this catalogue. A pleasant scent and a demonstrated health effect are different things.
Scientific evidence
Outcome assessments based on research, including its uncertainties and limitations.
This entry is an overview. Its background references do not establish whether the practice works.
What people say
Public statements, with positions specific to each source and topic. These views do not determine the scientific evidence assessment.
What the research shows ↑No sourced public statements added for this habit yet. This does not mean no one discusses it.
These support context and precautions; they are separate from assessed outcome sources.
Posadzki P, Alotaibi A, Ernst E · The International journal of risk & safety in medicine · 2012
Donelli D, Antonelli M, Bellinazzi C, Gensini GF, Firenzuoli F · Phytomedicine : international journal of phytotherapy and phytopharmacology · 2019
Community
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Explore other habits in a shared category. Each has its own evidence and precautions.
Revision 6 · Approved for publication · Codex (publication approval explicitly authorized by site owner; category migration)
Prepared and checked with AI. Publication approval does not imply independent expert review. Request a correction.
Audit correction pass (group 6). Implementation step 1 reworded: 'Use scents you find pleasant without expecting a clinical effect' stated a stronger negative than the randomised literature supports, so it now says the trial evidence is low quality and mixed and that a reliable clinical effect should not be expected. Two sources added so the entry's two safety precautions are auditable rather than uncited: posadzki-2012-aromatherapy-adverse (systematic review of case reports: 42 primary reports, 71 patients, one fatality, dermatitis most common) supports the skin, airway and child/pet cautions, and donelli-2019-lavender-anxiety supports the statement about the quality of the trial evidence (65 RCTs; lavender inhalation Hedges' g -0.73, 95% CI -1.00 to -0.46, with the authors' own caveat that inhalation shows 'only an indication of an effect of reasonable size' and that most included RCTs had high overall risk of bias). Coverage stays Basic and no outcome was added, so this entry still publishes no outcome assessment; the sources are cited to substantiate the precautions and the implementation wording. A second reviewer must re-check: (1) that no reader-facing sentence now implies an assessed clinical benefit, since Basic coverage must not imply assessed outcomes; (2) whether the catalogue wants this stub converted to Standard coverage with a real outcome assessment, given that 65 randomised trials exist on this topic (an editorial decision, deliberately not taken here); and (3) that the Posadzki figures are reproduced as the abstract prints them. Basic-entry reference pass: the entry now cites the systematic review of aromatherapy adverse effects and the lavender anxiety meta-analysis as background references. The safety precaution now records what that review actually found - including that the frequency of adverse effects is unknown - instead of an unsourced general caution, and the description names the state of the trial literature. No outcome is assessed and no claim is made that aromatherapy works. A second reviewer must check that naming the low quality of the trial evidence in the description is not read as a finding. Publication release 2026-10-04: site owner authorized a bounded AI audit and release of this exact revision. See docs/release-audit-2026-10-04.md for source-check findings and limits. No independent health-professional or peer review is claimed. Category migration 2026-10-04: removed the separate goals field; categories: Focus, Sleep → Focus, Sleep, Stress & wellbeing. Research assessments, sources, guidance, precautions, and evidence review dates are unchanged. This revision awaits publication approval; no new evidence review is claimed. Publication approval 2026-10-04: site owner explicitly accepted all current category-migration revisions for deployment and requested that remaining limitations be retained in docs/content-review-backlog.md. Approval applies to this exact content revision. No new evidence review, independent expert review, or clinical validation is claimed; existing precautions and disclosures remain in effect.