How Aromatherapy helps older adults to fight against cognitive functions & sleepiness?

Changes in the aging process affect the duration and quality of sleep. Not having a quality night’s sleep leads to a reduction in daytime wakefulness in older adults. 

What is cognitive function?

Cognitive function is a broad term that refers to mental processes involved in the acquisition of knowledge, manipulation of information, and reasoning. Cognitive functions include the domains of perception, memory, learning, attention, decision making, and language abilities.

What is daytime sleepiness?

 Daytime sleepiness is defined as a difficulty in maintaining desired wakefulness or alertness during waking episodes, with an irrepressible need for sleeping or the unintended occurrence of sleep on a daily basis (American Academy of Sleep Medicine, 2014).

How aromatherapy improves cognitive functions?

Dr. Michael Leon, professor emeritus of neurobiology and behavior at the University of California Irvine, explained that “it was known that the loss of olfactory stimulation causes the memory centers of the brain to deteriorate and it turns out that increasing odor stimulation improves the memory centers of the brain along with memory.”

“The olfactory sense is the only sense that has direct access to the memory centers of the brain and aromatherapy is a good way to stimulate those centers with little effort,”

How aromatherapy is good for better sleep?

Certain essential oils, utilized in the right manner and proportions, can land you comfortably in dreamland! A few drops are usually all it takes, and intake options include air diffusers, steam from pots of boiling water or simply massaging directly into the skin. Read on for the best essential oils to get your nightly forty winks and then some!

Numerous studies have cited the effectiveness of inhaling lavender oil to keep insomnia at bay. In large part, this is related to the other benefits lavender oil confers, which include lowering heart rate, temperature and blood pressure, all processes which–not incidentally–mirror the stages the body undergoes when easing into sleep. Lavender oil is also known to reduce anxiety, which is critical to relaxing at the end of a long day fraught with any number of difficulties.