Aromatherapy oils 'kill superbug'

Kulapavana · December 22, 2004

Source: bbc

Published: December 21, 2004 Author: bbc

Essential oils could kill the deadly MRSA hospital 'superbug', scientists have claimed.

University of Manchester researchers found three of the oils, usually used in aromatherapy, destroyed MRSA and E.coli bacteria in two minutes.

They suggest the oils could be blended into soaps and shampoos which could be used in hospitals to stop the spread of the superbug.

Hospital-acquired infections, such as MRSA, kill an estimated 5,000 a year.

The Manchester study was triggered when complementary medicine specialists at Christie Cancer Hospital asked university researchers to test essential oils.

They wanted to ensure they could not harm the patients, whose immune systems are weakened by the treatments.

Dr Peter Warn, who carried out the research, said: "When I tested the oils in the lab, absolutely nothing grew. Rather than stimulating bacteria and fungi, the oils killed them off."

Soaps and shampoos

The team then tested 40 essential oils against 10 of the most infectious agents found in hospitals, including MRSA (methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus).

Two of the oils were found to kill MRSA and E.coli almost instantly, while a third was found to act over a longer period of time.

However, the researchers say they are unable to reveal which oils carry benefits because of commercial sensitivities.

MRSA is often carried in patients' nostrils, and is currently treated by putting disinfectant on the area to kill the bacterium - which many patients often find unpleasant.

Dr Warn says the essential oils could be used to create much more pleasant inhalation therapies - which he said were likely to have a much higher success rate than the current treatment, which is only effective in around 50% of cases."

Dr Warn said: "We believe that our discovery could revolutionise the fight to combat MRSA and other superbugs."

But he said the team now needed around £30,000 in order to continue its research.

Jacqui Stringer, clinical leader of complementary therapies at Christie Hospital in Manchester, instigated the oils research.

She said: "Our research shows a very practical application which could be of enormous benefit to the NHS and its patients.

"The reason essential oils are so effective is because they are made up of a complex mixture of chemical compounds which the MRSA and other superbug bacteria finds difficult to resist."

The Department of Health evaluates products which are claimed to prevent or treat HAIs before it permits them to be used across the NHS.

March 5, 2005

Let us look at the virus theory a little closer. It is but an assumption that viruses cause disease. They say their evidence is presented in the fact that when they kill the bacteria or viruses, the disease is soon gone as well. The viruses become active from some outside trigger - generally an invasion of those same germs. They attack the living cells and destroy them, in the process using the cell-DNA to multiply. A virus is really nothing more than a string of RNA-messenger cells, which need the cell’s DNA, to complete them and divide. If this is allowed to continue unabated, the body will succumb under the onslaught and the victim will die. That sounds like the correct view, is it not? After all, Pasteur already proved this more than 150 years ago, is the argument.

Pasteur made a few assumptions, which we shall scrutinise further, to discover whether they stroke with the facts or not. The first is the assumption that germs cause disease. When a disease is full-blown, what is the picture of the blood? A so-called ‘viral disease’ is characterised by a high level of viruses in the blood of victims of full-blown cases. This is - and we should note this well - invariably the case with all viral diseases. Invariably this is noted only in full-blown cases. If we examine the blood of any healthy person, we may find the virus in some cases, but never in disproportionate amounts. In the sick, everyone has a very high count.

What is important, we must consider carefully what we observe. In a full-blown case of disease, we are looking at the disease ultimate. It is an end-result. From the moment we entered primary school, we have been taught that results are always different from causes, and this is scientific.

Modern medicine sees the virus as exceedingly dangerous. They think that if they do not kill them, the patient is in danger. The vira always keep on multiplying as long as the disease lasts, till death follows, says the theory. In addition, since death is the final result, as they say, we must conclude that abundance of vira is also an end-result. Then how can it be the cause?

In viral diseases, they throw this scientific principle out the window and declare that cause and result is one and the same thing. This is unscientific, to say the least. It has no place in any scientific discussion, least of all medicine, where lives are dependent on thorough scientific principles and procedures. Why then does that not count for germs?

Germs are the exception to the rule, they say. That makes for many exceptions to the rule, for there are many different germs associated with disease. Several gut bacteria, such as salmonella and escheria coli, to name but a few, totalling more than thirty different ones. Most of them, we use as the bowel nosodes. There is more than a just a hand-full of viruses, quite a few bacilli and microbes and then we do not even count the ones they have not yet discovered. Together, this veritable cornucopia of creatures makes for over 100 exceptions to the rule. That is exceptional by itself. It is therefore complete nonsense and subsequently thoroughly unscientific.