Below is a transcript of my interview with Amy Anthony. The transcript is machine-generated, so it may have inaccuracies. Please let me know through the website form, and I will make corrections. Please visit Amy Anthony here: NYC Aromatica
[00:00:00.970] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
Amy Anthony, welcome to the podcast.
[00:00:03.730] – Amy Anthony
Thank you, doctors. It’s nice to meet you, and a pleasure to be here.
[00:00:07.700] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
Thank you. Nice to meet you. Let’s start out by talking about aromatherapy and essential oils, which I just read on your website that aromatherapy is not just about essential oils. So, yeah, please tell us all about it.
[00:00:24.210] – Amy Anthony
It’s a loaded topic and one that, even though I am an educator, I will be a student for the rest of my life. I have to say, just looking at the aromatic plants and before I even get into my kind of elevator speech definition, aromatherapy, I think, is becoming more relatable to people because of a lot of research that’s being done. Dollars are being spent on terpene research. So that’s really exciting to understand, because when you talk about terpenes, those are in aromatic plants. So aromatherapy is the therapeutic application of genuine and authentic essential oils. And we can apply and work with essential oils through mainly inhalation. So by our sense of smell, by topical application, essential oils can be beneficial for pain. And then there’s a very controversial internal use, which I don’t really practice, but I want to pause because there’s so much to talk about even in what I just shared there. So I don’t know.
[00:01:31.120] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
Okay. Yeah. I just read an interesting article, and I don’t know if this applies to what you’re doing, but it was an article about where they can somehow combine essential oils with metals to create these antibiotic surfaces that have long lasting antibiotic properties, maybe with copper. And where one substance has a long acting effect but not fast acting, and then the other has a fast acting. And by putting them together, it may make the safer, naturally antibiotic surfaces.
[00:02:03.510] – Amy Anthony
Wow. I didn’t hear that. But that’s intriguing because essential oils have been studied for years by agriculture in many different countries, et cetera, for their antimicrobial properties. And they shine that way. Like, I remember reading some good research on chickens and farmers giving essential oils and the herb, always work with the herb, please, to enhance everyone’s life. Work with herbs, cook with them, eat them, giving chickens like herbs like thyme and oregano. And I think some of the essential oils in their feed for antibiotic properties. And the farmers, it was successful. They had healthy chickens.
[00:02:47.570] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
Oh, that’s great. And I should have been more clear. Like you said, antimicrobial not being specific to bacteria, but also viruses, which is, of course, our main concern today with COVID and all these other flu virus and things like that.
[00:03:01.930] – Amy Anthony
Correct. And we have to be careful as a romatherapist, because when you work with oils, like, I’m holding up lavender. I love you, lavender, but I don’t want to introduce you. I’m holding rose, geranium and cardamom. You’ll find that these two oils, these two substances contain similar chemistry, but some, like cardamom, might have more of some and less components than the other. And it might have its own unique chemistry. So there is this shared chemistry amongst the oils that can help them excel at certain things. So why I’m bringing this up is some oils excel at being antiviral. Some can be antifungal, like patchouli is known to be antifungal tea tree. But I can’t go out and say that lavender is a great antifungal. So there’s nuance to this. That’s my point.
[00:03:55.050] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
Okay, yeah. I would imagine there’s a lot of nuance of wood oils to combine, what ratios to combine them in, and I know nothing about it. But I was thinking about just the application for health care issues, maybe particularly mental health. And that’s a major topic now, treating things like addiction, PTSD, various things that may be trauma related, depression, anxiety. And then a big thing now is people who have been mistreated with psych drugs and are trying to get off of them and going through protracted withdrawal. That’s a major thing, especially the benzodiazepine withdrawal issue. And protracted long term withdrawal where there seems to be almost no solution to it, no way to make it better. And here you have something that I hadn’t thought about before and maybe a lot of us hadn’t thought about. The application of aromatherapy.
[00:04:48.510] – Amy Anthony
Yeah, it’s potent, it’s powerful. I took a workshop from a psychiatrist, psychologist, I believe it was, and he works with essential oils in Europe with his clients. So essential oils excel at connecting and working across the whole person, the mind, body, spirit, soul. And they have their antimicrobial nature. They’re very anti inflammatory. A lot of them are wound, healing, promoting. And that’s for topical application. Great. Let’s set that aside. The essential oils, because they’re oily, they’re lipid loving. They are tiny, tiny, volatile, lipid loving molecules that have an affinity for us. All of our membranes are lipid loving. So we inhale these, they can go into the olfactory tract. So we have scent recognition. That could work with memory. So if I work or you’re working with a client who has good memories of orange, if you could bring them to orange when they’re feeling anxiety, that can help them, right. Just by that memory recall, which is incredibly powerful, that’s used a lot in hospice care for memory and emotions and things like that. And then we could take this to another level with olfaction aromatherapy, meaning I diffuse it in the air, I smell from the bottle.
[00:06:08.370] – Amy Anthony
I use an inhaler stick. I put a drop on a cotton pad. This could be super easy, by the way. I have on my website, I just put it up a shortish video on how to smell an oil, by the way. So you smell and then you are getting it into your mucosa, in your nose, and you’re getting it in the nerve tract, you could say. And a lot of the oil components can penetrate the blood brain barrier and be found in cerebral spinal fluid. And also when you’re inhaling, you’re getting things into the lungs, into the bloodstream. So you have lavender oil can be detected within 20 minutes in the bloodstream. And there’s research. There’s a product. I could follow up with you for your notes. It’s sold in Europe. It’s sold here. Lavender is accepted to be like an anti anxiety quote drug to help with anxiety. I have to follow up with that. It just came on my radar, like, last week, and it’s been around for a while, but there’s a lot to this, and it’s understudied because I don’t think the funding is not there.
[00:07:16.090] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
Yeah. Oh, I can imagine. Are there specific applications in dealing with treatment, side effects? Like, if someone is taking a medication that they really need to take, but it has intolerable side effects, and maybe they have anything from nausea to constipation to headaches.
[00:07:32.210] – Amy Anthony
Yeah, definitely. Because this is the great thing, is the plants are for everybody. The oils are for everybody. And one of the classics that’s used or worked with I like that term more worked with in cancer care is for nausea. I’ve worked with women who are pregnant with pregnancy. Ginger. Ginger oil. Ginger, essential oil. So true story for me. And yes, this is applicable if you have nausea, that’s a nerve response, right? So smelling ginger oil within a few minutes can help quench that response. And I do this when I go out to eat, and I might have had too much fiber heavy food, and I’m gassy and bloated, I’ll come home, smell oil, ginger from the bottle, two to three minutes, definitely. Within five minutes, I feel like 100% better. That’s just one thing. Like, fennel is amazing to smell for digestion. So as a tip for you and your listeners, a lot of the things that we cook with, you could work with in aromatherapy by smelling only in quotes, because that’s powerful. Cardamom, black pepper, ginger, fennel. These are very digestive herbs, and they help with the smooth muscle tissue in that sense.
[00:09:00.040] – Amy Anthony
So that was just talking about digestion. And those are included in constipation, by the way. You could do like, an abdominal massage. So you’ll need to get guidelines on how to work with oils. There’s websites, find an aromatherapist. We could talk about that. I have resources. You could get an abdominal massage. You make one with oils, and you could put it diluted on your stomach, and then you have the ulfaction plus the penetration through the skin to help.
[00:09:29.270] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
Okay, that’s great. So the oils will actually penetrate into the skin, like topically?
[00:09:34.810] – Amy Anthony
Oh, yeah. One example I often share with students is because these are so tiny and lipid loving. When you think about a nicotine patch or a transdermal drug delivery, that’s what’s happening. It’s like passive diffusion, where the oils, they want to go into our skin because of their lipid nature, and then that goes into the capillaries. So it’s incredibly powerful. And I don’t want to sound like booze is like, crazy and overstate it, but I work with the oils on a daily basis. It’s pretty intense. And that’s the thing is smelling is enough. So if you find yourself, I want to share an oil, that’s great for, like, anger. If you’re having an irritable anger moment and you just need to help settling down. Vettevar. Vetivaria is a zanuitis. It’s also a different Latin name. Vettiver has worked with in post traumatic stress disorder a lot. I’ve had students tell me I’ve taught people from doctors to nurses to psycho, psychiatrists, et cetera, for aromatherapy certification. Smelling vette or oil for like three to five minutes can help you calm down and get grounded. It’s a root oil. It’s from grass, from the root of the grass.
[00:10:56.350] – Amy Anthony
And that’s its signature. It’s just calming and holding you and soothing you and cooling you down. Like mentally. It’s really powerful.
[00:11:09.030] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
That’s incredible. Say for somebody who’s in early recovery and addiction, are there oils or sense known to help with suppressing or helping people to get past cravings?
[00:11:21.210] – Amy Anthony
Yeah. So part of this, too, is because the oils are there, but we need to take that responsibility, have that tool with us. So maybe I’m going to share some oils and you’ll go buy the oil and have it with you so you don’t forget about it. Because you’ll need to work with this as needed daily right. To help you get across this bridge. Right. You’re in this transition. So hands down, the citrus oils, sweetness is important in life, and that’s something we often crave and we need even when you think about sodas, sugars, fruits, and that’s worked with a lot right. For even quitting smoking. So smelling, find a citrus that aligns with you. Go to Lake, your local health food store, and maybe they’ll have samples and you can smell grapefruit, lemon, but I think grapefruit would be very kind. Lemon would be very nice. Cravings black pepper. There was one study, I think, overstated how black pepper was helpful. Black pepper essential oil at helping people reduce cravings and the severity of them. But I’d say just start with the citruses because they’re accessible. They’re kind of like sunshine in a bottle, and they’re foodlike, and they do increase digestion.
[00:12:40.040] – Amy Anthony
A lot of people, when they smell the oil, they’ll start to salivate.
[00:12:43.890] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
Oh, wow.
[00:12:44.870] – Amy Anthony
The citrus oils.
[00:12:47.190] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
Okay. Yeah. The thing that’s interesting is just how scent seems like the most direct access to the brain and the thing most associated with powerful memories and triggering powerful old memories, things we might have forgotten. So I can imagine it’s like a very powerful therapy, just getting direct access to the olfactory nerves.
[00:13:13.130] – Amy Anthony
Yeah, it is. And as an aromatherapist, you’d work with somebody on this level of you talk let’s say someone comes to me and we’re talking about, I’m having cravings. I want to work through this. And I’ll present, like, eight oils to them or ten, and we’ll kind of go through them to make a blend of three to five of those oils. And let’s say they have a great memory of something, and we’ll be like, oh, well, let’s include that one into your blend, because that’s positive, right? Because if you’re feeling down or, like, you have this gap where you’re like, oh, my God, I don’t know what to do. I feel like going and having a drink or a cigarette or whatever. Like, you can resonate with that oil on that memory level. Also remembering all this other stuff is happening because the essential oil components work with our neuroendocrine system. They’re working with synapses in the brain. A lot of research is out there on them being working with dopamine. Dopamine and serotonin. They’re not like that, but they’re acting like with these receptors, it’s wild.
[00:14:16.850] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
Yeah. And that sounds so much better than a drug that causes an artificial accumulation of neurotransmitters or increased production or even taking supplements that contain neurotransmitter like substances. I mean, what you’re talking about is everything of working with what’s already in the brain. The brain doing what it’s supposed to do with what it already has, just being stimulated by the scent. I mean, that sounds like a really great idea.
[00:14:46.170] – Amy Anthony
Yeah, I like that. And you’re bringing up something I like to share with people. When I was studying herbalism with Jim McDonald, he’s an herbalist up in Michigan, a lot of I think good herbalists say this the plants tell the body to do stuff. And I love that kind of unscientific way of putting it, because you’re just kicking the body into action with molecules it recognizes. And when you’re smelling the essential oil, you’re still getting little bits into your bloodstream, and you need to metabolize that stuff. So it’s real, and it’s like our body recognizes these components because they start in the same pathway. I put myself in the spot, and then I kind of lose my train of thought. It’s the turpine pathway. It’ll come to me. But we recognize these things. These are precursors to things we make as well in our body, these terpenes. So it’s pretty fun stuff. Yeah.
[00:15:49.410] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
I was trying to avoid also googling stuff, but let me just look it up.
[00:15:54.850] – Amy Anthony
No, it’s okay. It’s not a big deal.
[00:15:57.970] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
Terpene pathway. The canonical terpene biosynthetic pathway uses a single enzyme. I think I’m it’s pretty deep.
[00:16:08.310] – Amy Anthony
I didn’t think I’d bring up the there’s two pathways that we talk about in essential oils. I could follow up with you in your show notes.
[00:16:16.960] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
Okay, yeah, that sounds great. This gets really involved in some giant chemical names and diagrams.
[00:16:27.450] – Amy Anthony
The mevylonic pathway or something like that, but I’ll follow up.
[00:16:31.280] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
Okay. Yeah, that sounds good. One thing that comes to mind is that the big thing that everyone’s talking about now and this is also plant based, are all these psychedelic therapies and everything from there’s. Ibagaine ayahuasca what’s the other psilocybin. And these things are being studied, and there’s a push to make them legal and use them in real therapy. And I was thinking, like, well, maybe what you’re doing could go with that someone’s in a psilocybin experience with a guide, and maybe they could benefit also from essential oils and aromatherapy.
[00:17:06.230] – Amy Anthony
Yeah. Yes. A resounding. Yes, because you could use it, like you’re saying, in conjunction with because if that person is in this incredibly receptive state because that’s where you are. You’re in this liminal space during these ceremonies. Right. If you introduced some herbs, some aromatic herbs into that to create a memory imprint, and if you’re in this good liminal space, and then you could have an essential oil or blend made for you to bring you back to that place. That’s a powerful tool for when you’re not in that therapy room. And I know I’ve heard great things, like, you can have one or two sessions and be like, I’m changed. Right?
[00:17:49.140] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
Yeah.
[00:17:49.430] – Amy Anthony
This is intense stuff, but I just want to share something with you. I read. I think this was in a book by Peter Holmes or an article written probably over 20 years ago that in South America, during some of these, like, ayahuasca ceremonies that you’re, a medicine person, would have an aromatic like basil that they would introduce to the person, to the client when they’re having a bad experience to help bring them out of that experience. That’s powerful. Yeah. And we’re talking basil. We’re talking, like a type of basil that grows in the brain forest.
[00:18:29.010] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
Yeah. When you mentioned time, what’s that? I can’t think of the name of it, and I was just listening to it in the car the other day. There’s a Simon and Garfunkel song where they keep repeating those herbs over time.
[00:18:40.410] – Amy Anthony
Are you going to Scarsboro Fair, parsley, Sage, rosemary, and thyme? Scarsboro Fair is the song, and then the herbs are parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme.
[00:18:54.490] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
Oh, wow. And do those have any special meaning?
[00:18:57.870] – Amy Anthony
They do. I mean, parsley is parsley seed we’d work with, which is incredibly potent, almost too harsh for the liver that that would be left for medical doctors to work with, and a lot of folks in Europe, like in France, might be working with that as a medical doctor. Internally, rosemary has a crapload of research on it, and it’s historically known for, like, Ophelia and Shakespeare saying that rosemary is for remembrance. There’s a lot of evidence showing how it helps sharpen the brain, help you focus. So for your listeners, if you find you’re feeling a little foggy or cloudy or maybe you’re studying for something, you can have rosemary with, you put a couple drops in a cotton pad. Maybe you diffuse it in your study, your room, wherever you are. And the chemistry is very helpful for aiding with memory retention and brightness.
[00:20:00.910] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
Wow.
[00:20:01.890] – Amy Anthony
And please cook with the herb. Like, eat the heck out of it, because it has other really beneficial parts of it. That’s the thing about aromatherapy, is it’s just not the oils. It’s loving the entire plant and making a tea, like thyme tea from the leaves has thyme all in it. You’ll see that in listerine. That’s potent stuff. It’s great when you have a breath respiratory cold to drink the tea, maybe with some ginger and honey to really get that chemistry into you, to help kill stuff.
[00:20:34.170] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
Yeah. Instead of getting a tea bag from the store, you can actually take these things yourself and make a tea.
[00:20:44.430] – Amy Anthony
Yeah. Go to your grocery store, pick up some fresh thyme. Again, to be really clear, I’m not advocating you take essential oil and put it in tea. No, but we’re taking the whole plant, the leaves, the twist sprigs. Yes. This is the fun part, like, loving those plants and having them. They’re very supportive of our immune system.
[00:21:11.510] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
And that’s something else that comes to mind, of I get the sense that you’re not in favor of burning things like incense. And I was just reading a thing that burning candles might be toxic, that all candles have toxic chemicals when you burn them. So what do you think about that? And you’d mentioned diffusion, and that’s not burning, though, right?
[00:21:31.760] – Amy Anthony
Correct. So, candles, by the way, I’ve made I love them. I used to teach workshops at the New York Botanical Gardens on making candles, but particularly beeswax candles. So no fragrance oils, no paraffin wax, no lead wicks. So candles are gorgeous, but I advocate unscented clean burning wax in beeswax. It’s precious. Right. We’re taking their bees homes or their spent combs, and we’re using their wax. So the Yankee Candle is not a sorry yankee Candle? I don’t bash brands, so I don’t like that. I just did that. But scented candles with fragrance oils are not healthy for us to breathe in. They’re not good burning things. If you have a genuine, gorgeous incense made of, like, tree SAPS and resins and botanicals, and you’re working with that mindfully, please use that. But just don’t go and buy the cheap, bad incense that you don’t know what’s in it, because right. You’re breathing that stuff in diffusion. And I don’t have my diffusers with me in this room, but you can have the ultrasonic diffusers that have water in them, which I don’t love, because you add water to them. Those are really common to find because water breeds bacteria.
[00:22:58.770] – Amy Anthony
But you can easily go to Bed, Bath and beyond and buy one of those, et cetera. There is also nebulizing diffusers and fan driven diffusers that aromatherapists would work with to really permeate the air with oils that you’ll then breathe in. And you would do this on timed sessions. This is not something you would constantly breathe in. So I think I answered your question.
[00:23:23.840] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
Yeah. So diffusion is getting something into the air. Then there’s infusion. That’s like a tea thing, right? An infusion?
[00:23:31.820] – Amy Anthony
Yes. Okay.
[00:23:37.030] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
One thing, and I didn’t want to say it early on, but a lot of the words you’re using just remind me of people that talk about cannabis and medical cannabis and just the way that people take it. And someone was trying to explain to me, they were explaining to me the way that medical cannabis works of ratios of CBD, and I think they might have said turbines, like turbine ratios. And it quickly went over my head of like I can’t imagine keeping track of all this stuff and all the different ways of how it might be. It might make someone too anxious or it might help them to sleep or to focus better. So what do you think about all that with cannabis?
[00:24:17.730] – Amy Anthony
That is something I’ve chosen not to participate in or research. I’m a very contrarian person. So with saying that, I think this is all over Hyped, a lot of people are looking to sell bad product and make a quick, easy schister buck. But terpenes are important and I wasn’t sure if I should go here and you open the door, so I will. So those terpenes are what I mentioned before. This is what are the in the essential oils. So you’ll see, like, betacaryophylene is a terpene and that can be found in several gorgeous essential oils. That is a great anti inflammatory component for the mind and the skin for easing pain. It’s found a lot in copayiba oil. I’ve been studying sweet fern here. It’s a native plant that has betacaryophylene in it at a pretty high percentage. Also there’s alpha humiline as well. But there’s a lot to keep track of. But I think a lot of two things. The dollars are there to do the research, to look at the terpenes and be like, hey guys, this stuff is real, it’s working. Yay. But then there’s people that are pushing, I just think bad product trying to ride the wave.
[00:25:37.210] – Amy Anthony
I just say be careful and ask your providers who you’re buying this from, like, where did you get it from? Does it have a lot number? How can I trace where this came from and really be that educated consumer?
[00:25:49.390] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
Yeah, and that’s why I was talking about specifically medical cannabis, where these dispensaries are supposed to have a trace it from where it’s grown from, like they say the seed to the sale that it’s supposed to be tracked all the way through. And I would imagine that might be, except other than people who have their own herb gardens behind their house, that you might want to think about that as the source of even essential oils or herbs where you get them from.
[00:26:17.670] – Amy Anthony
Yeah, because I hate to say this, but there’s always someone that’s going to do something really mean and bad and dishonest and then you’re the one that’s the front end of it. So, yeah, just getting to know your suppliers on that end to go to essential oils. I live and breathe this stuff every day, so I might know a couple of artisanal distillers. I do distill my own botanicals, so it’s like I’m interested in that. But the average person just wants to go by the oil because they heard that grapefruits could be helpful. So it’s a fine line if there’s no right answer.
[00:26:58.790] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
Yeah. When do you talk about growing? Well, I don’t know if you mentioned it, but I know my mother has this little funny little hydroponic garden in her house. She got all this equipment and has a thing in the corner of the kitchen growing all these different things like herbs and whatever. Do you have a garden in your home or nearby your home?
[00:27:18.190] – Amy Anthony
No. Thanks for asking. Yes and no. I live in New York City for most of the time and I was a member of a community garden, which I backed out of during COVID I also spend time on Long Island and my husband and I, we have a little piece of paradise out there where I do have gardens. And I call those that those are my babies. That’s where my heart is. So I’m intimate. I figure I’ve loved plants since I was a kid and that’s how I could live in an urban environment, is to have access to nature and go outside and go on walks and look at trees a lot. But I just need to share this with you because this is important as my message to your listeners as an aromatherapist. Essential oils are portable. They’re incredibly concentrated. So all you really need is one drop of oil on a cotton pad and smelling it, you will see something happen. I realized, but didn’t know it at the time, that I started to study aromatherapy because I was lacking my connection with nature. And we are stuck in a hospital, in an office building, in an urban environment, in a suburban environment, and we are disconnected from plants when we can smell an essential oil.
[00:28:39.450] – Amy Anthony
That gives us that connection. It gives us that connection to nature in a way. And that’s an important message I have about my journey as an aromatherapist. It’s a bit off topic, but it’s powerful.
[00:28:54.960] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
When you mentioned community garden recently, I was in Brooklyn and I was just kind of wandering around the streets, narrow hotel, and I walked by one of those, a little gated area at the street corner and it was just left open. And I walked in and it was somebody’s community garden. There were signs up explaining what it was and how you can contribute. So that was pretty interesting that they have these little lots where there might normally be a building, but not but somebody making a garden.
[00:29:20.130] – Amy Anthony
Yeah, it’s a really important part of the community here and it was starting about the 1980s, but you’re bringing up something important that if you’re a community garden in New York City, you must have open hours for the community to access that space.
[00:29:37.430] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
Yeah, it was early in the morning and the gate was just left open. There wasn’t anybody there. And I just kind of wandered around, looked at everything and left. And it was pretty interesting when you mentioned people being stuck in hospitals. I remember driving along the highway towards the Brooklyn Bridge and could see this huge NYU research building. And as we quickly drove by, I noticed everybody’s office has a plant on the window. And I thought, in a way, it’s kind of sad. They’re all stuck in the city, and the closest they can come to nature is a little plant up against their window. But on the other hand, at least everyone has a plant in her window.
[00:30:16.150] – Amy Anthony
Yeah, it’s like we know we need it. So working with the essential oils is one way. So I have grapefruit in my hand right now. It’s someone that I mentioned earlier to help with the cravings and bring brightness to your life. So you can think about smelling the oil, and when you can go get a grapefruit and eat it with lunch, that’s the best of both worlds.
[00:30:41.530] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
I don’t normally like grapefruit, but I know there’s some that are really good, like some kind of sweet ones. Now, how do they get oil from all these different things? I wouldn’t think that every plant and fruit has oil, correct?
[00:30:53.890] – Amy Anthony
That’s a really good question. So we touched upon a bit of this before, but let’s bring it together. Essential oils come from aromatic plants, and we just know that with Vetovir that I mentioned before, that the oil is in the roots that we want. So we take the specific plant material, take hundreds of pounds, depending on the plant material. It could take a ton of rose petals to get a pound of oil, because rose lends itself to dissolving in water or like, giving itself to water. So the plant parts components are put into a big still. Just think of an industrial size still or a small copper still. Like you’re distilling old fashioned alcohol. So you subject this plant material to heat, steam, pressure. And when you hit this right pressure point, you start to have the steam bring over these incredibly light, lipid loving molecules. So, yes, it’s aromatic, but you have to have this terpene component. The terpenes are the backbones of essential oils and they are not soluble in water. And the distillation process is inherent to creating essential oils. CO2 extraction is new. It’s something that’s important, but that’s another topic.
[00:32:25.330] – Amy Anthony
But the essential oils just that you just get the volatile aromatic components. So I mentioned the terpene. That’s really important. Terpene units, or terpene class, as you call it, we distill them because I want to bring this up because you could say tomato has a smell. But that’s different chemistry. Like, we’re not looking at the terpenes. Okay. Or Lily, you might say, has a great aroma, but we can’t get an essential oil from that because it won’t withstand the distillation process. And again, it’s not rich in those terpenes.
[00:33:01.370] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
One last thing. I don’t want to keep you too long, but I was thinking when you have all these oils that you’re taking out and there’s people that people like to be individuals and express themselves and wear different clothing and different jewelry and stuff. And I was thinking a person express themselves through scents. Like, other than just plain old cologne and perfume and stuff. Is there a way to use these as a self expression, to kind of walk around and maybe have a scent of different oils on you?
[00:33:27.650] – Amy Anthony
Of course. And I love that. A lot of the questions you’re asking just help bring out the and nature of aromatherapy, of working with oils, because we’re working with scent recall. We’re working with memory recall and forming new memories. We’re speaking about mental clarity and brightness. We’re touching on emotions. We touched on the antimicrobial nature. So there’s just so much. And within that, years ago, perfumery was not separate because people only worked with genuine, authentic plant botanical material. Now it’s all about synthetics. And perfumers are chemists now. But yes, one of the best things that could be done is, like, let’s say you’re a client of mine. The next time you visit New York, we have a session, and you’re like, hey, I’m working with mental agitation. I need some clarity. We decide that we’ll make you a topical application, maybe an aftershave, and then guess what? It’s an. And so we will come up with something that’s skin loving that to suit you. Plus it’ll have components of this smells amazing. And then you get to wear that during the day. And I have to share this with you because this is personal. I’ve worked with myself for things work to manage my anger response.
[00:34:51.480] – Amy Anthony
Like, again, I have construction happening below me in New York and the commercial space below me. I get angry. I can’t control it. I will apply an essential oil blend once a day. And my anger, the edge is taken off, and all I do is once or twice a day, I’ll have, like, a rollerball applicator and apply it on my jawline, and that’s all you need. So it becomes a perfume. It becomes something that works with the mind. It becomes something that someone, when they go to stores, are like, you smell good. I’m like, thank you. Yes, I do. I’m not kidding. So, yes.
[00:35:30.010] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
This whole topic, this whole field is incredible. It’s something that I think a lot of people haven’t thought about. And to me, it almost sounds like real magic, like a practical magic. It’s not actually magic. I mean, you’re not doing anything supernatural, but it’s real, and it almost seems magical. Yeah.
[00:35:47.070] – Amy Anthony
And it’s so deceptively. Once you understand the concentrated nature, like why a bottle of something costs what it does and how much plant material takes. The lipid nature. Once you understand this stuff, it just becomes this beautiful artful thing to turn to, to work with moody motions. And it’s not a panacea. It’s not the end all. It doesn’t replace some things. But it’s a gorgeous way to introduce, I don’t know, freshness and creativity and joy into your life.
[00:36:21.230] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
Yeah. It’s almost like the greatest adjunct therapy. It sounds like it just goes along with everything else. Oh, go ahead.
[00:36:31.550] – Amy Anthony
Yes. I’m like, yes. That’s what I love teaching aromatherapy certification is because you’ll have doctors come in that want to learn about it. Nurses, psychiatrists, hypnotherapists. It’s the perfect tool in your tool kit, because not everyone will resonate with this. Right. You might be working with a client or patient. They’re like, not for me. But it is a great adjunct. You’re so spot on.
[00:37:01.860] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
Yeah. I can’t even imagine who wouldn’t want to have some kind of aromatherapy. I can imagine. I actually, strangely, have a negative association with lavender, and just from a bad memory that was associated with it. But that’s just one thing, and there’s a million other things out there.
[00:37:20.170] – Amy Anthony
Exactly. But I want to share this with you and your listeners, because if you seek out an aromatherapist to work with, that aromatherapist should not be pushing product on you. They shouldn’t be saying, well, it’s going to work anyway. No, there’s nothing therapeutic about that. So if you tell me you’re, like, not into the lavender, guess what? I’m going to find other oils that might be very similar, because, again, their chemistry could be similar ish. So I would listen to you and your needs and not try to push stuff on you. That’s what an aroma professional aromatherapist would do.
[00:37:58.250] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
Yeah, that’s great. When people watch the Oscars, everybody wants to see who’s going to be when the lead actor actress award at the end. But some of the best actors, the most interesting ones, are the supporting actors and actresses. And here you have, like, the greatest supporting actress in the world. It’s incredible.
[00:38:20.510] – Amy Anthony
That’s fun.
[00:38:21.870] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
Yeah, just everything.
[00:38:24.590] – Amy Anthony
Great analogy.
[00:38:25.690] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
Yeah. I have a cousin who’s opening an Academy clinic and trying to find everything that can support patients and make the experience better. That was another thing I wanted to bring up. I didn’t know this about ketamine therapy that people are not doing it necessarily to get a psychedelic experience. It’s not about insight, and it’s about the actual direct effect of the drug on the brain and brain growth and managing things like glutamate and GABA. I think it modulates GABA. It enhances glutamate production, enhances some kind of calcium communication between neurons. And the interesting thing is the growth of dendrites, dendritic growth of the connections of one neuron to many neurons and communication in the brain. They have all these things. And I was wondering, is there any studies are there studies or evidence that aromas can do similar things of brain growth, brain healing?
[00:39:26.150] – Amy Anthony
I wish I had more time and access to scientific studies. I’d like to think there is, especially because of cannabis, that there’s more research. I’d like to think the answer is yes, but I do not have an answer to that. But when I have seen research, I know that essential oils do work with GABA. I know they work with glutamate because I have read some papers. But about nerve regeneration and growth, I’d like to think the answer is yes, but I don’t know.
[00:40:00.110] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
The balance of glutamate and GABA are apparently critical to recovering from benz vazepine, protracted withdrawal. And there’s people that suffer with even for years, even three years or more of severe withdrawal symptoms. And they come and go, they get better, they get worse. And some of these people feel hopeless and even suicidal that they’re just never going to come out of it. And this is just something I hadn’t even thought to recommend to people. And it could be like that one key for one person to where nothing else worked.
[00:40:36.250] – Amy Anthony
Yes, that’s a great way. Because like we were saying before, like, essential oils might be beneficial for some people and not for others. But like with any therapy, if you don’t try it, you don’t know. So with essential oils, there’s a media action. Like, you could be sitting with me. I’ll present some oils to you after we talk through things, and then we’ll see what happens. And then you’d work with something. I found it takes like three days where you’re like, oh, I feel a little different. It’s not earth shattering. It’s like with working with pain. With essential oils, the edge is taken off. It’s like modulating a lot of essential oil. Good aromatherapy literature will talk about the modulating nature of the oils. It’s like that three day period. So it’s like any herbal remedy. Like, you’ll work with something for seven days, 14 days, and be like, let’s see what’s happening, and nothing crazy is happening. If something’s weird, you just stop. Right? Yeah. This is exciting.
[00:41:44.530] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
Yeah. And that’s another thing with the ketamine therapy. We were talking about talk therapy and psychotherapy after. And he’s saying, well, a person should get that therapy, but they can’t get it immediately after because they’re not really prepared to talk because of the drug effects going on. But I would imagine, like, during treatments what about even during surgery? Like just regular surgery? Has anybody tried that in addition to general anesthesia? Oh, wait, I guess you can’t smell because you have well, maybe you could smell.
[00:42:16.930] – Amy Anthony
Well, that’s the thing, is the molecules are getting into the body. So even with anosmia, the molecules go in your body and will affect things. So you might have your receptors distorted or destroyed about scent perception and recognition, but the mucosal tract is there. You’re getting it in the blood.
[00:42:40.690] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
Okay.
[00:42:41.890] – Amy Anthony
It’s still going to work.
[00:42:43.840] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
So even if a person like, say, has a loss of smell from COVID they can still benefit.
[00:42:50.150] – Amy Anthony
Yes, because this is the thing. It’s more than about the sense of smell. It’s the aromatic molecules in their lipid loving nature. They’re so tiny. You can go down into I forgot how many mass atomic units these can be. They’re so small. You might recall I was sharing earlier that some molecules, I don’t know which one’s particular, can be, bypassed the blood brain barrier. I mean, not many things can do that because so many drugs are water soluble or they’re just too big molecularly. We’re talking at like, ten carbons, 15 carbons per molecule here, which is pretty small.
[00:43:33.910] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
Yeah. Another therapy I would imagine this would work well with would be and we’ve had a couple of experts on this binaural beat sound therapy, where people and there’s different kinds of sound therapy. The binaural beats are where they have these different tones in each year of a headphone, and they create, like, this hallucination of a beat frequency, where not really hallucination, but, like, the beat frequency doesn’t exist outside of the brain because the two frequency, you have, like, one frequency in one ear and a slightly different one in the other ear. If you played them on a speaker, you’d have the physical effects of a beat frequency. But here it’s actually you’re hearing it in your brain, and you can cause the brain to kind of go along with that frequency and induce delta wave frequency, deep sleep or theta meditative. And they have these mind machines where they combine the headphones and flashing lights in the eyes and electrical stimulators in the ears. And then it turns out that really the headphones or the sound is all you need. In fact, it actually works for a lot of people as what they call isacronic beats, which is just the same thing played on a speaker without even putting on headphones, which is the way I like to do it.
[00:44:44.730] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
I actually just mixed a track of, like, I took ocean waves, a crackling fireplace sound, and a binary beat program that goes down into a theta range beat. And I just played on this little speaker by the bed, and it just knocks everybody out, puts us all to sleep and keeps us asleep all night.
[00:45:03.810] – Amy Anthony
Oh, I love that.
[00:45:05.600] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
Yeah, I just imagine that therapy combined with with some, you know, aromatherapy would be really good.
[00:45:11.730] – Amy Anthony
Yeah. Like, could you just open the door to something that I found with my I’ve been professionally working with oils since 2015, so over that time, I’ve had some horror stories shared with me. People will have diffusers running all night long, which is not good, it’s not needed. You don’t need to breathe all that in, especially if it’s a nebulizing diffuser. But to combine what you were just talking about with the bio. Say it again. Bio.
[00:45:40.290] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
Binaural.
[00:45:41.630] – Amy Anthony
Binaural. Let’s say you diffused essential oils as you’re getting ready for bed for like five minutes in your room area, and you were diffusing like a blend of Roman Chamomile lavender and Vetoer. You won’t smell the lavender as much and that’s in the air. Then your diffuser shut off and you’re getting in the mood. And then you put the binaural beats on through the night. Why have the chemistry entering your body when you can have that more physical? The beats work with you, so imagine combining these together. But I’m stressing that don’t have your diffuser running all night. Set the stage. Set the body stage to further go into this state that’s created by the oral sense. It’s so fun.
[00:46:32.460] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
Yeah. And then I like to follow up the binary program because that doesn’t run all night, at least on the recording I set. But then it ends with that white noise effect of the ocean and the fireplace, which those are all just preferred by our family, which I thought the fire one wasn’t a good idea. Like, to get used to. Like, you fall asleep to a sound of fire.
[00:46:54.210] – Amy Anthony
I get you.
[00:46:55.330] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
But they love how fireplace sound.
[00:46:57.170] – Amy Anthony
How long does the binaural track last?
[00:47:01.030] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
The one that I like, and there’s all different ones. In fact, I had one that I made for a patient that was like 30 minutes long and she said that it’s great, except the problem is that she keeps having to wake up. Every time it ends, she wakes up and she starts it again. So I went back and remade it to a nine hour recording. And it was a big file. It was like a 1GB MP3, but that one worked for her. She plays all night and it keeps her asleep. It sells it in at the Delta of probably, I think, like 4 Hz or something like that, like that in the background behind the music. And yet somehow that nine hour version of it worked perfectly. So the one I made for myself that I play, I got a little $30 speaker that takes an SD card or USB so I don’t have to go online or do Bluetooth or anything. I just put the thing right on the speaker. All I do is turn the speaker on it, just start playing it. But yeah, I made mine last 10 hours, so it’ll definitely cover the whole night.
[00:48:02.830] – Amy Anthony
Wow. That’s really cool how these therapies can really complement each other and you just see what’s right for the individual.
[00:48:10.510] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
Yeah, that’s the best thing of finding things that are those two therapies are the sound therapy and aromatherapy are things. You’re not introducing any chemicals to the body. Well, you are, kind of.
[00:48:27.970] – Amy Anthony
In small amounts. The mindful way is again, I can’t say it enough. Less is more in one drop is all you need to really notice a shift. It’s proven that lavender in excess amounts can be excitable to people. You’re putting like £30 of lavender on your palm, you know what I mean? Yeah, that’s a lot.
[00:48:53.690] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
You mean like the extracted amount of that’s what it was extracted from £30 of lavender?
[00:48:59.090] – Amy Anthony
Yeah, like, there are five drops, but a figure that is often shown. I could look up references in my office, like 250 to £350 of lavender, depending on the region, the time of year. Gives you a pound of oil of lavender oil. That’s flowering lavender tops. It’s a lot of plant material.
[00:49:23.810] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
It reminds me of vitamins. Where you have the fat soluble vitamins are the ones you’re not supposed to take too much of, like A-D-E and K. You have to be careful not to overdo them.
[00:49:35.270] – Amy Anthony
Yeah. I was just thinking back last night. I was reading something about Betacarotene and some of the dangers of that with some studies in the 70s. But yeah, again, the fat solubility, when we’re talking with fat soluble stuff, it takes more to break down. The body has to do more. It could be got stored in your tissues.
[00:49:55.950] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
But yeah, any kind of therapy where less is more is always a good therapy here. Not always, but that’s generally less is more is a good principle to go by.
[00:50:05.090] – Amy Anthony
Yeah, I tell myself this stuff and I have self doubt. I think, like, all of us do. Less is more in what we can do to help you remember that you are an amazing person and you belong here. And when I think about my choices in life, it’s like, Amy, you are born with nothing, you’ll leave with nothing. So if all you did was drink water, do you really need to drink that? It’s like, what do you need? You don’t need a lot. Right? We just need some things to remind us how awesome we are as human beings.
[00:50:41.630] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
Yeah, that’s an interesting theme that’s come up in some different podcasts also, of just the idea that a person might not have anything wrong with them. People are always thinking, like, I’m broken, I have defects, I have flaws, and I need to work on myself and fix myself. And what if someone looked in the mirror at themselves and said, maybe I’m fine, maybe there’s really nothing wrong with me at all. It’s almost like a dangerous idea, because if someone’s married, their spouse is going to say, like, hold on a second, you’re not perfect, there’s a lot of stuff to work on. But that does come up, like in The Three Principles, which is a spiritual movement. And people I’ve interviewed from The Three Principles, they talk about that of you’re just perfect the way you are, and let’s stop pushing things like addiction and brokenness and all that. Maybe there’s really nothing wrong with you and you’re fine as you are. And I’m actually going to interview someone tomorrow on a thing called Circling, a therapy called Circling, where one person does therapy and focuses on the other. And I don’t totally understand all of that I’m going to learn about tomorrow.
[00:51:48.050] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
But I guess, like, looking at a person and seeing them as they are and kind of honoring them and appreciating them for who they are, as they are without saying not just, I guess not the superficial aspects or the fake aspects, but the realness of them and appreciating them. So I’m happy that aromatherapy kind of fits in with that, or at least what you were saying. Maybe that’s not an aromatherapy thing, but just what you’re saying of, like, a person is great and perfect the way they are.
[00:52:19.630] – Amy Anthony
Yeah. To not beat ourselves up. If someone does have post traumatic stress disorder, we want to work with that and bring them back to themselves. Right. You are an awesome person.
[00:52:35.300] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
Yeah. You’re an awesome person. That’s what you said.
[00:52:37.090] – Amy Anthony
Yeah. It’s like something might have gone wrong. So people use this thing, let’s touch that wound and honor that wound and then let’s work with it. It’s not going to go away. But you’re still you. I just have to say this and I have to follow up with the show notes with you. There’s a book I just read this year by a psychiatrist in Britain that works with nature therapy, gardening therapy and, of course, aromatic plants come up in the book, but it’s about the therapeutic power of nature and gardening and how it’s very successful to work with these plants in jails, prisons, post traumatic stress disorder for soldiers, veterans for addiction recovery. It’s a fabulous book. I recommend it to you. I’ll share it. I’ll follow up.
[00:53:33.650] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
Yeah, that sounds good.
[00:53:37.030] – Amy Anthony
It’s profound just to be like, oh, all I need to do is maybe smell some veto and work with someone to align me and give myself permission to be in nature. And that could be healing. Yeah.
[00:53:50.890] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
What do you think about that theory or idea that the whole world has a network of communicating plants? Like trees are communicating through some kind of a fungal mycelial network.
[00:54:01.640] – Amy Anthony
Yeah. The interconnectedness of it all. There’s evidence I forget her name. The scientist that was pioneering that research. Was it 20 years ago up in, I think, Washington State? I could be misquoting that, but I believe it’s this. We are each other, right? You go on that level. We exchange air and oxygen. When you’re breathing in this beautiful cedarwood oil I have, those chemicals are going into me. I know that. It’s the butterfly effect, right? Every action has a ripple effect. Trees are living beings. They don’t live in isolation at all.
[00:54:45.930] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
And then there’s a lot of talk about mushrooms having healing properties and not the magic mushrooms that everyone’s talking about, but just regular every other kind of mushroom. I don’t know, that might be getting off into a whole another topic, the science of mushrooms and healthy eating and all that.
[00:55:07.250] – Amy Anthony
It’s part of the holistic, supporting someone holistically. So, yeah, incorporating dietary mushrooms into your life because that’s part of aromatherapy. It’s not about pushing essential oils to make a profit and selling cheesy products. It’s about supporting the person. Holistically like you’re just saying it’s incorporated diet, exercise or movement. I like to call it movement. Getting sunshine, working with nature, being in nature. That’s part of aromatherapy.
[00:55:41.960] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
I like to say, yeah, that’s a big problem of nature. People having access to nature and nature being damaged by human beings and things that are happening. A lot of people can’t get fresh water and environment being destroyed and trying to protect that. So that’s like a major issue now. But at least for now though, I mean, most people listening to this can probably get access to essential oils. If someone wants to do it right now. Would you say like Whole Foods would be a safe place to go to look for them on the shelf?
[00:56:24.010] – Amy Anthony
Yes. So a few things I would like to share is definitely go to your local health food stores. Whole Foods is a place to start. I don’t advocate for brands or companies, I’ll say that, but I have a list of suppliers like Plant Therapy. They’re based here on the east coast. Is one you could go to. There’s a place called Floricopia. They have lovely oils. They’re based in California. Aromatics International, Eden’s Garden. There’s a few online places to go to. Many, you could start going down a rabbit hole here. But definitely health food store. Please don’t go to Etsy or Amazon. I would rather you went to a store and you smelled the oil. An essential oil should not give you a headache. It shouldn’t smell flat. It shouldn’t smell that means it’s synthetic. It should have different components. Because an essential oil could be made up of 2030 4100 components plus, so you should be able to smell variation. So go in person. And also as a part of my podcast journey here, as I was sharing with you before is please seek an aromatherapist. Seek a certified aromatherapist. I am the current New York state representative for the alliance of International Aromatherapists.
[00:57:51.030] – Amy Anthony
You could go to AIA Alliance of International Aromatherapist.org and find an aromatherapist to work with. You can go to the National Association for Holistic Aromatherapy, that’s naha.org to find a local aromatherapist to help. Have someone work with you, to help you guide you with the oils and be that gentle reminder of the safe use of essential oil to safe application.
[00:58:17.950] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
Do you work with people remotely? Or is it something because if you work with a client to help them with the aromatherapy, does it have to be in person so they’re able to smell the sense in your presence as a preference?
[00:58:32.470] – Amy Anthony
I’ve decided to not work remotely. I know other people do, but I feel it’s very important to be with that person, to build rapport, to see their expression, to introduce them to the oils and have the lived experience. Because you could do questionnaires algorithms, but you’re missing that. Like you mentioned before, not liking lavender, but maybe I presented different lavenders to you. You know, like, you need that lived experience. But again, I speak for myself, not all aromatherapists.
[00:59:08.730] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
Yeah, but, you know, like, I found recently, having family in New York, you know, getting you know, if you’re willing to fly at odd times and just go fly with a backpack, it’s not all that expensive getting to New York and back. Yeah. So it’s not completely out of the question. If somebody really wants to work with you, they could take a trip up there. So how can people get in touch with you if they want to work with you directly?
[00:59:33.430] – Amy Anthony
Work with me here again, because I am in person only, and I’m very private about working because I work from home. But definitely check out my website, nycaromatica.com, to geek out with me about oils. I write articles. I have Plant Talk videos to help meat plants and ideas to work with them. I have free and pay what you wish classes on how to diffuse essential oils, how to incorporate essential oils into your bath, how to make an aromatic sav for topical application. And also I have the essential aromatica podcast. I interview other aromatherapists, but also have single episodes where I talk about botanicals and cooking with aromatics and different things. But I can’t stress enough, like, I want to love my professional community. So Naha.org and the alliance of International Aromatherapist.org is a way to find a local practitioner.
[01:00:37.930] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
Okay, so you’re like, are you the leader of aromatherapist of the entire state of New York?
[01:00:43.460] – Amy Anthony
No. That sounds so fabulous. It’s a volunteer position that I have taken on to be the person that a romatherapist in New York State would reach out to. So we’re looking to build community. But also, I speak for the AIA in a way I’m here to professionally represent.
[01:01:05.730] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
Okay. Because I was thinking that for Romotherapy is similar to cooking, and cooking is not an easy thing to do in New York. You guys have the Culinary Institute of America, where the top chefs in the world come out of, and what they’re doing and what you’re doing are kind of I mean, this is a major thing, knowing how to combine things and make. And you’re not making a dish for a restaurant full of people. You’re making it for an individual.
[01:01:32.590] – Amy Anthony
Yes.
[01:01:33.850] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
Yeah.
[01:01:34.990] – Amy Anthony
You’re just bringing up something. I don’t care if it seems like I’m harping on this, but we have certification in this country, and that’s why there’s places like Naha and the AIA. There’s people out there that are working within selling oils that maybe you shouldn’t seek their advice. That’s all I’m saying. So if you find someone that you know, went to a Naha and AIA approved school. You know, you’re getting a professional and someone that actually had to do case studies, write papers, take an exam.
[01:02:06.950] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
Yeah. That’s important because it doesn’t sound like something that should be self taught or self study than someone. Just these days, coaching is a big thing, and anyone can call themselves the coach, but an aromatherapist is something that you want to see someone not only credentialed, but credentialed by a reputable organization.
[01:02:26.330] – Amy Anthony
Yeah. Until we have more regulation.
[01:02:30.370] – Mark Leeds, D.O.
Yes. So okay. Amy Anthony. Thank you. Thank you for joining me in the podcast today. It’s been an incredible conversation. Thank you.
[01:02:39.920] – Amy Anthony
Thanks for having me, Doctor. This is really fantastic. And thanks for the work that you do.
