Are Essential Oils a Fad? How to Respond When People Ask You
A 5,000-year-old fad? That's a stretch.
Nonetheless, many people wonder, "are essential oils a fad?"
The nose knows best.
Consider this:
There are Five Senses in the Human Body
- Sight
- Taste
- Touch
- Hearing
- Smell
Anything that deeply engages any of our five senses is unlikely to ever go out of style. For example:
Sight:
Will good sightseeing go out of style? Unlikely.
Think of the most beautiful thing you've ever seen.
Imagine a beautiful sunset, a lunar eclipse, or a nature reservation filled with various exotic plants and animals.
The sunset is not a fad.
Taste:
We all eat food, and we could eat food that doesn't taste good and still survive, but is good food a fad?
Of course not. Good food will always be popular. Good food will never go out of business. It's the ultimate reward for our sense of taste, and it's not going anywhere.
Touch:
Our sense of touch can be engaged in many ways, and our favorite ways also have historical weight to them.
Will soft blankets go out of style? Are comfortable shoes a fad? How about warm sweaters?
These items all pleasantly stimulate our sense of touch, and for that reason, it's pretty much impossible for them to go out of style.
Hearing:
Human beings don't require music to live life (unless you're me.) Yet, good music will never go out of style. It is a prize to the ears (and the soul.)
Music can help us get inspired, regenerate ourselves, and help us through tough times.
Music works its invisible magic for a few moments, and then it's gone. Despite being largely intangible, good music will always be "in." It's not a fad.
Smell:
Things that smell really good will always be popular. I knew someone who used to buy chapped stick just to smell it; they never actually applied it to their lips.
Our desire for beautiful smells is undeniable. While perfumes and colognes will also probably never go out of style, we hope they do get replaced by essential oils one day as a natural alternative. That would mean none of the synthetic chemicals and artificial fragrances present in perfumes and colognes that irritate our systems.
Essential oils are natural. They are derived from the flowers and plants that people have loved smelling since ancient times, millennia ago.
They are the culmination of our sense of smell, and something as essential as that could never go out of style.
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Incredible Facts About Your Nose
Throughout scientific literature, there have been reports suggesting that the human nose can smell 10,000 scents, but it turns out that's a huge underestimation.
This figure was popularized after scientists discovered that a typical human nose has around 400 olfactory receptors. However, the human eye only has three color receptors, yet human beings can see up to 10 million colors.
"We're much better smellers than we thought we were," Vosshall told Live Science.
Vosshall did a study in which researchers put together mixtures of 128 different scent molecules.
The findings of this study revealed that humans can smell at least 1 trillion different scents. Even this is a low estimate since there are more than 128 scent molecules.
Vosshall hopes that this research will help inspire people to smell the world in a new way.
Final Thoughts
Suffice it to say, your sense of smell and the effects that essential oils have on it are completely mind-blowing.
As long as the essential oils you purchase are 100% pure and natural, they are the safest, most therapeutic, and genuinely enjoyable scents you could ever hope to smell.
New to essential oils and aromatherapy? Try our top 6 essential oils to start.