An essential oil or aromatic material acts just like a key in it's ability to unlock the body's illness combination; emotional and physical.  Described simply, every action within the body is carried to it's destination by a series of informational messengers via the nervous, lympathic and endocrine systems, such as need to move, to digest and to relax.  These messengers, which can be hormones, or a protein structure (peptides) will, on arrival at their destination point, attach to a cell at a specific receptor and then transfer its chemical message into the cell.  This exchange of information results in a reaction that alters the structure of the cell and, this in turn, produces another reaction, for example, a muscle contraction.   The information messengers will then carry the result of the reaction back to the brain, linking the mind and body as one.  It is the association of a memory of an incident, combined with the sensation of the physical response that then becomes an emotion. 

At the moment of a trauma or stressful situation, the nervous system is firing off lots of messages to the brain and visa versa and the information system becomes overloaded.  At this point, the messengers have no where to go and, as a consequence, are stored in the surrounding tissues, be it skin, muscle or organ cells. This is why it is always important to treat the emotional aspect of an illness as well as the physical, because they are both closely interlinked and most illnesses or dis-eases can usually be associated with a stressful time. 

Essential oils and aromatic materials are able to offer the perfect remedy, as being extremely complex organic compounds, containing hundreds of chemical combinations they are able to attach to the cell's receptors and bring about a change in the cell structure - the simple key effect.  Drugs work in exactly the same way, though on many occasions, because they are not as complex as a naturally occurring organic compound, they are unable to provide the perfect key and unwelcome side effects may result.

For an example of the complexity of aromatics, yarrow, as shown in the picture, which is commonly found in pastures and hedgerows, typically comprises of the following organic compounds; sabinene, chamazulene, camphor, germacrene D, caryophyllene, alpha and beta pinene, borneol, 1,8-Cineole and camphene.  These are just the major constituents and combined form just 70% of the organic structure, the other 30% is of hundreds of other compounds in microscopic proportions.  It is some of these major compounds that give the essential oil of yarrow the following healing properties; analgesic, anti-allergenic, antifungal, anti-inflammatory and antispasmodic.   The chamazulene content is formed during the distillation process and gives the essential oil the wonderful deep blue colour, but also lends its powerful anti-inflammatory and vulnerary (wound healing) qualities to the oil.  Horses will, therefore, frequently select yarrow when they have inflamed or infected wounds.    On an emotional level, it is usually chosen by the horse when there is some anxiety or buried traumatic emotion as it enables the cells to release the trapped messengers, allowing them to complete the information transfer denied during the system overload at the time of the stressful incident.

Generally, we do not give enough credibility to animals for experiencing emotions, but everybody who is close to horses knows just how emotional they are.  They experience jealousy, fear, joy, grief, anger just like the rest of us, though they can't always express it as easily as we can, so it may present as a behavioural problem or as a physical symptom.   It is wonderful to see a horse's  interest immediately sparked by the scent of an aromatic that contains the organic constituents that it needs.  Recently, a very irritable mare couldn't get enough of vanilla oil, an essential oil known for its therapeutic effects with irritable animals.  The mare didn't know what it was for, just recognised that the scent of this oil made her feel better.

I have a particular interest in sarcoids as, in my view, they are a result of a traumatic incident and the storage site of the incomplete information messengers.  I have had some great results, when working with this theory.  A particularly good example,  was a horse I helped with multiple sarcoids, who was exceptionally aggressive with other horses and used to refuse to load into a horse box.  The horse selected a variety of oils; some for his emotional problems, including past abuse, some for his immune system and some for the physical aspect of the sarcoids.  I left the selected, diluted essential oils for him to inhale or ingest as he chose, but also a gel blend to be applied to the sarcoids, something he was quite amenable to, whilst previously the application of pre-prepared topical preparations had resulted in aggressive behaviour.   The owner offered the oils and gel daily and the horse continued to self-medicate.  A week into the aromatic therapy, there was a noticeable improvement in  the condition of the sarcoids, one of the smaller nodular ones had been reabsorbed and a large verrucose one was much smoother.  At this time, the owner attended the local horse show and noticed how much calmer her horse was, not lashing out once. This behaviour continued and then a couple of weeks later he calmly loaded into his box without any of the usual resistance.  He has since gone on to win his Pre-Novice Championship, something that had once only been a dream for his owner.  The aromatic therapy for helping sarcoids is not always so quickly apparent, but when working with the animal's emotion and physical state there will, in many cases, be a noticeable improvement, if not a complete re-absorption of the sarcoid tissue.

Another interesting fact is that horses with sarcoids frequently select phototoxic essential oils such as bergamot, St. Johns Wort or angelica, which are high in photosensitive compounds, furocoumarins.  Furocoumarins stimulate the melanocyte response to ultra violet light when taken orally or applied topically to the skin and increase the erythematous and blistering effects of UV radiation causing photosensitivity and phototoxicity.  A new photodynamic therapy being researched in Australia, is producing great results by using photosensitive substances to treat sarcoids.   Horses are, therefore, intuitively self-medicating by selecting photosensitive oils to bring about an improvement of the sarcoid tissue, by effectively treating like with like.  It must be highlighted here that photosensitive oils used by an inexperienced person could result in severe burning and therefore should not be used on any animal, unless under the supervision of an animal aromatics practitioner.

As the essential oils and aromatic compounds are so diverse, a wide range of ailments and emotional disorders respond exceptionally well to them such as spooking, aggressive behaviour, Mudfever, COPD, Laminitis, Rainscald, Sweet-itch, and brittle hooves to name just a few.