Essential Oils: Science or Snake Oil?

Essential Oils - and their claims - are huge right now. But is it all hype, or is there something special about these little bro

Essential Oils - and their claims - are huge right now. But is it all hype, or is there something special about these little brown bottles? To get to the bottom of it, we dig through the studies and speak to cognitive neuroscientist Dr. Rachel Herz and psychologist Prof. Mark Moss.

Check out the full transcript here. 

Selected references: 

• Rachel Herz’s books: Why You Eat What You Eat & The Scent of Desire
• A review of the benefits of peppermint tea and oil 
• A critical review of the clinical trials 
• Mark’s two studies showing that rosemary can enhance memory
• The experiment where lavender had different effects depending on what the people expected it to do 

Credits: This episode was produced by Meryl Horn, with help from Wendy Zukerman, Rose Rimler and Odelia Rubin. Our senior producer is Kaitlyn Sawrey. We’re edited by Blythe Terrell and Caitlin Kenney. Fact checking by Michelle Harris and Rose Rimler. Mix and sound design by Emma Munger. Music by Emma Munger and Bobby Lord. A huge thanks to all the researchers we got in touch with for this episode - including Ryan Dalton, Elaine Elisabetsky, Belinda Hornby, Diane McKay, and Thomas Cleland. Also thanks to the Zukerman Family and Joseph Lavelle Wilson.

There are a lot of fads, blogs and strong opinions, but then there’s SCIENCE. Science Vs is the show from Gimlet Media that finds out what’s fact, what’s not, and what’s somewhere in between. We do the hard work of sifting through all the science so you don't have to. This season we tackle alcohol, fasting diets, DNA tests, race and the fertility cliff.