For twelve years, in the neurology department of the Raymond-Poincaré hospital in Garches (Hauts-de-Seine), head trauma patients have benefited from an unprecedented method of rehabilitation. It is in fact in this service that, for the first time in France, the Cosmetic Executive Women (CEW) has set up olfactory therapy workshops. This association was already at the origin of the beauty centers created more than twenty years ago in hospitals, to help patients live better with their pathology.
An olfactory case to revive memories
“Head trauma and stroke patients often suffer from memory and language problems. To try to overcome them, I had the idea of using smells, says Marie-France Archambault, former psychomotor therapist and initiator of the CEW olfactotherapy workshops. We have therefore created, in partnership with the International Flavors and Flagrances, a company in the perfume and aromas industry, an olfactory case. It contains, in different vials, food odors but also gas, cut wood, soap, etc. “.
During the individual or group workshops, patients are thus invited on a real olfactory journey. The smells are submitted to them with the help of strips of paper and, thanks to them, sometimes their childhood memories come back, such as the famous madeleine of Proust. For others, suffering from language disorders, smells constitute a new sensory door in rehabilitation. In particular when they are also suffering from visual disturbances which prevent re-education by the image. Since then, these workshops have been emulated and the CEW organizes them in ten other hospitals and medical centers. The latest to have integrated them? The Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital, in Paris, in 2012.
In neurology, olfactotherapy is used to boost cognitive abilities
In its pole of nervous system diseases, patients suffer from impaired cognitive abilities linked to a Stroke, head trauma, Alzheimer’s disease or multiple sclerosis. “The workshops make it possible to facilitate lexical evocation in aphasic patients, to remove anxiety disorders in those who suffer from it, or to work on memory. Whether it is autobiographical memory to find old memories, or episodic memory when we want patients to learn new memories, ”explains Marisa Denos, neuropsychologist at La Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital. They also help identify odor disorders that had not been detected. “If patients are unable to smell a smell of burning, gas or spoiled food, such disturbances can be the cause of domestic accidents when they return home. By identifying them, we can therefore better prevent this risk, ”explains the neuropsychologist.
But patients with neurological disorders are not the only ones to benefit from such olfactory workshops. The geriatric units of the Ambroise-Paré hospital in Boulogne-Billancourt (Hauts-de-Seine) and the Ephad des Oliviers in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence (Bouches-du-Rhône) have also put in place with, there too, a work most often focused on memory.
With teens, olfactotherapy can initiate dialogue
As for teenagers, those of the Maison de Solenn, in Paris, have recently had the opportunity to participate in perfume creation workshops. “These mediation workshops make it possible to initiate dialogue, to address their vision of social relations, family, sexuality,” says Sabine Le Camus, the olfactory therapist who works in this health space dedicated exclusively to adolescents. “By creating a perfume that they can, for example, offer to a loved one, they also regain self-confidence, gain self-esteem and feel useful again,” adds Marie-France Archambault.
Oncology units also offer olfactory therapy workshops
Thus, Sabine Le Camus works at the Gustave-Roussy Institute in Villejuif (Val-de-Marne). ” The chemotherapy causes many disorders of smell and taste. We are therefore trying to re-educate these senses by using different food smells such as spices or aromatics, ”explains our olfactory therapist. The well-being and relaxation aspects of odors are also an important focus of the work of these specialists. “The use of essential oils can help patients relax before a chemotherapy session. Or to better endure the unpleasant odors associated with the hospital, ”explains Sabine Le Camus.
Diseases can be diagnosed by their smell
Long before modern techniques appeared, doctors used their sense of smell as a diagnostic tool. Thus, a smell of ripe apple emanating from the patient evoked the plague, that of a butcher’s stall yellow fever or, quite logically, that of sugar diabetes. And if, since, the use of smell for diagnostic purposes has been abandoned, it may well become fashionable again. For example, in 2004, a study in Great Britain showed that it is possible to train dogs to detect bladder cancer by making them sniff patients’ urine. Their breath could also be used to detect other cancers. Since then, several teams of researchers have tried to develop kinds of diagnostic “electronic noses”. In Switzerland, one of them succeeded in distinguishing patients with chronic pulmonary disease from healthy subjects by this means.
The example of the Poitiers University Hospital
In the oncology unit of the Poitiers University Hospital, essential oils are at the heart of the aromatherapy project initiated by Catherine Boisseau, a palliative care healthcare manager. “Our work is different from that of the CEW workshops, since it is not olfactotherapists who intervene, but nursing staff from our department who have been trained in aromatherapy. Since November 2011, 32 of them have received training, explains Catherine Boisseau. In hematology, we use essential oil diffusers having, for example, relaxing properties, the aim being to improve the psychological well-being of patients. In the palliative care unit, the diffusion is accompanied either by massages or by therapeutic baths containing essential oils. Finally, scent workshops have been set up for outpatients. They are based on sensory journeys but are also an opportunity for health education. So, while many cancer patients turn to alternative medicine, they are not always aware of the risks they are taking. The use of certain essential oils is contraindicated, for example. »On March 23, the projectaromatherapy developed by the Poitiers University Hospital has been awarded the Any d’Avray Nursing Prize.
