Pentagon tries aroma therapy to ease combat stress

Don't dismiss this without thinking about it.

We all know a sound, like an explosion or gunfire can have a veteran jumping just as the sound of helicopter blades can cause flashbacks for Vietnam veterans. Well there is also the reaction brought on by smells. Gun power and diesel fuel can give them a nasty trip back to combat. As humans can have unpleasant experiences brought back because of reminders like these, they can have pleasant ones replace them with better smells.

Chocolate chip cookies right out of the oven, fresh baked apple pie, cinnamon in hot apple cider, work wonders for this New Englander longing for home living in Florida. Warm memories fill my heart and it "feels like home to me" until I go outside on the pool deck in December still in shorts and a T-shirt. Smells can calm people down or they can hurt. This article makes sense to me and I hope it will to you as well now that you are open to reading it.

Pentagon tries aroma therapy to ease combat stress
FORT RILEY, Kansas
Sat May 8, 2010 8:31pm EDTFORT RILEY, Kansas (Reuters) - The U.S. military is experimenting with aroma therapy, acupuncture and other unorthodox methods to treat soldiers traumatized by combat experiences, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Saturday.


He said the experiments showed promise.

Gates touted possible treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) during a meeting with the wives of servicemen at Fort Riley, Kansas, when one woman asked him to explain why chiropractic and acupuncture therapies were not covered under her military health care plan.

"We have an experimental unit ... treating soldiers with PTS (post-traumatic stress) and using a number of unorthodox approaches, including aroma therapy, acupuncture, things like that, that really are getting some serious results, and so maybe we can throw that into the hopper as well," Gates said.

The Pentagon has seen a sharp increase in the number of soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder during and after long deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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Pentagon tries aroma therapy to ease combat stress