A person who feels stressed does not always visit a psychiatrist. He or she might well decide to use aromatherapy. Aromatherapy is a type of alternative health therapy. Those who have benefited from aromatherapy often enthuse over the healing powers of that alternative health medicine therapy.

An aromatherapy practitioner might use scented candles and meditation to lower the stress level of a patient. Those techniques are part of the standard alternative therapy treatment for stress. An aromatherapy practitioner would almost certainly never use any type of anti-anxiety drug.

If a patient did not immediately respond to the aromatherapy, that procedure would need to be modified by the aromatherapy practitioner. He or she might try an alternative complementary therapy. He or she might, for example, try using massage or music to lower the patient’s stress level.

Today, most health professionals do not question the effectiveness of a generally accepted alternative health medicine therapy. Still, health professionals do not plan to rapidly abandon the more traditional medical therapies. After all, science is always uncovering new uses for old medicines.

Take, for example the drug “Prozac,” an anti-anxiety drug made by Eli Lilly and Company. Researchers have found that Prozac can be used to treat patients with an obsessive-compulsive disorder. That finding has helped researchers to gain a better understanding of what actually causes an obsessive-compulsive disorder.

In order to pursue that improved understanding, researchers have used laboratory mice that display possession of an odd trait. Those mice are constantly cleaning their faces. Those same mice avoid going into well-lighted, open spaces.

Researchers know that those mice lack a gene called SAPAP3. That gene codes the production of a special protein, one that can help nerves to communicate. That protein targets a region of the brain known as the stratium.

When such mice are given a drug such as Prozac, they stop their continual face cleaning. The Prozac appears to act in the same manner as the SAPAP3. Its action leads to the abolishment of an obsessive-compulsive disorder.

The results of the studies done with those special mice were the first evidence that an obsessive-compulsive disorder could be linked to a defect in the stratium of the brain. Researchers did not find that evidence by using any sort of alterative therapy. Researcher relied on the availability of an anti-anxiety drug in order to complete their investigation.

Such studies, and the results obtained from such studies, give pharmaceutical companies yet another reason to continue their efforts to develop new and improved medicines. While such medicines might be spurned by those who offer alternative medical treatments, they can still guide the discovery of important medical information.

Thanks to Prozac, some mice have been freed from the facial irritation that’s caused by repeated and irritating cleaning. Thanks to Prozac, many who once endured inescapable captivity to an obsessive-compulsive disorder can now lead “normal” lives.

Those benefits came to a medical community that had embraced alternative medicine therapy, but one that had never chosen to abandon the treatments offered by the more conventional forms of medicine.