The Gattefossé team from France traveled to Ohio to present Debra Reis with the 2023 Award of the Rene-Maurice Gattefossé prize.
Debra is a nurse and coordinator of the Healing Care Program at the ProMedica Cancer Institute. The healing care program provides free integrative therapies to patients to help cope with a cancer diagnosis and treatment side effects.
Background: Increasingly, patients with cancer are using essential oils as a complementary therapy to reduce the adverse effects of cancer treatment, such as fatigue. Although essential oils have few adverse effects, little is known about the effectiveness of individual oils for specific symptoms. Frankincense is one such oil that has been identified as a possible supportive therapy for cancer-related fatigue.
Objective: The aim of this study was to determine if frankincense applied to the soles of the feet before, during, and after chemotherapy affects patients' perceptions of chemotherapy-related fatigue compared with control (carrier oil without frankincense).