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When various
pathologies go wrong, this oil helps them to
respond.
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"The fact that emu
oil helps normalize basic cellular function in
so many skin ailments is outstanding. Emu oil
has been successfully employed on various types
of burns as well as on abrasions and also gaping
wounds." | | Emu oil is just one of the mediums
currently being employed by a growing number of
physicians in alternative and conventional
health care.
Because so many users of emu
oil often appear to experience complete
alleviation from various conditions, the
question arises: How does the oil work? The
explanation according to Dr. Leigh Hopkins,
consultant pharmacist and Clinical Professor of
Pharmacy, lies within what happens with various
pathologies and how the oil may help bring those
back into correct balance.
In a recent
interview, Hopkins offered to share a macro view
of a plausible explanation of the discerned
benefits of emu oil in relation to various skin
conditions. Hopkins emphasized that today's
modest explanation of how emu oil works may be
modified as additional research is
documented.
Dual
Delivery
Today, emu oil is being used around the
world by a growing number of individuals, from
pharmaceutical and cosmetic product
manufacturers to family physicians and
compounding pharmacists.
"It's clear from
documented 'before and after' pictures and from
what we hear and see - sorting through real
activities of the oil verses coincidental chance
occurrences - that healing is occurring," says
Hopkins. "At the same time, when the oil is used
in a typical application on normal or dry skin;
for example, there's also an improvement in the
quality of the skin itself that occurs fairly
quickly. This indicates that there are two
processes going on, one of which deals with the
epidermis (skins outer layer) which is
essentially a dead layer of protein."
Hopkins explains that the epidermis
serves as the protective function of the skin
and is analogous to fingernails, toenails or
hair - all being nonviable cells.
"While you may be able to hydrate the
skin - plump up the epidermis and make it softer
and smoother - that's incidental to the healing
benefit that's also being seen with the
oil," adds Hopkins. "The healing has to be
occurring within the dermis (skins lower
levels), and in the cells that are viable, that
is, cells that can divide. Those are the cells
from which healing has to come. And those cells,
depending on the nature of the wound, may have
to differentiate into other types of cells. So,
the healing process occurs from the dermis and
emu oil has an impact on healing at the dermal
level."
Because activity is occurring at
both the epidermis and the dermis levels,
Hopkins comments that there could be two
entirely different mechanisms - two explanations
and probably multiple different explanations for
the activity at either site. Putting it simply,
there is no single explanation as to the
function of emu oil as it relates to the
restoration of various
conditions.
Operating Across A
Broad Range Of Mechanisms
Numerous companies now offer pure emu
oil. This is because emu oil has been documented
to exhibit anti-inflammatory, moisturizing, and
significant epidermal proliferate activity
(among others), and the oil appears to promote
faster healing of burns with less pain and
scarring.
"It's that broad group of
activities that make the emu oil appear to be
'snake oil'," says Hopkins. "If we take a series
of skin conditions that respond in different
ways to emu oil, such as dry skin, various
burns, ulcers, wounds, eczema, psoriasis, etc,
each of those conditions in the hands of
conventional medicine has it's own unique
therapeutic approach. That the oil works where
we use a number of different types of drugs is
what makes it hard for the conventional medical
community to accept that the oil can be
operating across a broad range of disease
conditions by way of some common action within
the dermis layer of the skin."
Hopkins
relates that one problem the emu oil industry
faces is coming up with the explanation as to
why the oil helps alleviate various pathologies.
He remarks that the industry has to explain
fundamental mechanisms under which the oil is
working.
"And those more fundamental
mechanisms are really basic nutritional
mechanisms - fats that are in emu oil," says
Hopkins. "And the ratios of fats in emu oil
are critical to the normalization of
the healing process. I don't want to single
out a single fat, that's probably incorrect,
it's more the composition of fats in emu oil
(linoleic, oleic, palmitic, stearic, palmitloeic)
or a ratio of saturated to unsaturated fats
or some other relationship within all these
fats rather than a specific fat that's in the
oil. If it were such that it was a specific
fat, there are a lot of ways to get those fats
from other oils. But the ratio of those
fats are likely to be important to the benefits
that we see with the oil."
Examining the
Healing Process on A Cellular Level
Dr.
Hopkins, whose undergraduate work was in
biochemistry, relates that there may be numerous
explanations for emu oils specific influences on
body cells themselves and on receptors within
the cells. He also mentions that emu oil does
more than just promote healing.
Says
Hopkins, "It's clear that the oil does work and
this would have to be labeled in a macro and
fundamental level of healing. And we don't want
to necessarily think of emu oil as stimulating
healing - it can be retarding or blocking an
excess activity as well as stimulating under
performing activity. Any and all those depend on
the underlying explanation for a specific
disease."
Hopkins says that this may be
the case with emu oil with psoriasis or other
skin maladies. "In certain conditions, taking
psoriasis (a condition that responds in a
variable fashion to emu oil) for example, in
which there are specific cells that are out of
control - those cells need to be tamed, if you
will."
According to Hopkins a
better way to describe what emu oil does for
the body would be that "...emu oil helps to
normalize basic cellular function, and enable
the body to progress with what should be normal
healing."
"We know from our
experiences that the oil does work and it
does normalize various conditions," continues
Hopkins. "And I emphasize normalization.
With emu oil we can typically increase decrease
whatever is going on because often the problem
is because something is not performing well
enough, or another system is over performing.
For example, and excessive inflammatory
condition is an over performance of system that
is designed to produce an inflammatory response
because that's part of the body's normal
response to some invasion of organisms or other
foreign substances. The concept of normalization
involves progressing past that inflammatory
phase and moving into the next phase of the
response - to whatever has been presented to the
body. And sometimes things get hung up in those
different phases and you have to give them a
little boost - get them moving."
Hopkins
relates that at the root of almost every chronic
and acute skin condition is a cell line or
hormonal response that is exaggerated, which
needs to be kicked into it's next phase of
healing. He adds that these are complex phases
of healing that go on and are incompletely
understood.
The fact that emu oil helps
normalize basic cellular function in so many
skin ailments is outstanding. Emu oil has been
successfully employed on various types of burns
as well as on abrasions and also gaping wounds.
Regarding the use of emu oil on deep
wounds Hopkins says, "It's very impressive when
you see after a certain amount of time that you
can have an essentially completely healed system
- everything has been replaced, the muscle, the
tendon, the nerves, the blood vessels, the skin
- repaired and grown back. The very impressive
ability of the oil is that it seems to encourage
those systems to work in concert as they're
designed to do. When you're deficient in certain
components, that system then doesn't heal
normally, quickly, etc, and the oil simply helps
to orchestrate the healing
process.
By Beth Silva, Emu Today and
Tomorrow | |
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