Excuse the pun, but there’s been some great news coming out of the University Of Manchester about a potent alternative to the antibiotics that are increasingly looking powerless against so called ‘superbugs’.
Superbugs are mutations of existing strains that are proving increasingly immune to existing treatments.
As a result, infections, such as MRSA, kill an estimated 5,000 a year.
But researchers found three of the oils, usually used in aromatherapy, destroyed MRSA and E.coli bacteria in two minutes.
The study was at the request of complementary medicine specialists at Christie Cancer Hospital.
They asked university researchers to test essential oils, to ensure they could not harm the patients, whose immune systems could already be degraded by the treatments.
The scientists tested a total of 40 essential oils against 10 of the most infectious agents found in hospitals, including MRSA (methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus).
Two of the oils were found to kill MRSA and E.coli almost instantly, while a third was found to act over a longer period of time.
The exact details have yet to be released, but it is thought the two most effective oils proved to be thyme and cinnamon.
