Seeking common scents

Six-year-old Hodan Ogle isn't an expert on medicine, but the Somali kindergartner was among dozens of children sniffing out information for Children's Hospital of Minneapolis this weekend.

The children -- who were African, African-American and Hmong -- were testing medicinal fragrances to help doctors understand how different aromas affect children of different cultures.

The Caucasian children previously tested often turned up their noses after a whiff of lavender oil but smiled after testing the orange citrus. Ogle's eyes glowed after she inhaled peppermint oil. Her opinions, and others, will be part of the first scholarly research on the effects of ethnicity and gender on children's attitudes toward fragrances increasingly being used to curb anxiety, nausea, headaches and other problems.

"There are studies about [aromatherapy], but certainly not with children and certainly not with children of different cultures," said Dr. Tim Culbert, medical director of the Integrative Medicine Program of Children's Hospital, which is conducting the study. "And kids like it so much."

The waves of children who packed the testing rooms of his normally peaceful clinic agreed that smelling different fragrances was fun. Ogle, for example, told testers that most of the fragrances made her feel happy. But the peppermint oil made her feel "very happy."It reminds me of healthy food -- and hot noodles," she explained.

Collage of cultures

Children's Hospital, like others across the metro area, has seen an increase in the number of patients from different cultures. Appointments requiring an interpreter jumped from 8,000 in 2001 to 40,000 this year, staff members said. About 75 percent of those patients are from a Spanish-speaking country, another 15 percent are from Somalia and seven percent from Laos, they said.

The testing over the weekend focused mainly on children of African heritage. The children lined up at six testing stations, where they were given a white strip of paper that had been dipped in one of six fragrances: lavender, ginger, peppermint, spearmint, sweet orange and lemon.

Makkah Abdur-Salaam, 8, of St. Paul, started with lavender. The tester asked her how the scent made her feel, how it made her body feel, how she would describe the scent, and whether it reminded her of anything. These questions were repeated at each testing station with about 60 children.

"It's really terrible," Abdur-Salaam responded, crunching her nose. She said it made her feel "a little sad." No, it didn't remind her of anything.

Researchers have found that first-generation immigrant children tend to associate smells with more complex emotions. In an earlier study, a Guatemalan girl said the lemon scent reminded her of a grandmother back home. Another Hispanic girl said that a certain scent reminded her of a flower in Ecuador.

But even the same smell sparks different reactions among different kids, said Maura Fitzgerald, clinical nurse specialist for the program. For example, 56 percent of the Hispanic girls tested earlier said they found sweet orange oil to be calming, compared with 18 percent of Caucasian girls.

And 65 percent of Hispanic boys found peppermint to be "energetic" compared with 30 percent of non-Hispanic Caucasian boys.

When offered a vial of scented oil to take home, 35 percent of non-Hispanic boys chose lemon, compared with 14 percent of Hispanic boys. The top choice for the Hispanic boys was spearmint oil.

Ginger and lavender were the least preferred among both groups, even though lavender is frequently recommended as a calming agent, Fitzgerald said. One boy described ginger, for example, as reminding him of a "wet dog."

The integrative medicine clinic began using the fragrances to complement traditional medicine about seven years ago, Culbert said. Some of the children using the scented oils are hospital patients recovering from surgery who need relief from nausea or pain. Others are children whose parents are looking for new ways to treat hyperactivity, insomnia or headaches.

The children tend to like aromatherapy, Fitzgerald said, and need little encouragement to use it.

"But there was nothing in the literature [research studies] that showed which fragrances the children preferred," said Fitzgerald, whose colleagues now want to change that.

Jean Hopfensperger • 612-673-4511

Jean Hopfensperger • hopfen@startribune.com