Pepper oil aroma helps elderly with swallowing

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The smell of black pepper oil appears to ease swallowing difficulties in older people, researchers report.

Inhaling black pepper oil may thereby reduce the risk of aspiration pneumonia, which can be a major consequence of swallowing dysfunction.

Because black pepper oil is a strong appetite stimulus, Dr. Takae Ebihara, a geriatrician at the Tohoku University School of Medicine in Sendai, Japan, and colleagues theorized that inhaling it would ameliorate impairment of the swallowing reflex by stimulating olfactory centers in the brain.

The team conducted a study with residents of nursing homes who were physically handicapped, primarily due to cerebrovascular disorders. As noted in the Journal of the American Geriatric Society, the average age of the subjects was roughly 85 years.

The investigators assigned 35 patients each to inhale black pepper oil, lavender oil, and distilled water. Caregivers were instructed to have the participants smell the products, deposited on paper sticks held to the nostrils, for 1 minute immediately before each meal for 30 days.

To test the effect, swallowing was triggered by squirting distilled water through a tube into the back of the throat, and the latency time between the squirt and the swallow was measured.

After the first exposure to black pepper oil, average latency of the swallowing reflex was reduced from 17.6 seconds to 6.4 seconds, falling still further to 4.4 seconds by the end of the trial.

In the lavender oil group and the water group, latency remained essentially the same.

The ten participants with a history of aspiration pneumonia underwent brain scans before and after the study. The researchers saw that cerebral blood flow increased significantly in the area of the brain involved in central processing of initiation, motivation, and goal-directed behavior.

They conclude that "nasal inhalation of volatile black pepper oil might be useful for patients with nasofeeding tubes" and others at high risk for aspiration pneumonia.

SOURCE: Journal of the American Geriatric Society, September 2006.