A new study reveals that aromatherapy may help your mood, may relax you, but doesn’t do much for your health.

Researchers at Ohio State University decided to test the supposed stress-relieving and healing properties of two of the most popular aromatherapy scents: lavender and lemon.

"We all know that the placebo effect can have a very strong impact on a person's health but beyond that, we wanted to see if these aromatic essential oils actually improved human health in some measurable way," said lead author Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, psychiatry and psychology professor at Ohio State University.

During the study, 56 healthy volunteers were exposed to both scents. Researchers taped cotton balls laced with either lemon oil, lavender oil or distilled water below the volunteers’ noses for the duration of the tests. Participants were monitored for blood pressure and heart rate during the experiments. Also, the researchers took series of blood samples from each volunteer.

The researchers reported that while lemon oil showed a clear mood enhancement, lavender oil did not. Moreover, neither smell had any positive impact on any of the biochemical markers for stress, pain control or wound healing.

"The take home message is that good smells may make you feel better, but you should not count on them to change your physiology," Kiecolt-Glaser said in an email, according to AFP.

“This is probably the most comprehensive study ever done in this area, but the human body is infinitely complex. If an individual patient uses these oils and feels better, there’s no way we can prove it doesn’t improve that person’s health. But we still failed to find any quantitative indication that these oils provide any physiological effect for people in general,” William Malarkey, professor of internal medicine and co-author of the study said.

The study is a strike for health and beauty companies, which have made millions off the soothing scents or aromatherapy products.

The findings were not on the taste of Dr. Roshini Raj of New York University Medical Center who said on The Early Show Tuesday the study was “relatively small” only involving about 50 people so this should not lead to the conclusion that aromatherapy doesn’t work for everyone. Once you feel less stressed and more positive with aromatherapy, she said, it might help you deal with certain medical conditions. Therefore, aromatherapy cannot hurt and is worth a try in some situations, but certainly should not replace actual medications when they are needed.

The study, supported in part by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health, was published in the March edition of Psychoneuroendocrinology.