Sandalwood oil is an essential oil

Essential oil

An essential oil is a concentrated hydrophobic liquid containing volatile aroma compounds from plants. Essential oils are also known as volatile oils, ethereal oils or aetherolea, or simply as the "oil of" the plant from which they were extracted, such as oil of clove...

 obtained from the steam distillation of chips and billets cut from the heartwood of the Sandalwood

Sandalwood

Sandalwood is the name of a class of fragrant woods from trees in the genus Santalum. The woods are heavy, yellow, and fine-grained, and unlike many other aromatic woods they retain their fragrance for decades. As well as using the harvested and cut wood in-situ, essential oils are also extracted...

 (Santalum album) tree. Sandalwood oil is used in perfumes, cosmetics, and sacred unguents.

Main Constituents

Sandalwood oil contains more than 90% sesquiterpenic alcohols of which 50-60% is the tricyclic

Tricyclic

Tricyclics are chemical compounds that contain three interconnected rings of atoms.Many compounds have a tricyclic structure, but in pharmacology, the term has traditionally been reserved to describe heterocyclic drugs...

 α-Santalol. β-Santalol comprises 20-25%.

Therapeutic Uses

Sandalwood essential oil is used in Ayurvedic medicine for the treatment of both somatic and mental disorders. A study investigating the effects of inhalation of East Indian sandalwood oil and its main compound, α-Santalol, on human physiological parameters found that the compounds elevated pulse rate, skin conductance, and systolic blood pressure.

Sandalwood oil and α-santalol have been associated with chemopreventive activity in animal models of carcinogenesis.