Amrutanjan, Poy-Sian, and svāroma: What's Actually Different
If you have ever kept a nasal inhaler in a bag or a desk drawer in India, it was probably one of two things. An Amrutanjan Relief inhaler, the small one with the keychain loop. Or a Poy-Sian Mark II, the striped Thai tube that people bring back from Bangkok by the handful.
Both are excellent at what they were designed to do. Neither was designed to do what an aromatherapy inhaler does. The difference is not marketing positioning, and it is not quality. It is written directly into the ingredient percentages on the packaging, and once you see those numbers the whole category makes more sense.
What is actually in each one
Start with the published formulations, because they are more informative than any description.
Poy-Sian Mark II lists menthol at 42%, camphor at 16.4%, eucalyptus oil at 8.5%, and borneol at 6.1%.
Amrutanjan Relief Nasal Inhaler lists pudinah, the menthol crystal derived from Mentha arvensis, at around 40%, and karpura, or camphor, at around 35%, alongside gandhapura patra taila (wintergreen oil) and tailaparna taila (eucalyptus oil). It is formulated and sold as an Ayurvedic preparation for nasal congestion.
The widely available Western equivalents follow the same logic, built around menthol and camphor with a conifer oil.
So across three continents, the same architecture: menthol as the dominant compound, camphor second, an aromatic oil in support. When roughly 40% of a formulation is a single compound, that compound is not a note in a blend. It is the entire product.
Why they are built that way
Menthol at those concentrations is not really functioning as a scent. It is functioning as a receptor agonist.
Menthol binds to TRPM8, a cold-sensing receptor on trigeminal nerve endings in the nasal lining. The trigeminal nerve handles temperature, touch, and irritation in the face. It is the nerve that registers the heat of chilli and the sting of raw onion, and it is entirely separate from the olfactory nerve that carries smell.
When TRPM8 fires, the brain interprets the cooling as evidence of good airflow. This produces a genuinely counterintuitive finding: research published in PLOS One notes that applying menthol creates the perception of decongestion without actually altering nasal morphology. A study in PMC on nasal cooling and airflow perception reaches the same conclusion, and explains the mechanism: we judge how clear our nose feels by how cool the incoming air is, not by how much air is moving.
This is not a knock on those products. It is why they work so well and so fast. A 42% menthol formulation delivers an unmistakable sensation within a second, and for a blocked nose at two in the morning that immediate, convincing sensation of clearance is precisely what you want. It is a well-solved problem, solved decades ago, and sold at a price that makes it available to nearly everyone.
What high menthol does to everything else in the tube
Here is the part with real consequences for anyone shopping across both categories.
The trigeminal and olfactory systems are separate, but they interact. A 2025 review in Chemical Senses describes them as distinct sensory modalities that converge at multiple stages of the nervous system, with trigeminal input able to either sharpen or suppress what the olfactory system registers. Work on olfactory and trigeminal integration in the primary olfactory cortex has found that at higher concentrations, the trigeminal component of a compound reduces the perceived intensity and quality of the odour underneath it.
Which means the eucalyptus in a 42% menthol tube is largely inaudible. Not absent, just overwhelmed. You are not perceiving a botanical composition. You are perceiving cold, with something faintly green behind it.
Again: correct design. Nobody buying a decongestant is evaluating its top notes. But it does explain why these products all smell broadly alike despite different ingredient lists, and why a blend built for aromatic character has to be constructed at completely different concentrations.
We went further into the olfactory pathway itself in the science of scent and how smell reaches the brain.
Where svāroma sits
svāroma inhalers are not decongestants. They are not licensed as medicine, they make no medical claims, and they are not intended to treat, prevent, or relieve any condition, congestion included. If you have a cold, the products above are the right ones and this one is not.
What they are built for is the opposite use pattern. Not just one acute moment, but a repeated one. A blend you return to daily, deliberately, paired with a slow breath: before a difficult conversation, on a long flight, at the end of an afternoon that has gone badly. That is a scent-as-cue application rather than a sensation-as-relief application, and it demands different construction.
Concretely, that means five to seven oils composed against each other rather than one compound at 40%. Concentrations low enough that the individual notes stay legible on the fortieth use rather than collapsing into a single cold hit. A wider twin-nostril opening held beneath the nose rather than a narrow tip inserted into one nostril, because the gesture is meant to be unhurried rather than corrective.
It is also, straightforwardly, a more expensive object. A Poy-Sian tube costs a fraction of what a svāroma inhaler costs, and if what you need is cooling relief, paying more would be irrational. The price difference reflects a different formulation brief and different oils, not a better version of the same thing.
The honest overlap
There is one place these categories genuinely meet, and it is worth naming rather than glossing over.
A lot of people use traditional inhalers for travel. Not for congestion, but for the unsettled feeling on a winding road, in a rocking train, or on a bad descent. The Thai inhalers in particular have been used this way for generations, and the cooling sensation is doing real perceptual work in that moment.
That is the closest thing to a shared use case, and it is why anyone crossing over from that habit tends to find the transition easiest with a blend built around similar botanicals at gentler levels: eucalyptus, ginger, peppermint, rosemary. Familiar vocabulary, different volume. These are the oils we put in our Nausea inhaler (sva aarogya).
So which should you buy
A blocked nose, a cold, sinus pressure: buy the decongestant. It costs very little, it works quickly, and nothing in this post should be read as a reason to stop.
A scent you want to return to as part of a daily rhythm, something that stays interesting rather than just bracing: that is a different object with a different brief, and a 40% menthol tube will not do it. Not because it is inferior, but because it was never trying.
If you are curious which of the six svāroma blends fits how you actually live, the Discovery Set exists for exactly that, and is a more sensible starting point than guessing at a single one.
Most people who understand the distinction end up keeping both. Different drawers, different moments. That is not a compromise, it is just accuracy about what each thing is for.
svāroma makes six aromatherapy inhalers, each blended for a specific moment and made with pure essential oils. Explore the full range.
Amrutanjan is a registered trademark of Amrutanjan Health Care Ltd. Poy-Sian is a registered trademark of Bertram Chemical (1982) Co., Ltd. svāroma is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to either company. Ingredient figures are taken from publicly published manufacturer and pharmacy listings and are accurate to the best of our knowledge at the time of writing. This comparison is offered for consumer education and is not a claim of superiority for any purpose those products are formulated to serve.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between Amrutanjan inhaler and an aromatherapy inhaler?
Amrutanjan Relief is formulated and sold as an Ayurvedic preparation for nasal congestion, built around pudinah (menthol crystal) at around 40% and karpura (camphor) at around 35%. An aromatherapy inhaler is not a decongestant and makes no medical claims. It uses a multi-oil blend at much lower concentrations, designed to be noticed as a scent and returned to repeatedly rather than to produce immediate cooling relief.
What is inside a Poy-Sian inhaler?
Poy-Sian Mark II lists menthol at 42%, camphor at 16.4%, eucalyptus oil at 8.5%, and borneol at 6.1%. Menthol is by a wide margin the dominant compound, which is what produces the characteristic sharp cooling sensation.
Why do traditional nasal inhalers feel so much stronger?
Because menthol at those concentrations activates TRPM8 cold receptors on the trigeminal nerve, which is a different pathway from smell. The brain reads that cooling as evidence of clear airflow. Research in PLOS One notes this produces the perception of decongestion without actually changing nasal morphology.
Is an aromatherapy inhaler better than Amrutanjan or Poy-Sian?
No, and it is not intended to be. Those products are formulated for nasal congestion and do that job quickly and cheaply. An aromatherapy inhaler is not a decongestant and should not be used as one. They are built for different situations.
Can I use an aromatherapy inhaler for a blocked nose or a cold?
No. svāroma inhalers are not decongestants and are not intended to treat, prevent, or relieve any condition. For congestion, use a product formulated and licensed for that purpose, or speak to a pharmacist.
Why do aromatherapy inhalers cost more?
Different formulation brief and different materials. A single dominant compound at 40% is inexpensive to produce. A blend of five to seven pure essential oils composed against each other, at concentrations where the individual notes remain distinguishable, costs considerably more. Whether that is worth it depends entirely on which of the two jobs you are buying for.
Do aromatherapy inhalers contain menthol or camphor?
Some blends include peppermint, which contains menthol naturally, and eucalyptus. The distinction is proportion. In a decongestant these appear at concentrations chosen to drive a cooling response. In an aromatic blend they appear as notes within a composition.