Exercise your Brain with Aromas!

Exercise Your Brain with Aromas - Updates!
In a recent blog we published, titled Exciting Things are Happening with Aromatherapy and Mental Cognition, we shared about the exciting new research presented in 2023, which concluded that smelling a variety of essential oils while sleeping dramatically improved memory by 226%.

The Update; Dr. Michael Leon, of the contributors to this research at The University of California at Irvine, was interviewed by Robert Tisserand, a leader in the aromatherapy field, to ask questions and to gain more clarity about the research released in 2023.

Olfactory Research is Gaining Traction
I think this renewed interest is partly because so many people lost their sense of smell during the COVID-19 Pandemic, or their sense of smell had changed for an extended period of time.

We also know that the loss of smell is a well-documented early indicator for neurological disease like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, to name a few.

It's clear that the relationship between the quality of our health and our ability to smell warrants more study. Below I'll share my takeaways from this conversation.

More to Consider from this Research 

• The loss of smell correlates with at least 68 neurological disorders.
  
  
• When smelling any type of odors, aromas, scents you are stimulating new neural connections in your brain. This is because our olfactory system is the only one of our senses with a direct connection into the memory and emotional centers of the brain.
  
  
• Using aromatics for sensory enrichment via our olfactory system appears to have beneficial impact on our mental cognition and wellness.
  
  
• Smelling a wider variety of smells appears to be more effective than smelling the same smell repetitively.
  
  
• Smelling by using diffusers at night during early sleep cycles did not interfere with sleep.
  
  
• Choose pleasant natural aromas and rotate a new aroma each night in a diffuser.
  
  

Just like exercising our muscles, if we are doing the same repetitive motions without engaging in new activity its only helpful to a point.

So as you go through your day - smell your way through it!  It can't hurt, and it's looking like it is a great prevention tool for our mental stamina and memory.

 It's simply common sense that variety is the spice of life, right?