Hack Your Hormones
Burn, Baby, Burn! WillPowders Wax Lyrical on the Nootropic Biohacks of Scent and Touch
We all love a big fat scoop of pleasure in our lives and quite right too! Humans, uniquely amongst the animal kingdom, have mastered the power of ambience: music and lighting turn meals into feasts and romance into love, plump cushions and velvety throws make for a beautiful Bedouin tent on a moonlit Arabian night while Netflix is your storytelling Shahrazad. We perfume the air with luxury candles to invoke misty-eyed memories and lift our spirits with promise … but …
… before we get too dreamy, couple this with some hot water and a handful of the old Epsoms and you’re in for a pretty good bathgasm!
That’s right - it seems like ambient sensory rituals are a very human jam. But, wouldn’t you just know it, we seem to have forgotten the potential the ancient power our sense of smell has in the biohacking toolkit because, we’re rediscovering, it’s the only sense system hard wired into the VTA - the ventral tegmental area - of our brains and that Momma’s Little Helper produces dopamine for boosted pleasure, attention, mood, motivation and movement.
Couple our sense of dopamine-producing smell with our sense of oxytocin-arousing touch and temperature perception and you might find you’ve banished the brain fog and summoned your cognitive efficiency to pay a long-awaited call.
Keeping the magic of consciously pleasuring yourself alive (madam!)
At WillPowders, we reckon this makes it more important than ever to re-capture the art of scented pleasures and touch if we are to reach greater intimacy with happiness - which is renowned for being a slippery, come-a-day-go-a-day feeling a lot of the time. Our siren song is, let’s get more of that feeling locked down!
But, our increasingly stressful lives, which our brains are not built to sustain, mean it’s easy to slip back into merely surviving days and all the fearful, up in our heads feelings of angst that brings. Stepping away from that busy bullshit, even for a few moments has got to be some sort of divine high on life right, right? But where do we find the motivation when we’re in the middle of the day wading through the treacle of work or at the end of the day we’re beat and our happy hormones are AWOL?
Answer? We cooked you up a biohacking candle for when you’re at capacity
That’s right - if you’ve got the match, we’ve got the candle to set it to! Because, if you can’t physically step away from the stress, then at least you know that you can make it smell nice. But, wait, is that all that a nice scented candle does? Actually, no, at WillPowders, it’s not! We don’t do things by half. We weren’t interested in just bringing you a candle that smells nice so you could have five minutes meditatively watching the flame (though if it works for you, fill your boots, obvs) and looks lovely on your bedside table (it does, of course, but that’s not all we’ve got). No, ma’am! We’re here to create fireworks in your happy hormone factories and rekindle your dopamine and oxytocin.
Enter At Capacity Smells Like You’ve Had Enough Candle - a nootropic, biohacking candle to tickle your cognitive efficiency back to life. Flicker me, that’s good!
We’re a badass bunch of biohackers so let’s fire up this candle’s potential
Of course, you’ve got your usual clean WillPowders line-up, that almost goes without saying. No xenoestrogens here, thanks but no thanks:
- Coconut oil - natural, sustainable, clean, slow burn, baby, slow burn!
- Essential oils - with nootropic properties - no synthetic lab produced scents allowed
- Chic design - no hiding this sexy smoulder in the closet between burns
Plus a few surprise bonuses that your regular run of the mill, ho-hum, hum-drum chandlers (that’s candle makers to me and you) don’t cater for:
- Melted coconut oil is dreamy on the skin - blow out the flame and you have a ready warmed coconut oil moisturiser to drench your dry skin bits with - a luxury home spa pampering treatment, no less;
- An encouragement to dabble in the delights of touch - touch releases the loving hug hormone oxytocin ‘in response to low intensity stimulation of the skin’;
- With a bonus thrown in by the fact that the coconut oil is warm - seems that oxytocin comes out to play for agreeable temperatures too!
At Capacity’s carefully curated essential oils have nootropic potential via the skin for boosted mood - biohack me, now!
Come, On! How’s a scented candle going to help with my stressed brain?
Seems like brain fog might just need to wake up and smell the coffee - or, even better, a Candle with Care, of course! Researchers are discovering that our olfactory senses, that’s our ability to smell to us non-boffins, can improve cognitive efficiency - think of it as the way our brains fire! It’s your brain on a good day. Research tells us ‘Olfactory perception, distinguished by its intensity, speed of perception, and the breadth of stimuli, plays a pivotal role in cognitive efficiency’. The researchers found that scents tickle the olfactory senses in two ways:
- Through the characteristics of the scents we smell
- And through the emotions we associate with those scents
Could it be that when the inner cogs feel like they’re grinding to a halt, a quick sniff of something good can get the wheels purring again? If this is the case, then it could be one of the fastest ways to put that spring back in your inner workings, since the olfactory system is speedy-quick at processing. It seems there may be an in-built ability to pay more attention and be less distressed when we smell something pleasant.
One study on babies revealed that when they were plonked in front of a 92 second video (of a woman smiling then showing sadness alternately - no video nasties here, kids!) after being given a dusting down with either a pine or baby powder scent, as opposed to no scent, they looked longer, cried less, mouthed less and showed more smiling behaviours. Additionally, the presence of the scent ‘markedly reduced infant emotional distress and increased attention, suggesting that the olfactory sensory system provides cues to infants that support mood regulation and maintain attention’.
Now, we know you’re grown-assed people and not six months old! But, it would appear that scent does something within the brain that helps it sort its mood out for the better and pay attention to the task in hand, even when it’s not such a pleasant task (the scented babies watched the woman’s sad expressions for longer when babies would normally look to the side or down when their mothers show sadness).
But, maybe we shouldn’t be surprised by this. Our sense of smell is wired up to an area in our brain that produces dopamine - the ventral tegmental area. Dopamine, according to Psychology Today ‘boosts mood, motivation, and attention, and helps regulate movement, learning, and emotional responses’.
Fed up of burning yourself out at work then having no brain space for yourself?
While we might usually set a match to the wick of our favourite candle for the purposes of meditation and relaxation magic (and giving the living room a scent reset - we’re looking at you, Fido!), you know, that glorious time when we get to think about absolutely nothing, unless that Hollywood star fancies popping into our thoughts, of course, no judgement here, this research indicates that we could be squeezing more juice out of our candle addiction than we otherwise thought.
Resenting work and your family because they seem to have endless needs that come before your own means we tend to crash and burn the moment there’s a gap in the schedule that we could use for something we want to do for ourselves - dance the Argentine tango, chew the (good) fat with a friend, hell, draw, read, stitch, whip up a fire pit, tame the jungle back to a (lady) garden. Biohacking a dopamine hit from a good sniff of our candle’s carefully curated scents and a little bit of the oxytocin loving hug hormone courtesy of our innovative candle’s coconut oil and essential oils could have you doing all this and more.
Not just double bubble, but triple: in your space, in your brain and on your skin
It’s lovely to burn a candle for ambience, and ours doesn’t disappoint - candlelit bath, anyone? And smell itself induces mood states that we want to welcome into our lives. Don’t forget that, with At Capacity, you get to carry the scent with you on your skin long after you’ve blown out the flame, so the essential oils have the potential to keep working their charms on your mood.
Know your oils and amplify the effects longer term
One argument explored by scientists is that understanding the potential effects of scents can amplify their effects on mood. It’s a case of feed the brain and the body will follow, as we say at WillPowders. One study suggested that ‘expectancy does influence these effects; accentuating or reversing effects depending upon prior belief’.
With this in mind, let’s get you in the know with the essential oil treats that await you:
Orange Flower and Mimosa
Light it Up - Perfect for creating a peaceful environment, they enhance your overall well-being.
Sniff It In - uplifting and calming, promoting relaxation and elevating the spirit
Soak It Up - hydrating and soothing, leaving skin feeling soft and refreshed.
Jasmine
Light It Up - Inspire confidence and sensuality
Sniff It In - known for its stress-relieving and mood-boosting properties
Soak It In - with anti-inflammatory benefits, jasmine helps calm and soothe, particularly for sensitive or irritated skin, making it ideal for relaxation and skin care.
Geranium, Tuberose, Violet, and Orris
Light ‘Em Up - this floral blend of oils creates a soothing atmosphere
Sniff ‘Em In - these oils promote emotional balance and refreshment
Soak ‘Em Up - geranium, in particular, is known for its ability to balance skin oils, while tuberose, violet, and orris provide gentle nourishment, promoting a smooth, soft complexion.
Heliotrope
Light It Up - a soft, sweet floral scent
Sniff It In - heliotrope brings peace and tranquillity, enhancing your mood
Soak It Up - skin-loving hydration that leaves skin feeling refreshed and rejuvenated
Sandalwood and Cedarwood
Light ‘Em Up - woody oils for grounding and stabilising
Sniff ‘Em In - calming the mind and body while promoting clarity
Soak ‘Em Up - sandalwood also offers natural anti-inflammatory benefits, making it great for soothing and nourishing the skin, particularly for those with dry or sensitive skin
WillPowders At Capacity: Smells Like You’ve Had Enough - when it comes to natural candles and luxury candles, it’s all beginning to sound like a nootropic stack in scent and oil form. Hurrah! We’ll light a candle to that.
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