Although the word aromatherapy wasn’t coined until 1937, by French chemist René-Maurice Gattefossé, the practice of using scent to calm the mind and soothe the nerves been around for centuries. Frankincense, for example, has long been used in spiritual practices to enhance meditation, and has recently been clinically shown to improve symptoms of anxiety and depression.
— Read more in Is It Time For Some Aromatherapy? at Town & Country.
As part of the project, more than four dozen 6th graders were instructed to place rose-scented fragrance sticks on the desk where they studied their schoolwork and to place another rose-scented fragrance stick on the stand next to the bed where they slept at night. [...] The results, according to the study, indicated ‘a significant increase in learning success’ in the students who studied and slept with the same scent.
— Read more in Fragrance and deep sleep combo found to significantly boost learning at Slashgear, or see the original study How odor cues help to optimize learning during sleep in a real life-setting at Nature.
Our sense of smell is strongly connected to our ability to taste therefore experiencing food related cues such as smelling a bacon aroma, can lead us to imagine the act of eating that food. Imagine eating enough bacon and you might find yourself sated.
— Experimental psychologist Charles Spence of the University of Oxford, talking about the bacon patch he developed. Read more in Patch Infused With Smell of Bacon Developed ‘to Help Vegans and Vegetarians With Meat Cravings’ at Independent.
“It's not just that the coffee-like scent helped people perform better on analytical tasks, which was already interesting," says Madzharov. "But they also thought they would do better, and we demonstrated that this expectation was at least partly responsible for their improved performance.” In short, smelling a coffee-like scent, which has no caffeine in it, has an effect similar to that of drinking coffee, suggesting a placebo effect of coffee scent.
— Read more in Wake Up, Smell the Coffee ... and Succeed at Business Traveler.
If there is traffic on the turnpike today, I will be lemming this badly: Happy Uplifting Balm from Spa Ceylon. "If you've been feeling down in the dumps and are looking for some all-natural soothing, boost your mood with this fast-acting balm. It refreshes and invigorates the senses, promotes vibrant positive energy, and gently lightens your mood." With orange, lemon, rosemary, spearmint; $10 for 10 ml at Smallflower.