A new raft of ‘mediscents’ are being sold as the newest, quickest way to hack your mental health. WH investigates
Ask older generations what they think of when you say the word perfume and it’s likely they’ll conjure up images of light floral bursts in dainty spritz bottles or the natural fragrance wafting from a vase of flowers on the windowsill. But that was then, and this is 2022. Now, the pursuit of ‘scent wellness’ has forced the perfume industry to raise its game, with consumers demanding multitasking, life-hacking products. Fragrances are redefining aromatherapy and tearing chapters from the books of medical research. Yes, these creations smell good, but perfumers are leveraging neuroscience to push things further and claim that fragrances have an impact on mental and emotional wellbeing, too. A new era of medi-scents – also dubbed ‘functional fragrances’ – is upon us, and they’re being touted as quick ways to biohack your brain for better mood.
As founder of supplement brand The Nue Co and creator of the first perfume billed as an ‘anti-stress’ supp, Jules Miller considers it her mission to give perfume a wider purpose, ‘to inhabit both the fragrance counter and the health and beauty aisle’, she explains. For her, it means viewing the connection between general wellbeing and sense of smell through a scientific lens, using fMRI scans, similar to magnetic resonance imaging, to reveal how different scents activate parts of the brain and affect emotion.
And where scent can really excel, she enthuses, is its rapid delivery. ‘A capsule takes, on average, between 20 and 40 minutes to break down,’ Miller explains. ‘Whereas your sense of smell works immediately – your olfactory system kicks in quickly, making scent one of the fastest ways to affect your emotional and cognitive state.’ If it sounds too cerebral to ever catch on with the mass market, think again. Industry giants Estée Lauder and Avon are both using similar technologies, as fragrance shifts from being marketed as simply a way to smell good to a proven salve for modern life.
Scents of change
It’s no secret that 75% of human emotions are triggered by smell. Why such a large number? ‘Of the five senses, smell is the only one that is mainlined directly to the brain,’ explains Sandeep Robert Datta, professor of neurobiology at Harvard Medical School. ‘You sense odours in your nose, that information is then transmitted to a place in your brain called the olfactory bulb before going straight to the emotion centre, the amygdala, or the area involved in memory, such as the hippocampus.’ So you’re very much hardwired to be impacted by scent. ‘While fragrance does not directly cause a change in hormone release in the way that a drug can, it’s been shown to affect a person’s emotional state,’ explains Stephen Watkins,
