Beauty and The Brain

So there I was lying in a hospital bed, bones badly broken from a riding accident. A nurse appears and administers a shot of a potent narcotic. The pain disappears, euphoria descends. It’s nice, I think, but falling in love is better. And as if to illustrate the point, a year later I was visiting my family when my mother scrutinized me intensely. “You’ve done something,” she said. “Lost weight?” Nope. “Is that new makeup?” Nope. “Well, what have you discovered that is making your skin look like that?”

I was in love.

And the endorphin rush in the brain made my skin glow.

How we feel can affect how we look.

And while we have not yet discovered how to bottle love, we have discovered ways to put the brain front and center in your beauty routine. Truth be told, the brain is not a particularly attractive organ, but the chemistry that goes on within can bring beauty to our lives.

Take sleep, for instance. Everyone knows that getting a bad night’s sleep is a sure route to racoon eyes, pasty skin, and a bad case of the grumpies. Every beauty book worth its salt counsels a good night’s sleep. Terrific. But how? Lots of advice out there—everything from lavender to CBD to nighttime meditation programs. Not much info on exactly how these things work or why they might not. And then there are sleep-inducing medications, like Ambien, where the exact mechanisms are very well known. But so are the side effects.

Think of it this way: the brain is a collection of houses, and each house has a variety of gates that are manned by different types of guards. Some people who want to come into the house are there to initiate all kinds of exciting activities, and some people who want to get in are there to calm them down. The guard’s job is to ensure the proper mix of people get in so the house functions properly. One of these guards is called GABAA and it’s his job to usher in the calm people. Drugs like Ambien help the GABAA guard get more calm people through the gate.

So, we asked a simple question: are there inhaled components in natural products like essential oils that might also help the GABAA guard. They would of course be much gentler than Ambien since, unlike a drug, which is a single agent, essential oils are complex organic mixtures.

I hit the scientific literature to find out.

It turns out there are, although our old friend lavender was quickly eliminated because its components try to get in at too many different types of gates and do too many different kinds of things. I wanted to find ingredients who were more focused on just helping the GABAA guard. We struck pay dirt with an oil from a plant in the verbena family and over the next year or so we tested it in various combinations with other friends of the GABAA guard. Then we had to identify and formulate the best combination of complexion-enhancing beauty oils that not only did wonderful things for your skin but would also slowly release the components of the essential oils to produce a deep restful sleep throughout the night. Helps to have a co-founder who is skin genius.

The bottom line: you not only look great the next morning because you’ve gotten a good night’s sleep but also because of the hydrating, antioxidizing and anti-inflammatory effects of our beauty oils.

Too much working, studying, partying or just living? We got you covered.