Smells During Sleep May Shape Dreams

However, if you want a pair of my used panties, send $20 via PayPal to PantiesRus@impuresleep.com.

For the first 20 responders ONLY, I will send you, absolutely free!, a real live Koala bear! Just pay separate shipping and handling!

I assume to save on shipping those bonus koalas will each be wearing the panties...??? Anyway, what an outrageous bargain!!!!



(an no, the price itself is not the outrageous part of this bargain!)

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Hee hee hee!!! Hey, I just thought, since SleepyCarol said her brother was buying used panties on Ebay, I'd cash in on the trend...

LOL,
Babs

In a partial answer to what SWS asked........I haven't "checked out" why the 5 aromas that I get from Bret are my choices other than the strawberry.
I've always loved the fruit and at times have been known to eat so many that I break out in a rash.....Seems worth it at the time, but once the rash starts -- nope!!!
Also from an aroma perspective, strawberry incense has always been my favorite.
All that said, I've been wearing patchouli and nag champa oils for many many years ( I get asked on occasion why I smell like every head shop someone has ever walked into..... ).
I have not tried my oils on the pads I got from Bret as I'm not sure of the purity of the oils -- I know the pur-sleep oils are a pure rendition. I guess I could do some research into it, but I'm happy with the oils I get from Bret for my sleep aroma therapy....

Just a couple more pennies worth..
cheers
goose

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Freshly-hand-hewn cedar shakes from my grandparents cabin when my grandfather had just finished building it... Cotton quilts made by my grandmother just off the clothes line spread on a freshly-made bed in that same cabin... Grandma's cooking... She was a french-trained chef who cooked for a very rich family during the depression. Grandpa's apple-wood pipe tobacco, unsmoked... Early mornings in August on the lake in a boat by that cabin... Bunchberries, Teaberries, Blueberries, Raspberries, Blackberries, Hazelnuts... all within walking distance growing wild on the roadside or in the pungent forest surrounding the cabin... Mosses, ferns, Shadblow, and of course, shad and fiddleheads, prepped, cooked and eaten... Sometimes, when the wind comes from the north in the fall, it smells like the Canadian summers at that cabin.

Afternoons lying in a foot-thick bed of pine needles in a pine grove at my parents' cabin in New Hampshire...The air was thick with the smell of white pine. Freshly gnawed deciduous tree stumps where beavers had taken down trees... The smell of leaves mulching in the fall...

I remember as a kid hating to go into the laundry soap aisles at the grocery stores because everything was so heavily scented back then. I notice now that when I'm in those same aisles today, the laundry soap scent is still seems more potent at the height of a child's nose. There's less of that now, though because a lot of soaps are in bottles.

Yeah, I'd say scents are some of the most intense part of memories and when you smell them again, it can bring back waves of things you remember. There is obvious room for exploration in the olfactory sciences.

DreamDiver wrote:Freshly-hand-hewn cedar shakes from my grandparents cabin when my grandfather had just finished building it... Cotton quilts made by my grandmother just off the clothes line spread on a freshly-made bed in that same cabin... Grandma's cooking... She was a french-trained chef who cooked for a very rich family during the depression. Grandpa's apple-wood pipe tobacco, unsmoked... Early mornings in August on the lake in a boat by that cabin... Bunchberries, Teaberries, Blueberries, Raspberries, Blackberries, Hazelnuts... all within walking distance growing wild on the roadside or in the pungent forest surrounding the cabin... Mosses, ferns, Shadblow, and of course, shad and fiddleheads, prepped, cooked and eaten... Sometimes, when the wind comes from the north in the fall, it smells like the Canadian summers at that cabin.

What an enchanting and captivating description, Diver! Thanks for that wonderful throwback to my own memories. Where was GP's cabin?

Goose, thanks for that feedback! I'm a strawberry fan as well.

DreamDiver, banish my vague ruminations about the psychology and neuromechanics of aroma preference... I'd much prefer to read the rest of that novel!

plr66 wrote:What an enchanting and captivating description, Diver! Thanks for that wonderful throwback to my own memories. Where was GP's cabin?

Baker Lake - a stone's through from Lac Unique, but smaller. It is a two-mile-long finger lake that has grown cabins along it's sides. The grandparents' cabin was at the source end of the lake. There were green and brown leaches in the water, and wide old cedar logs in the lake bottom that they made the shingles from. It don't think it was always a lake. There were adult frogs the size of house flies and tad poles in every puddle - and there were lots of puddles and sphagnum moss with peat that was feet thick. The spring we used for house water was very shallow. We had to take very short showers. There were also black bears that tried to get into the house and moose that grazed the shallow lake grasses. It was truly a paradise. I wish we could have kept the property. I'm afraid to go back because I'm betting the wildlife is all gone now.

Last night I used Pur-Sleep strawberry. I've used all the scents in the original deluxe pak and had no dream issues. Not last night. I had lots of dreams and congestion. I'm not allergic to strawberries, so now I'm wondering what's up. At least I didn't dream of giant strawberries stealing my XPAP equipment.

-SWS wrote:This is one of those highly scientific topics where intuition has just been nagging me unmercifully. Intuitively I suspect there are far greater benefits to aroma therapy than sleep science has yet managed to sink its methodological teeth. ..... Regardless, I personally happen to think that medicine in future generations may spawn "sleep psychology" as a dedicated sub-discipline. Like Bret and Goose, I suspect that aroma therapy is bound to assume a more prominent role in medicine's future. ..... Reflexology and psychology both clearly have basis in both environmental and social survival. And thus the psychology of sleep warrants significantly more research than it presently receives IMO.

Couldn’t agree more, -SWS; this is one area where science definitely needs to catch up. For example, among those who espouse natural medicine, aromatherapy is widely used to help those who have AD(H)D with such needs as better mental focus, quicker learning, calmness and a sense of being grounded. Also, a common indicator of both giftedness and AD(H)D is a heightened sensitivity to the sensory aspects of everyday life and especially to scent. It’s one of the many areas where opinions vary widely about whether the person is, in fact, gifted, has AD(H)D or has some combination of both.

DreamDiver wrote:Yeah, I'd say scents are some of the most intense part of memories and when you smell them again, it can bring back waves of things you remember. There is obvious room for exploration in the olfactory sciences.

As we all know, a frequently used visual in movies and books is that of a bereaved person (whether the bereavement came from loss due to death or abandonment of the relationship) burying his/her face in some article of the other’s clothing and breathing in deeply. Scent can instantly bring another person closer in one’s memories and emotions.

-SWS wrote:One possibly relevant analogy that comes to mind is the non-universal response that humans receive from pets. There are plenty of respected studies showing psychological benefits very commonly yielded by pets. Affection and touch are two factors that may yield reduced levels of stress and perhaps improve longevity. And yet pets are clearly not beneficial for everyone for an entire variety reasons. We probably all know some people who find pets unenjoyable.

A very appropriate analogy. In my opinion, a person’s enjoyment of pets or wishing to have nothing to do with them is directly linked to who’s doing the petting.

Babette wrote:Or just spray your girlfriend's perfume on your pillow, like my ex used to. I actually caught him sneaking my perfume bottle out of my bag one day. I was kinda freaked out, until he told me what he was doing with it.

Babs, that is one of the most romantic stories I’ve ever heard. Now, I realize your ex may just have been following Rooster’s inclination to induce “special” dreams , but it was your perfume he was using, so it was you specifically that he had in mind. (sigh) I’d say that anyone -- not just the guys -- who wants to kick up the romance factor in his/her relationship might consider “accidentally” getting “caught” spraying his/her partner’s perfume/aftershave/etc. on his/her pillow. Who doesn’t want to be cherished?

Marsha

SleepGuy wrote: ...... I've learned that the sense of smell is fundamentally different from all others for several reasons. For one thing, it's a chemical sense, meaning that the smell molecules physically connect with the nerve endings in the sinus (like puzzle pieces).........

So does that mean when I entered the restroom at the football game last night and sm......... aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!!!!!!!!!

marshaeb wrote:For example, among those who espouse natural medicine, aromatherapy is widely used to help those who have AD(H)D with such needs as better mental focus, quicker learning, calmness and a sense of being grounded.

Marsha, that's an extremely interesting application of aromatherapy IMHO.

Speaking of natural/holistc practitioners... I have a friend who suffered environmental and food allergies for years. A veritable parade of Western practitioners over more than twenty years could never make much of a dent in his problems. So finally on a recommendation from a friend he paid a visit to an Eastern holistic practitioner. Despite the Western MD credential she seemed to rely more heavily on Eastern practices. She had him testing for "energy imbalances" by holding various substances in his hand---substances that were encased in ordinary clear plastic bags. I'm no medical practitioner but my paradigm is admittedly Western. Needless to say I found that methodology to be highly incredulous---and still do to this day.

Interestingly, in a few short weeks that brilliant Eastern practitioner somehow managed to straightened out his allergies that none of the Western practitioners could manage to accomplish over the course of a couple decades. Go figure. There's still no valid scientific methodology for that zip lock baggie test that I can figure out. She sure did something right. And she did something that Western medicine is virtually clueless about. Because that brilliant Eastern practitioner has quite a following of satisfied patients.

Moral of the story: if Western medicine hasn't managed to sink it's methodological teeth into a health solution, don't think for a minute that there can't possibly be basis for validity. Results validate methodology every time IMO...

Rooster wrote:So does that mean when I entered the restroom at the football game last night and sm......... aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!!!!!!!!!

Yup! Reminds me of that old saying mothers typically impart: "Don't touch that! You don't know where it's been!" Well, in this case the molecules touch us and we know exactly where they've been.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3691966

Mothers' recognition of their newborns by olfactory cues.
Kaitz M, Good A, Rokem AM, Eidelman AI.
Psychology Department, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel.

We report that 90% of women tested in the present study identified their newborns by olfactory cues after only 10 min-1 hr exposure to their infants. All of the women tested recognized their babies' odor after exposure periods greater than 1 hr. The robust results are due in part to the implementation of an initial screening phase in which individuals with obvious olfactory deficits were excluded from the sample. These results suggest that odor cues from newborns are even more salient to their mothers than have been thought heretofore.

PMID: 3691966 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

And infants respond to the mothers' smell as well.

One of the important things in many a child's teddy bear or "blankie" is it's smell.

Growing up into a distal world of words makes us forget some to those things - but they're still there...

O.

Babette wrote:Bret, being a FINE, UPSTANDING, MORAL AND RELIGIOUS GUY, will not be creating "ImPure Sleep Scents" anytime soon.

However, if you want a pair of my used panties, send $20 via PayPal to PantiesRus@impuresleep.com.

For the first 20 responders ONLY, I will send you, absolutely free!, a real live Koala bear! Just pay separate shipping and handling!

Or just spray your girlfriend's perfume on your pillow, like my ex used to. I actually caught him sneaking my perfume bottle out of my bag one day. I was kinda freaked out, until he told me what he was doing with it.

LOL,
Babs

And the winner of the October 2008 CPAPTalk Award for free-flowing no-holds-barred wit and humor is . . . BABETTE!