Stay Alert

Boost Focus, Attention and Memory and Stay Alert

Memory is the scribe of the soul - Aristotle

Help boost your most precious asset that makes you – your memory. This is our BrainBalm to boost focus, attention and memory and to keep you alert. With science based memory enhancing bioactive ingredients, it’s fresh woody essence clears and stimulates the mind.

Containing sage, kalonji, rosemary and melissa, plant medicines that have clinical research to show they improve cognitive performance and concentration, including word recall.

The bioactive ingredients are absorbed on topical application and inhalation. 1,8-cineole, pinene and borneol increase our brain signal for attention and memory, acetylcholine. This neurotransmitter naturally decreases as we age and in Alzheimer's. But science is now showing that there are plant medicines that can help.

Help maintain and improve attention and memory by using Alert Facial Treatment every morning and use the concentrated Alert Pulse-Point Treatment as required during the day. Use before a meeting, presentation, study, test, exam or sports competition to rapidly improve focus - just apply like a perfume oil. Use when studying and training, then apply just before the test, assessment or exam.

Not getting enough sleep has been shown to affect our memory, so we have launched our Sleep BrainBalm alongside Alert BrainBalm – the bioactive ingredients in Sleep have science to show they naturally boost the length and quality of sleep.

Memory is essential to our conscious experience. It makes us who we are. We all need be alert, focused and to maintain good memory. Follow our blog to find out more things you can do to maintain and improve your memory.

Facial Treatment

Our 100% natural light-weight skin-quenching Facial Treatments are rapidly absorbed. Active ingredients deeply nourish, protect and maintain skin homeostasis and moisture around the clock. As part of your daily skincare routine. The result is healthier radiant visibly-glowing skin.

Hand-blended with topically absorbed bioactive brain-boosting ingredients and pure, more nutritive, cold-pressed oils our facial treatments boost your mind and your skin.

Used daily, plant-based oils are more moisturising than creams and result in balanced, rehydrated skin that is smoother and has a more even skin tone.

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Pulse-Point Treatment

Like the Facial Treatment, our concentrated Pulse-Point Treatment is small enough to carry with you to meetings, study, exams, sport competitions or to bring travelling.

Feel more alert on the move with our topical, fast-absorbing bioactive treatment.

The aromatic volatile ingredients work rapidly when inhaled or applied to the skin. These ingredients have a more natural affinity to the skin and the bioactive terpenoids are shown to transport across the oil-permeable epidermis to enter the bloodstream and to reach the brain to boost alertness and word recall.

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Ingredients Breakdown

Spanish Sage

A front-runner plant to improve memory. The science behind this plant's ingredients is the reason why BrainBalms exists. This is the main active ingredient in our signature oil Alert. Spanish sage was the focus of the BrainBalms founder’s scientific studies at King’s College London and she is still investigating what it does to enhance the brain and memory in clinical trials 20 years later.

European sage has a long history of use for maintaining health, as a cure-all and for looking after the brain. So say the proverbs: Why should a man die whilst sage grows in his garden? & He that would live for aye, must eat sage in May. Compounds in sage can vary from 10% to 40% over the season and in May one of the compounds that boosts the brain's memory signal, 1,8-cineole, is at its highest.

European sage is a registered Traditional Herbal Medicine product, which has now has clinical science to show it improves memory, alertness and cognition, in the young, old and in Alzheimer’s. Our brain's memory signal decreases as we age, and especially in Alzheimer's. Bioactive ingredients in sage like cineole and pinene boost this memory signal, by blocking its removal in our brain cells.

Bioactives in the volatile oil, and other ingredients in the whole extract, not only boost our brain's memory signal but in controlled clinical trials sage also elevates mood, calmness and contentedness. On top of this, sage is a key antibacterial plant and is also oestrogenic and lowers inflammation, free radical damage and protein plaques in the ageing brain (anti-amyloid). All these actions have evidence to show they may help protect the brain and memory.

Finding ways to get a regular amount of the right plant's bioactive phytochemicals into the body may offer long-term protection for the ageing brain.

Kalonji

Valued historically in Arabic culture as a panacea and to improve memory, kalonji, black cumin or nigella has an extraordinary range of health benefits, many of which are backed by science. Controlled clinical trials (RCT's) show extracts of this plant enhance cognition and verbal learning, as well as improving mood and lowering anxiety.

Like European sage, kalonji's chemical ingredients boosts the brain’s memory signal, acetylcholine .But this one also affects the excitatory signal, glutamate. The volatile oil contains the memory boosting pinenes and carvacrol - also shown to be neuroprotective.

Rosemary

Another memory plant medicine that has science to show it enhances memory function. Ancient Greeks gave it to students to improve memory. Celebrated doctor of divinity Roger Hacket: “It overtoppeth all the flowers in the garden, boasting man’s rule. It helpeth the brain, strengtheneth the memorie, and is very medicinable for the head.” Clinical studies today show exactly how rosemary extract strengthens attention and memory, in students, adults and the elderly.

Research at the University of Northumbria England show the volatile oil boosts memory by 15 per cent in over 65 year olds and that it improves the recall of events in the future by 70 per cent. Rosemary enhances blood capillary flow and, like European sage, boosts the brain's memory signal, acetylcholine. It also acts on nicotine-like signals that increase attention. As well asl this, it is antioxidant, anti-amyloid, neuroprotective and acts on the brain's mood and well-being brain signals dopamine and serotonin. In fruit flies it extends life span. Camphor, cineole and borneol are some of the topically absorbed ingredients in the volatile oil which increase the memory signal acetylcholine.

Melissa

This lemony plant, also called lemon balm, is shown by scientific research to have benefits for anxiety, mood, sleep and pain, as well as improve memory and enhance cognition.

Seventeenth-century herbalist John Evelyn: “Balm is sovereign for the brain, strengthening the memory and powerfully chasing away melancholy.” In combination with the calming plant medicine valerian it lowers hyperactivity, concentration difficulties and impulsiveness in observational trials in primary school children.

Melissa extracts are shown to improve cognitive processing, memory and attention in healthy adults and in Alzheimer’s in clinical trials (RCT's). Its bioactive compounds act on various brain signals including the one for attention and memory (muscarinic and nicotinic receptors for acetylcholine) and the calming GABA signal. Melissa is also neuroprotective and lowers inflammation and oxidation in lab studies. Polyphenols, like rosmarinic and caffeic acids, and flavonoids such as luteolin, which are present in the whole plant extract, are also important.

Lemon balm is great in salads and makes a delicious fresh tea and is easy to grow.