How The Ning Works

How the Ning™ Works?

The Ning™ works by using “Direct Response Olfaction,” the science of creating brain based biochemical or behavioral positive change through scent specific stimuli.  The Ning™ is a non-allergenic, medical grade plastic device with the appearance of a small horseshoe.  The Ning™ carries the scent of various powerful terpenes which can dramatically influence behavior.  

"The Ning™ is so small, worn on the septum part of the nose. Clear to the eye yet it delivers powerful lifestyle effects."

What is Olfaction?

Olfaction, or the sense of smell, is the most direct and powerful stimulus to positive biochemical and behavioral changes. It is far faster, more efficient and safer than light, sound, pressure, electricity, or ingestible chemistry.  Olfaction was a rather neglected area of physiology until April 2003, the results of the international Human Genome Project gave us the ability, for the first time, to read nature's complete genetic blueprint for building a human being.  The results demonstrated, to every scientist’s shock, that the sense of smell has the second largest number of genes responsible for its development and steady functioning (the immune system was first, and reproduction was third).  Then olfaction took on even more importance when in 2004 when Richard Axel and Linda Buck won the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for their studies describing the incredible, unexpected number of genes dedicated to olfaction and how the olfactory system works.

What is the simplest way to understand olfaction? 

Olfaction is the second most complex aspect of the body, so any attempt to simplify it does not do justice to its importance.  But let’s give it a whirl. The nose is commonly thought of as the main organ of smell, but this is not really the case. Olfaction does not begin at the nose. The nose (nasal passages) simply channels odor molecules to over 100 million sensing neurons that comprise the olfactory epithelium. Each olfactory neuron has 10-20 cilia which are hair like projections that capture specific odor molecules and bind them to their respective chemoreceptors. There are hundreds of different odor receptors, each with the ability to sense certain odor molecules. Research has shown that an odor can stimulate several different kinds of receptors. The brain interprets the combination of receptors to recognize any one of about 10,000 different smells. This binding changes the permeability of the sensory neurons causing a slow electric potential that travels on the axons of the receptor cells which terminate in the olfactory bulb, a projection of the brain that lies on top of the nasal cavity. From the olfactory bulb, the signal is transmitted to different parts of the nervous system, most often the limbic system in the brain, where various outcomes can occur. The limbic system contains the hypothalamus among other brain structures.

The nasal cavity and the mouth also have a backchannel connection, the nasopharynx, which travels up from the rear of the mouth to the nasal cavity. That is one reason flavor is so heavily influenced by the sense of smell.  Specifically, when you chew, or let food linger in your mouth, some odorant molecules manage to waft up the nasopharynx and stimulate the olfactory receptors.

 

"You can’t even see the Ning™.
Clear, septum like ring infused with terpenes!"

 

How does Olfaction Work?

Every day we breathe over 23,000 times and move over 400 cubic feet of air.  Aside from the intake of oxygen, most people associate breathing with ingesting micro amounts of toxins and pollutants.  While this is true, the reality is that in the 2 seconds it takes to inhale, molecules of odor also flood through our systems.  Many of these molecules are capable of triggering biochemical changes in the brain and body.  For example, in clinical trials, women who sniffed a specialized musk scent developed shorter menstrual cycles, ovulated more often, and found it easier to conceive than women who did not inhale this musk. This occurred because the musk scent has a very similar chemical signature to human steroid hormones that are responsible for those same changes. The list goes on and on including such things as increasing the relaxation response or improving appetite suppression.  We need only eight tiny molecules of a substance to trigger an impulse in a nerve ending.  An interesting fact is that most scent based biochemical changes occur below the actual threshold of conscious smell because it takes about forty nerve endings becoming active before we consciously “smell” something.

Whether above the conscious threshold for smell or not, odor travels through the nose and activates specialized nerve receptors which send signals to the olfactory bulb in the brain.   When the olfactory bulb is stimulated it sends signals to different parts of the brain which interprets these signals.  Then those activated areas of the brain send out signals of their own.  Depending on what area of the brain is stimulated and how exactly it is stimulated, a wide range of biochemical and/or behavioral results are possible.

What might be a surprise; however, is the indisputable fact that the fastest and most direct method of specific brain area stimulation is accomplished through “trigger scents” or more specifically, a broad range of highly specific scent molecules called terpenes. These terpenes are the basis for each of The Ning™ formulas.

As you can see from the above diagram, inhalation is faster than injection and far faster than snorting or oral ingestion.   Additionally, it is easy to see that inhalation is as strong as injection and far stronger than snorting or ingestion.

 

An Example of Direct Response Olfaction.

Let’s talk about appetite suppression which is the most important aspect of portion control and therefore body weight management.  Deep in the brain, as part of the limbic system, there is a small but critically important part of quite a few aspects of the body called the hypothalamus.  One small region of the hypothalamus, the ventromedial hypothalamus, is responsible for telling you that you are no longer hungry.  There are specific terpenes associated with a species of mint plants that have been proven to bind to the ventromedial hypothalamus.  When the odor from these terpenes travel through the nose, they activate certain nerve receptors which sends signals to the olfactory bulb in the brain. When the olfactory bulb is stimulated, it sends signals to the satiety center in the hypothalamus (the ventromedial hypothalamus) which interprets these signals.  The ventromedial hypothalamus then sends out signals of its own telling you that you are full and have no desire to eat.  

 

Here is the complete process which takes place after the inhalation of a Ning™: