Can Bath Scents Boost Your Sex Life?
Alone together can so easily turn to together alone. A romantic getaway with a private jacuzzi is likely not in the cards for now. Your bathtub, if you have one, may be in need of some serious deep cleaning. You can probably do a better bath and shower maintenance clean after a single deep clean, but that isn’t the issue here.
One of the ways that scented beauty products can help you live a better life is by connecting you back to your body and building deeper emotional connections to your loved ones. A better connection to your own body will improve your sex life with or without having a sexual partner. Building a nonverbal, sensual connection with a partner is critical for moving your sexual expectations out of your head and into your body.
Taking a bath is a luxury. Why waste the special break from obligation by overstimulating your sense of smell with a bath bomb or salts that are more marketing than meaning? Besides, you have more important things to be thinking about, like getting in touch with your body.
Getting a simple answer on what scents will support a relaxed sense of intimacy and connection with the body and others is not easy. Human sexuality is complicated. Studies often focus on specific types of sexual disfunction, such as among menopausal women or older men with erectile dysfunction. If you search online, you will find all kinds of nonsense about exotic herbal treatments to boost your libido.
The Mayo Clinic website, which is our go-to resource for all health questions, has a good summary of low sex drive in women that defines hypoactive sexual desire disorder as having no interest in any kind of sexual activity, including masturbation; never or only seldom having sexual fantasies or thoughts; and, being concerned about one’s lack of sexual activity or thoughts. It is important to note that lack of sex or sexual thoughts is not a disorder; it is the distress that calls for help. Male sexuality is just as complicated, but most of the information one will find is on erectile dysfunction. According to researchers between 25% and 70% of women globally experience sexual dysfunction.
Talking about sex is taboo; your doctor may be unprepared to have a nuanced discussion. Specialists may be unavailable. Despite all that, it is worth it to talk to a doctor about sexual health before looking for a magical cure from essential oils or herbal medicine. There are any number of conditions that could be treated, such as hypertension, medication changes made, or psychotherapy explored before relying solely on alternative medicine. Physical or sexual abuse or bad sexual experiences in the past can cause low sex drive. The solution is not to push yourself to seek sex as a cure, but to recognize that you deserve to be healthy. You could be in a bad relationship in which sex is a bad idea.
Back to bath scents. Low sexual desire could be caused by a combination of poor body image, stress, fatigue, and use of stress-relievers that impair arousal, such as alcohol. As a complementary therapy, aromatherapy is uniquely suited to support healthy function of the nervous system. If smelling good scents relaxes you when you bathe, that is likely much of the way there to starting a bath routine that will better connect you to your body. There are a few other possibilities:
Conditioned Response to Scents: If you have a strong sexual memory associated with scent, smelling the same scent could recall the arousal from that memory. More on this below
Neurophysiological Effect: The scent could activate physical arousal by stimulating part of the brain responsible for arousal independent of any effect mediated by processing the olfactory signal
Direct Physiological Effect: The chemical constituents of the essential oil may have a direct effect on the sexual organs. This is possible, but the least likely of the three.
Lavender
Good lavender oil is affordable and easy to find. See our list of sellers with a strong reputation in aromatherapy and fine perfumery. There is no reason to buy a “lavender” bath product made out of lavandin when you can have the sublime.
In one study, researchers reported that out of 30 scents, the combined effect of lavender and pumpkin pie resulted in a 40% increase in penile blood flow compared to no scent. In a 2015 study published in Frontiers in Psychology, Cellaro and colleagues reported that randomly assigning participants to play the Trust Game in a room scented by lavender, peppermint, or no scent. The lavender scent led participants to exhibit more interpersonal trust in the game compared to peppermint or no scent conditions. The combination of increased trust, relaxation, and potential sexual arousal is a great combination for enhancing your love life.
Rose
Rose is known as the oil of love, used to open the heart to receive and give love as well as to soothe nerves and calm emotions. Good rose oil is more expensive than lavender, but still affordable to use for aromatherapy. A fascinating study out of Iran reported findings from randomizing young women with PMS to aromatherapy using diffusers to either rosa damascene, neroli, or sweet almond oil as the control. Both of the active ingredients were effective on some symptoms, but the rose oil was effective at 2 months at reducing psychological, physical, social and overall symptoms compared to the control. This is not the treatment hypoactive sexual disorder, but it points to a broad spectrum of activity related to sexual function
Scent Conditioning with Self-Touch and Masturbation
Now for the scandalous part. Essential oils and sexual health are understudied. Whatever is left to be understood, it is likely that no scent is by itself going to arouse you to the point you will want to have sex when otherwise you would not. But … scent and emotional/sexual memory are intimately connected in your brain. Directed masturbation, in the context of cognitive behavioral therapy, has been shown to be a very effective treatment for some forms of sexual dysfunction. This series of at-home experiences begins with directing positive focus back to the body visually, with touch, and ultimately through masturbation, including with a vibrator. We have not seen any research extending this concept to individuals without clinical sexual dysfunction or any that incorporate aromatherapy, although this sex-positive mindfulness study is moving in that direction. A recent study showed that conditioning could be used to associate a previously neutral scent with either a threatening or safe context and that exposure to this conditioned scent modified how participants interpreted facial expressions. It is not a great leap to see how self-directed touch combined with scents associated with reducing anxiety and potentially increasing arousal could be used to condition one to associate the scent with arousal in other contexts, like with a partner.
How Do I Use Essential Oils in My Bath?
You want to have enough control over the amount that you can adjust initially and then add more later if you freshen the bath. Here is where oil-based carriers (and perhaps even measuring by volume) excel. Fractionated coconut oil is always a good idea, but you could go to somewhat stronger-smelling oils here compared to oil-based perfumes. Jojoba is a lovely oil for skincare that won’t be too heavy when mixed into a bath. You can either buy a plastic squeeze bottle or use a leftover bottle (letting rubbing alcohol sit in it for a while will get rid of scents from the original materials as much as possible). You are aiming for about 5% of the total solution from your essential oil, or one part out of 20. You can divide the bottle in half with your eye, then half again to 25%, a fifth of that to about 5%. This does not need to be precise as you are not blending any scents and you will dilute this in a bath, so you don’t need to worry about sensitization at this level.
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio