Collection: Incense & Burners

Incense is psychoactive: Scientists identify the biology behind the ceremony
Religious leaders have contended for millennia that burning incense is good for the
soul. Now, biologists have learned that it is good for our brains too. In a new study
appearing online in The FASEB Journal, an international team of scientists, including
researchers from Johns Hopkins University and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem,
describe how burning frankincense (resin from the Boswellia plant) activates poorly
understood ion channels in the brain to alleviate anxiety or depression. This suggests
that an entirely new class of depression and anxiety drugs might be right under our
noses. The study concludes that the brain responds to burning frankincense, and that the
results appears to be of an anti-depressant nature.