Why the MONQ Breath?


The Science Behind Breathing in Your Mouth
& Out the Nose, Without Inhaling

MONQ personal aromatherapy diffusers contain only pure essential oils in a vegetable glycerin base. MONQ users breathe the essential oil blend into the mouth (without touching the device to the mouth) and out the nose using a retro-nasal breath, without inhaling to the lungs.

Evolutionary biology suggests that the human oropharyngeal and retro-nasal pathway has adapted to optimize our sense of taste and smell while protecting the lungs.

  • “Retro-nasal, but not ortho-nasal, odors share processing circuitry commonly associated with taste “ (Menini, 2010).
  • Evidence suggests that humans’ ability to distinguish between specific and delicate food flavors depends primarily on retro-nasal smell. Using this as the basis for research, scientists found that there are adaptations to the mouth, throat, and nasal passages such that a retro-nasal breath traps food volatiles (such as fragrant molecules) in a “curtain” at the back of the throat, preventing transportation to the lungs, and optimizing the same volatiles in the retro-nasal flow to stimulate olfactory receptors (Ni et al., 2015).
  • According to Verhagen, there are three routes of odor transport, mouth-lung-nose, nose-lung-nose, and direct mouth-nose. A mouth-to-nose route is typical of retro-nasal smell during food intake, and it is the only route that does not involve the lungs. This is the breath MONQ recommends.

In addition to being the most direct and efficient route, a retro-nasal breath also minimizes sensory adaptation.

  • When researchers investigated the occurrence of sensory adaptation with ortho-nasal versus retro-nasal fragrance delivery, they found that adaptation occurred readily with ortho-nasal but not a retro-nasal pathway, pointing back to the evolutionary adaptations that have occurred to allow humans to breathe (and taste) without the involvement of the lungs (Pierce & Simons, 2018).

MONQ works best when users breathe retro-nasally, in their mouth and out their nose, without inhaling to the lungs.

References:
Menini, A. (Ed.). (2010). The Neurobiology of Olfaction. CRC Press/Taylor & Francis.
Ni, R., Michalski, M., Brown, E., Doan, N., Zinter, J., Ouellette, N. T., & Shepherd, G. M. (2015, November 24). Optimal directional volatile transport in retronasal olfaction. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 112(47), 14700-14704. PMC.
Pierce, A. M., & Simons, C. T. (2018, March). Olfactory Adaptation is Dependent on Route of Delivery. Chemical Senses, 43(3), 197-203.
Verhagen, J. V. (2015, August 1). A role for lung retention in the sense of retronasal smell. Chemosens Percept, 8(2), 78-84. PMC.

Disclaimer: These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.