Suffering from the winter blues? You’re not alone. With shorter, darker days and reduced exposure to sunlight during the winter months, the change in season can have a profound impact on our mood, with almost a third of people in the UK thought to suffer from seasonal affective disorder (SAD) at this time of year.
Add to that the stresses and strains of the ongoing pandemic and the pressures of today’s modern way of life, and you could be forgiven for feeling rather frazzled, with anxiety levels at their highest ever across the nation in March 2020 and staying at elevated levels ever since.
While traditionally, sufferers of stress, anxiety and low mood might have turned to prescribed medication or therapy, we’re seeing a growing number of people seeking out all-natural alternatives to address their woes instead.
As we become increasingly aware of what we’re putting into our bodies, we’re also extending the same approach to our general, overall health – turning away from painkillers and medicines in favour of plant power. In fact, one plant in particular that has been making a name for itself of late as the go-to natural tonic for a variety of different ailments is hemp – or more specifically, non-psychoactive compound, CBD.
Able to be legally purchased in the UK from health food stores and online, it’s quick and easy to pop in, get your supply and be taking it just a few minutes later – but does the easy accessibility mean that you should? With such a wealth of scientific backing behind it, and numerous ongoing studies being conducted as we speak, the results certainly seem promising – but Matt Spooner and George Carroll, founders of unique and ethical CBD brand Mood, say that users should take more care when choosing their CBD products to ensure that they are buying the right formulation to suit their needs.
“With CBD, it’s not always a case of ‘one size fits all’, and different symptoms and conditions may require different blends of ingredients and varying potency levels to see the best results,” explains Matt.
“Getting the dosage right, and taking it at the right time of day, are also important, so it’s wise to do your research before you buy.”
Avid CBD users themselves prior to creating Mood, both men are speaking from experience – and have poured their learnings over the years into the brand to ensure that they offer customers not just the highest quality products on the market, but the best and most effective all-round user experience, too.
The friends, who met some years ago at school, began their journey with Mood when they realised that beyond simply consuming CBD products themselves, they could help their family members by sharing it with them, too. Matt, who had spent eight years working as a carpenter on building sites, had been regularly utilising CBD to ease the aches and pains he found came with the job, while George, a salesman who constantly found himself under pressure in his various roles, had turned to the hemp product to soothe away the stresses and strains of the day and help him to sleep better.
Knowing how powerful the effects had been for them, they were excited to see if CBD could help their loved ones, just as it had helped them. While Matt’s mother has arthritis and was suffering from chronic pain as a result, George’s brother was recovering from a snowboard accident – and the friends knew that it could be just the tonic for easing some of their suffering.
But after starting off by gifting them some CBD products from existing brands they used themselves, they realised there was a gap in the market for something better – a CBD oil that was purer, more potent, and more effective, and a range that specifically addressed a variety of different issues, rather than comprising just one product attempting to cater to all.
To get the ball rolling, the friends decided to take a trip to the US in 2019 to meet local CBD farmers face -to-face and get a feel for the quality of the hemp they were producing, as well as scrutinising their equipment and extraction methods to ensure that they were up to scratch.
From here, there was no stopping them, and today Mood is proudly offering a range of only the purest, safest and most effective products on the market. Each has been rigorously tested using third parties to ensure complete transparency with customers, so when you shop with Mood, you know exactly what you’re getting.
For extra savvy customers who want to delve a little deeper into the science, the packaging of each of its three potent oil blends features a QR code which, when scanned, will take customers straight to the relevant lab reports. So, you can see the science in front of you, right there in black and white, before buying anything.
“Our goals are to simplify the industry, which has become unnecessarily confusing, to educate people in a way in which they understand, and reduce the stigma surrounding hemp and its relation to cannabis,” says Matt.
“But above all, we want to help as many people as possible overcome feelings of anxiety, stress, physical pain and insomnia.”
Matt, George and the rest of the Mood team have worked hard over the past few years to create a solution that can easily fit into everyone’s routine, and the brand prides itself on being the only UK CBD brand that offers the unique blend of ingredients within its formulae.
Designed to give you what you need at each moment of the day, the oils come in three varieties. The Morning Oil doesn’t just pack a punch when it comes to CBD, but is also infused with soothing ashwagandha and energy boosting B12 to give you just the right start to your day. After implementing it into your daily routine, you might just find that you no longer need those two cups of coffee to get you going in the morning, and the Morning Oil provides a gentle lift without the unpleasant jitters that can be associated with caffeine. If you suffer from anxiety, that’s the last thing you need, and the Morning Oil gives you all of the good stuff without the bad.
If you’re prone to the afternoon slump, then the Noon Oil could be just the tonic. Infused with fish oil and magnesium for a little pick-me-up when you need it, its pleasant orange flavour makes sure that it’s even easier to take.
And at night, you can unwind with Mood’s much-loved Night Oil, infused with chamomile and ginseng to help you drift off with ease, and a nice minty flavour, too.
“We offer a product quiz on our website, so that potential customers can find out which of our products will work best for them based on how they are feeling. So we’ve taken the guesswork out of the buying process for customers who aren’t sure where to start,” says Matt.
To see results, you’ll need to be consistent with use – but the good news is, it won’t take long before you should start to notice them.
“CBD is a compound that is stored in fatty tissue and is released gradually over time, which explains why everyone is different in terms of the timescale it takes to show results,” says George.
“We advise a continued incorporation into your daily routine, and usually within a week, you’ll start to see benefits.”
Mood’s well-thought-out range of oils certainly seems to have all bases covered, and it’s great to have some solid instructions for use when you’re starting out with a product such as these. And, for those looking for an even easier, and more fun way to get their daily dose, Mood also offers three different flavours of CBD gummies – Powerful Peach, Wild Strawberry and Fresh Apple – with each gummy containing 25mg of CBD.
As well as helping to address and ease a range of different symptoms and ailments with its products, the brand wants to go a step further than that and support its customers in other ways, too,
“Part of our mission at Mood is to raise awareness and spark conversation about common struggles such as mental health,” adds George.
And the brand also takes its sustainability credentials seriously, too, aiming to become a carbon neutral brand in the near future and encouraging conversations around the health of our planet and reducing our carbon footprints, too.
To support its efforts, Mood has partnered with both The Laura Hyde Foundation – a charity that helps to ensure that all medical and emergency services personnel have access to the best mental health network available. Offering clinically supervised, free and independent support to those who need it the most, the charity helped over 8,000 individuals last year alone, sending out over 1,200 care packages to different frontline workplaces and driving all trusts and workplaces in the field to have a mental health policy in place to support employees during what has been a very trying time thanks to the ongoing pandemic.
Mood’s charity partnerships don’t end there, either, and the brand is also working alongside Ecologi, which aims to empower individuals by giving them the tools they need to reduce their carbon footprint and help to fight climate change. Each time someone makes a purchase from Mood, a tree is planted to offset it.
So, these aren’t just big ideas with little substance, but ones that have been carefully thought out and addressed – enabling customers to shop with Mood safe in the knowledge that they are making an ethical choice.
Initiatives such as these are the little things that set Mood apart from the competition – and there are plenty more where those came from, too. QR codes on packaging to take customers to a curated Spotify playlist specific for the time of day, which accompanies each oil perfectly and provides a unique sensory experience for the customer. These guys really have thought of everything, and making taking your daily doses into a ritual such as this is bound to make the entire process more enjoyable.
Behind the scenes, there is plenty more going on, too. Recently, Mood launched an ambassador program to bring together a group of inspiring professionals in the health and wellness space to work alongside them. The aim is to help customers to connect directly with positive and motivational leaders who have the tools needed to help them further along their journey to improved health and wellbeing.
Aiming to use a range of media, including film, short videos, images and interviews, to showcase each, names are still being kept tightly under wraps – and here at LLM, we can’t wait for the big reveal.
George says: “Our first pop-up shop on Oxford Street in December was a huge success, and it allowed us to meet with our new and existing customers face to face and educate them – both about CBD in general, and about our brand. It was a very special moment, as we’re both so passionate about the subject – so it’s definitely something we’ll be looking to do more of in 2022.”
