Sniffing Sweat May Have Positive Effects on People’s Mental Health

According to a team of Swedish researchers, sniffing the sweat of other people could give a person a mental health boost. The scientists conducted experiments on human armpits to test the theory that the sweat smell activates brain pathways linked to calming emotions. The study is still in its early stage.

Sweat Smell for Mental Health

Apparently, some of the team’s early findings were presented at a medical conference in Paris, which indicated progress in the research. Exploring anything that can have a positive impact on people’s mental health is important. However, before accepting it as a fact, more studies need to be conducted, and more conclusive proof needs to be presented. The team of Swedish scientists currently working on the hypothesis that the scent of a person can convey their emotional state is exploring the possibility that sniffing the sweat of others could potentially help individuals experience the same emotional state.

To advance their hypothesis, the researchers have taken some steps forward. Firstly, they requested individuals to provide sweat samples from their armpits after watching either a scary or a happy movie. Following this, the researchers invited 48 women with social anxiety who were willing to sniff the samples.

An Experiment Yielded Positive Results

Some of the women were given real samples of sweat to smell, while others were given a placebo sample with clean air. The study yielded positive results, as it was found that socially anxious women who smelled authentic human sweat responded better to therapy. The head researcher of the study stated that there will be more tests related to sweat in the future. The researcher explained that sweat produced during a happy state had a similar impact to sweat produced during a scared state. This suggests that human chemosignals in sweat, in general, may influence the response to treatment.

It seems that simply being exposed to the presence of someone has the effect that the researchers were trying to confirm. They still need to do more to confirm this, but apparently, there is testing done now for a follow-up study with a similar design.