A group of European researchers has shown that exposure to human body odor, extracted from other people’s sweat, could be used to improve the treatment of social anxiety.
- People who underwent a mindfulness therapy session while being exposed to human body odor showed about a 39% reduction in anxiety scores after a treatment session.
- While in the group receiving only the mindfulness therapy, only a 17% reduction in anxiety scores was seen.
- However, it may just be the simple act of being exposed to someone else’s presence that produces this effect, so these results need to be verified by a larger study.
Social anxiety is a common mental health condition in which affected individuals experience excessive anxiety about participating in social situations. This can affect interactions, whether at work or in social life, but also during everyday moments, such as shopping or going on vacation. It is then difficult to live one’s life without worrying excessively about contact with others.
In a preliminary study, a European team of researchers was able to demonstrate that social anxiety was further reduced in patients undergoing mindfulness therapy while being exposed to chemical signals from body odor. ‘other people, obtained from the sweat of the armpits of volunteers.
39% less anxiety due to body odor from human sweat
People who underwent a mindfulness therapy session while being exposed to human body odor showed about a 39% reduction in anxiety scores after a treatment session. While in the group receiving only the mindfulness therapy (i.e. the control group), only a 17% reduction in anxiety scores was seen.
When the results of the study are presented to the European Congress of Psychiatrywhich takes place from March 25 to 28 in Paris, researcher at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm (Sweden), Elisa Vigna, said: “Our emotions cause us to produce molecules (or ‘chemical signals’) in sweat that communicate our emotional state in order to elicit appropriate responses from the receptors. The results of our preliminary study show that the combination of these chemical cues with mindfulness therapy appears to produce better results than mindfulness therapy alone in the treatment of social anxiety.”
Sweat was taken from volunteers watching film clips
The study involved collecting sweat from volunteers and then exposing patients to chemical cues extracted from those samples, while undergoing treatment for social anxiety. The sweat samples were taken from participants who watched short clips of films chosen to elicit particular emotional states such as fear or happiness. This was to see if the specific emotions experienced while sweating had different effects on processing. Some clips aimed at inducing fear included excerpts from horror films such as The Grudge. Clips intended to induce a feeling of happiness included film clips like Mr Bean’s vacation Or Sister Act.
Once the sweat was collected, the researchers recruited 48 women (aged between 15 and 35), all suffering from social anxiety, and divided them into 3 groups of 16 people each. Over a 2-day period, they all underwent mindfulness therapy for social anxiety. At the same time, each group was exposed to a different smell, obtained from sweat samples from people who had seen the different types of music videos from the films. To compare, a control group was exposed to clean air.
A new way to help people with social anxiety disorder?
“We found that the women in the group exposed to the sweat of people who had watched funny or scary movies responded better to mindfulness therapy than those who had not been exposed to it. We were a bit surprised to find that the emotional state of the person producing the sweat did not differ in treatment outcomes – the sweat produced by someone watching a happy movie had the same effect on the treatment as that produced by someone watching a scary movie”explains Elisa Vigna.
“It may be that just being exposed to someone else’s presence has this effect, but we need to confirm it”she adds. “We hope this will lead to a new way of helping people with social anxiety disorder, for example by increasing the effectiveness of interventions or providing an alternative for those who are unresponsive to treatment”, concludes the researcher. Elisa Vigna warns, however, that due to the small number of participants and their lack of diversity, a larger study is needed to be able to confirm the results.
