A study – which is being presented this week at the European congress of psychiatry in Paris – involved collecting sweat from volunteers and then exposing patients being treated for social anxiety to chemo-signals extracted from those samples.
Anyone diagnosed with a mental health disorder can tell you that they’ve gone through an array of traditional treatments, but not everyone is lucky enough to find remedies that work for them.
Fortunately, researchers are always interested in exploring mental health treatments because of mental health problems devastating effects.
A post by The Guardian has been making rounds on Reddit/health that exposing yourself voluntarily to someone’s odour/sweat can have some benefits, including reducing anxiety.
The samples were from individuals who saw movie snippets chosen to evoke specific emotions, such as fear or happiness.
After gathering the sweat, the researchers selected 48 women, all of whom experienced social anxiety, and separated them into three groups, each with 16 individuals.
They all received mindfulness-based social anxiety treatment over the course of two days. Each group was exposed to either clean air or smell samples simultaneously.
The study found that women who were exposed to odour samples responded better to mindfulness therapy than those exposed to clean air.
In her research, Elisa Vigna of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, explained that an individual’s emotional state causes sweat to produce molecules that communicate emotions and produce reactions from others.
“The results of our preliminary study show that combining these chemo-signals with mindfulness therapy seem to produce better results in treating social anxiety than can be achieved by mindfulness therapy alone,” she told The Guardian.
But on a serious note, the idea of using odour sweat to help reduce anxiety is quite intriguing. Our bodies do have a way of communicating emotions through non-verbal cues, so it’s not too far-fetched to think that sweat could be a part of that.
However, the thought of purposely exposing oneself to another person’s sweat as a form of therapy may not be appealing to everyone. It’s important to consider that many people with social anxiety may also have sensory sensitivities, which could make this kind of therapy even more challenging.
That being said, if this method proves to be effective and accessible for those who are interested, it could be a refreshing alternative to traditional therapies. It’s always exciting to see new approaches being explored in the mental health field, especially since everyone’s experiences with anxiety can be so unique.
At the end of the day, it’s essential to find what works for you personally when it comes to managing anxiety. While it may not involve smelling other people’s sweat, there are countless other methods and resources out there to help individuals find relief.
