A study found that people with social anxiety had their stress reduced by exposing themselves to the sweat of others. If confirmed, this discovery would offer new ways to treat these patients.
Body odor would help reduce this mental health disorder. A study conducted by the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm (Sweden) revealed that people suffering from social anxiety saw their stress reduced by exposing themselves to the sweat of others.
This scientific work, which may seem eccentric, is nevertheless to be taken seriously since it is currently being presented at the European Congress of Psychiatry, which is taking place in Paris from Saturday 25 to Tuesday 28 March.
The study involved taking sweat samples from volunteers before exposing patients treated for social anxiety to chemosignals extracted from these samples. The results proved the benefits of a combination of mindfulness therapy, traditionally used to treat this mental disorder, and exposure to the sweat of others.
Convincing results that remain to be confirmed
For this study, 48 women suffering from social anxiety were divided into three groups of 16 people. The latter underwent mindfulness therapy for two days. In parallel, each group was exposed to different degrees of odor samples.
“The results of our preliminary study show that the combination of these chemosignals with mindfulness therapy seems to provide better results in the treatment of social anxiety than mindfulness therapy alone,” commented the principal investigator of the Elisa Vigna study, whose comments were relayed by The Guardian.
Patients who underwent a mindfulness therapy session and were exposed to human body odors saw their anxiety score decrease by approximately 39%. In the therapy-only group, the reduction in anxiety scores was 17% following one treatment session.
“It is therefore possible that the human chemosignals present in sweat influence the response to treatment. It may be that the simple fact of being exposed to the presence of another person has this effect, but we must confirm it, ”analyzed Elisa Vigna.
No influence of the emotional state in the study
For this study, the samples were taken from people who watched film clips chosen to elicit particular emotional states, such as fear or happiness. For this, different types of videos were projected to the guinea pigs in order to recover varied samples on the spectrum of the emotional state.
“We were a bit surprised to find that the emotional state of the person producing the sweat did not differ in the treatment outcomes: sweat produced by a happy person had the same effect as that produced by a person frightened by a video clip,” concluded the lead researcher of the study.
The public health system in the United Kingdom (NHS) described social anxiety as a long-lasting and overwhelming fear of social situations. To treat this disorder, only cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) with a therapist and antidepressants are currently used by medicine.
Scientific research conducted a few years ago indicated that nearly 12.1% of adults in the United States have suffered or will suffer from social anxiety disorder during their lifetime.