A very unusual form of therapy for anxiety – smelling sweat – will soon be extensively researched.

A preliminary study by European researchers found that social anxiety could be reduced when patients were exposed to body odour, while undergoing mindfulness therapy.

The preliminary findings, that have not yet been peer reviewed, were presented at the European Congress of Psychiatry in Paris.

“Our state of mind causes us to produce molecules (or chemo-signals) in sweat which communicate our emotional state and produce corresponding responses in the receivers,” lead researcher Ms Elisa Vigna, of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, said. 

“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.”

Collecting sweat

For the preliminary study, sweat was collected from volunteers who watched short clips from movies.

The movies were selected specifically to elicit particular emotional states, like fear and happiness, to see if emotions experienced while sweating had an impact on the treatment.

Horror movies like The Grudge and happier clips from Mr Bean’s Holiday and Sister Act were shown to the volunteers.

Once all the sweat was collected, 48 women aged between 15 and 35, all of whom suffered from social anxiety, were divided into three groups.

For two days, the groups participated in mindfulness therapy, but each group was exposed to different sweat samples, with the exception of a control group which was not exposed to sweat samples.

“We found that the women in the group exposed to sweat from people who had been watching funny or fearful movies responded better to mindfulness therapy than those who hadn’t been exposed,” Ms Vigna said.

“We were a little surprised to find that the emotional state of the person producing the sweat didn’t differ in treatment outcomes – sweat produced while someone was happy had the same effect as someone who had been scared by a movie clip.

“So there may be something about human chemo-signals in sweat generally which affects the response to treatment.”

Ms Vigna said it could just simply mean being exposed to the presence of someone else may lead to a better result, but that needs to be confirmed.

A follow-up study is underway and this time around, volunteers offering up their sweat will be exposed to “emotionally neutral documentaries”.

“This should allow us to tease out whether any potential therapy benefits stem from the unconscious perception of specific emotional signals, or whether it is simply to do with human presence, irrespective of emotion,” she said.

Study results

For those being exposed to both body odour and mindfulness therapy, there was about a 39 per cent reduction in anxiety scores after one treatment session, Ms Vigna said.

The group that was not exposed to body odour and just did mindfulness therapy saw a reduction of 17 per cent in anxiety scores after one treatment session.

The hope for the researchers is that the study might lead to a new way of helping people with social anxiety.

“However, we caution that this is a proof-of-concept study, which is why we are now embarking on a bigger study to confirm the findings,” Ms Vigna said.