How your partner’s body odour could help reduce STRESS: Study finds women are CALMER after sniffing a used T-shirt belonging to their other half
- The aroma of one’s romantic partner was more calming than the smell of roses
- Experts say women in happy relationships should regularly sniff their partners
- The Swedish researchers said this would allow them to benefit from less stress
- The effect only worked when the 34 women were happy in their relationships
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When one thinks of calming scents, the smell of a man’s body odour might not spring to mind.
But new research has found women suffering from stress became calmer after sniffing a used T-shirt belonging to their partner.
The researchers say ‘important practical implications’ of their findings are that women carry out ‘regular sniffing’ of their chaps.
The aroma of one’s husband or boyfriend was found to be more calming than the smell of roses to women in secure relationships.
It was also found to be more calming than the smell of a t-shirt worn by the participant, or the neutral odour of a freshly laundered t-shirt.
When one thinks of calming scents, the smell of a man’s body odour might not spring to mind. But new research has found women suffering from stress became calmer after sniffing a used T-shirt belonging to their partner
The researchers from Stockholm University recommend that women in happy relationships regularly sniff their partners to benefit from the stress reduction effect.
However, the effect only worked in cases where the women were happy in their relationships.
Among those whose partnerships were not ‘secure’, it increased the woman’s stress, rather than comforted them.
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HOW DOES STRESS AFFECT PREGNANCY?
Stress in pregnancy makes women more vulnerable to smoking and air pollution, research suggested in July 2017.
Highly-stressed pregnant women who smoke are significantly more likely to have low-birth weight babies than more relaxed expecting smokers, a study review found.
The combination of high stress and air pollution also increases the risk of having a low-birth weight baby, the research adds.
Senior author Professor Tracey Woodruff, from the University of California, San Francisco, said: ‘It appears that stress may amplify the health effects of toxic chemical exposure, which means that for some people, toxic chemicals become more toxic.’
Co-author Professor Rachel Morello-Frosch, from the University of California, Berkeley, added: ‘The bottom line is that poverty-related stress may make people more susceptible to the negative effects of environmental health hazards, and that needs to be a consideration for policymakers and regulators.’
The researchers analysed 17 human studies and 22 animal trials that investigated the link between stress, chemicals and foetal development.
Stress was defined by factors such as socioeconomic status.
Professor Morello-Frosch added: ‘While the evidence on the combined effects of chemicals and stress is new and emerging, it is clearly suggestive of an important question of social justice.’
A group of 34 women were tested in the experiment. All were asked to rate how secure they felt in their relationships.
To recreate feelings of stress in the laboratory, the women were subjected to repeated mild electric shocks.
They were then asked to rate their level of discomfort on a scale of one to 10.
Their physical reaction was also tested, by electrodes on their skin which measured their stress response.
The authors, writing in the journal Physiology Behavior, stated: ‘To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to demonstrate that the odor of one’s adult romantic partner helps to alleviate psychophysiological responses to stress, specifically among relatively secure adults.
‘Relatively insecure participants had heightened physiological stress response when exposed to their partner’s odour.’
They added that a further experiment should be conducted to see whether the smell of a friend, rather than just a romantic partner had the same effect.
But they add: ‘Notwithstanding these limitations, our findings may have important practical implications.
They add: ‘Partner odour is a stimulus that can alleviate subjective stress for most people, and indeed even psychophysiological stress for relatively secure adults.
‘Regular sniffing of one’s attachment figures could potentially promote health and counteract maladaptive stress responses.’
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