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We admit we didn't see it coming: Swedish researchers claim in a new study that smelling other people's body odor, or in less washed-out words - their sweat - may be useful in treating social anxiety.

The researchers began tests with volunteers in a study whose findings were presented this week at a medical conference in Paris.

Their hunch is that the smell activates pathways in the brain associated with emotions, offering a calming effect - but it's too early to say if they're right.

Why and how do we smell?

Babies are born with a strong sense of smell, with a preference for their mother and her breast milk.

Smell helps us humans sense danger and interact with our environment, as well as each other.

It also makes meals tastier and can trigger strong memories as well.

Fragrances are detected by receptors in the upper part of the nose.

These signals are transmitted directly to the limbic system, an area of ​​the brain associated with memory and emotions.

Sweat itself, by the way, has no smell at all.

The problem is with the sweat glands.

There are two types of them in our body - apocrine glands, which are found mainly in the armpits, chest and groin, and eccrine glands, which are found in the armpits and also in other locations, such as the forehead and palms.

After the apocrine glands secrete sweat, bacteria present on the skin mix with it - and thus the characteristic smell that we all know and don't really like is created.

Relaxing sweat?

A woman smears her armpits (Photo: ShutterStock)

How did the research work?

The Swedish researchers suggest that human body odor may communicate our emotional state—joy or anxiety, for example—and even trigger similar reactions in others who smell it.

They asked volunteers to donate sweat from their armpits while they watched a scary or happy movie.

Then, 48 women with social anxiety agreed to sniff some of these samples, along with receiving mindfulness therapy, in which people are encouraged to focus on the here and now instead of replaying negative thoughts.

Some of the women were given real body odor to sniff, while others - the control group - were given clean air instead.

It seems that for those exposed to sweat the treatment results were better.

Lead researcher Alisa Wiena, from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, said: "Sweat produced while someone was happy had the same effect as someone who was frightened by a scene in a film. So maybe there is something about human signals in sweat in general that affects the response to treatment.

It may be that the mere exposure to someone else's presence has this effect, but we need to confirm it.

In fact, that's what we're testing now in a follow-up study with a similar design, but which includes sweat from people watching emotionally neutral documentaries."

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• anxiety

• pressure

• sweat