Why we use fragrances

Scent is one of the most powerful of senses. Smelling a certain fragrance can signal a season or a treasured memory or simply make a mundane task like cleaning a little more enjoybale.

Every day and night of our lives we smell odours, many of them go unnoticed, but they are there. Only when an odour pleases, triggers a warning, irritates or jogs a memory do we pause to take notice. Just how do we smell? How do fragrances affect us? The sense of smell is a remarkable and complicated sense, one which we are only just beginning to understand.

The evaluation of available scientific research suggests that while the aesthetics of the fragrance is a major reason for the use of it, the presence of a pleasant odor is not, in itself, sufficient to bring about positive changes in any social, cognitive, psychological, physiological or human performance domain.

There is another dimension to the sense of smell at the mind-body interface responsible for the observed interaction between fragrances and benefits. Certain fragrances will be appropriate in some contexts, but not in others. Understanding of this interaction is tentative at this point in time and needs further research and refinement. However, the overall evidence available supports the conclusion that fragrances can influence mood, memory, emotions, anxiety, stress, arousal, sustained attention and problem solving, mate choice, the immune/endocrine system and the ability to communicate by smell without knowing it. These effects can be elicited both by consciously and subliminally perceived odors.

The sense of smell plays a crucial role in our emotional well-being in this rapidly changing and chaotic world. Dr. Schiffman of Duke University said: “although the world will continue to become more technological, our biological nature will always be at the core of our lives. A life without olfactory pleasure would be an empty one”.


	Fragrance & Sexuality

In a 1995 survey conducted by The New York Times, 38% of the male respondents and 31% of the female respondents said that they use fragrance to make themselves more romantically attractive to others.

Manufacturers of fragrances continue to pursue the enhancement of sexuality through their products both overtly and covertly. Extensive research continues in search of odors that have potential as enhancers of sexuality. The concept of odors playing a potential role in human sexuality usually leads the trail to pheromones and their role in human attraction. The role of pheromones in animal behaviour is well established, but the picture in regard to humans is far from clear. More recent research suggests that chemical communication via pheromones may also occur among humans. Mounting evidence has demonstrated a human neuroendocrine response to pheromone-like substances even though the mechanisms for processing such substances remain controversial (J. Haviland-Jones et al presentation at AchemS 2006 annual meeting).

Androstadienone, a naturally occurring steroid, has been used by many researchers to demonstrate its pheromonal properties by moderately effecting psychological state or mood. To some, this material has an intense animalic musky odor. The US patent 5272134 claims its use in fragrances to impart feelings of confidence and attractiveness. It reduces negative moods in women and significantly increases women’s courtship-like display behaviour in social settings to suggest that humans are affected by pheromone like chemicals. A number of commercial fragrances have been marketed with claims driven by the inclusion of such chemicals but more work is needed to establish the phenomenon in humans.


	Fragrance & Hygiene

Fragrance influences health by making the act of cleaning more pleasant and rewarding. Though not proven scientifically, it is more than likely that a more pleasant cleaning experience, personal or around the house, results in more frequent and thorough cleaning, and, therefore, greater removal of microbes.

Research shows that a pleasant fragrance is of top importance in the consumers’ mind when purchasing cleaning products. Furthermore, consumers frequently cite a pleasant fragrance as making the chore of cleaning easier and more enjoyable.

In 1998, the World Health Organization reported that infectious disease is the number one cause of death in the world. Improvement in personal hygiene is a primary factor in reductions of death as better cleaning of hands, clothes, and public surfaces significantly reduces infectious disease. In very simple terms, good hygiene saves lives. A pleasant fragrance provides a motive and reward for more effective and frequent cleaning and thus a safer and healthier environment.

Fragrance is an essential cue to consumers of cleanliness. The “smell of clean” is very important in delivering the consumer benefit of clean. For example, the washed laundry should not only look clean but should also smell clean or else the job is not done. If a laundry item smells clean it will also reduce the instance of washing the item again, thus saving natural resources such as water and energy.


	Fragrance & Pain Relief

There is increasing evidence that odors may influence human responses to pain. Such findings have been attributed variously either to odors directing attention away from the pain or to the fact that odors may influence moods, which in turn may modify the unpleasantness or intensity of pain. Neither of these explanations invoke mechanisms that are specific to odors. But it is possible that the reduction in pain during odor exposure might result from the power of association of scent with, say, taste.

J. Prescott in his review on “the basis of odor effects on pain” postulates that many odors reported as smelling sweet is a consequence of their prior association with sweet taste. It is known that tasted sweetness can act as an analgesic due to the activation of an opioid reward system in the brain. Therefore, one may ask that sweet smelling odors may have been conditioned to activate these same opioid systems and thus acting to produce inhibitory effects on pain.

This hypothesis was tested by comparing the ability of odors with a range of sweetness and pleasantness to influence pain induced by immersion of the forearm in cold water. Researchers found that the presence of a sweet-smelling odor produced a significant increase in the time in which subjects kept their arm in the water. A pleasant, but not sweet-smelling odor had no similar impact. These results strongly suggest that sweet-smelling fragrance materials may activate opioid systems as a result of associative conditioning, such as vanilla!


	Fragrance & Mood Benefits

Research has shown that fragrances have significant measurable effects on mood states. Craig and Warrenburg developed a self-administered, quantitative method that measures subjective mood changes evoked by fragrances. They found that eight major factors of mood are affected by fragrance.

They include a beneficial effect on:

irritation
stress
depression
apathy

They also include the enhancement of

happiness
sensuality
relaxation
stimulation

Basically fragrance is emotional. There is an anatomical basis for this. The sense of smell is directly plugged into human limbic system of the brain. This is the region where emotions and memories also reside. Consequently, fragrance evokes a hedonic response of pleasure or displeasure and an emotional response of happiness and relaxation.

Manne and Redd used fragrance materials to reduce distress during magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Eighty-five patients undergoing MRI scans participated in the trial at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Patients who were exposed to fragrance while undergoing an MRI experienced approximately 63% less overall anxiety than a control group of patients who were not exposed to a fragrance.

The mood benefits of fragrances can have positive effects in real life situations as reported by Dr.S. Schiffman. It has been shown that the use of fragrance can improve mood in both women and men at mid-life. Feelings of tension, depression, and confusion were significantly alleviated by pleasant fragrance in female subjects.

Research on the role of fragrances on mood in a controlled laboratory setting were measured by Torii et al (23) by CNV amplitude, by Behan et al using EEG and Ansari et al using functional MRI. The relaxing aspects of certain fragrances were validated by scientific data. Also, Weigand and co-workers studied the effect of relaxing fragrances on lowering Cortisol levels and increasing slgA levels. These findings formed the basis of claims for fragrances used in relaxing personal wash products.


	Fragrance & Stress Relief

A significant relationship between positive mood state and health is now emerging. The immune and cardiovascular systems appear stronger in individuals with more positive mood states and less stress.

While more scientific studies are needed to validate that fragrance induced positive mood results in measurable health effects, it is suggested that fragrances should be quite effective based on what we already know about the effect of fragrances on mood change. For example, researchers have found that inhaling a relaxing fragrance ingredient speeds up the recovery of skin barrier function of slightly damaged skin. Also, certain fragrances may reduce performance-related stress as measured physiologically in lowered blood pressure, reduced muscle tension or reduced startle reflex.


	Fragrance & Work Performance

Fragrances can have a positive effect on the work environment. Recent studies have shown that periodic administration of pleasant fragrances during a sustained attention task improves performance. Professor Warm and co-workers measured the effects of olfactory stimulation on performance and stress in a demanding and stressful visual attention task. The odors used were muguet and peppermint. The former was known as relaxing and the latter as alerting. Both fragrances significantly improved performance in the test, but no difference in effectiveness between the two. Neither of these odorants had a significant effect on stress reduction while performing the task.

Further experiments by Warm et al suggested that this improvement of performance is due to facilitation of neural pathways invoked in the visual detection task or enhancement of the allocation of attentional resources to visual detection. Stimulation with peppermint was compared with non-odorous pure air and responses were recorded by measuring skin conductance and visual evoked potential.

Karamat and co-workers found that lavender oil significantly increased decision time in a computer-based reaction time task but did not influence motor time. It suggested that lavender oil has a central but not a peripheral sedative effect. Another test in a vigilance task suggested that lavender oil caused significant increase in reaction time, while jasmin absolute caused the opposite.