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Aromas while sleeping spark cognitive increase: study
- bell-cot 3y ago> When a fragrance wafted through the bedrooms of older adults for two hours every night for six months, memories skyrocketed. Participants in this study by University of California, Irvine neuroscientists reaped a 226% increase in cognitive capacity compared to the control group. Sounds straight from the Dept. of Things Too Good to be True. Also - "The study was supported by Procter & Gamble."
- camkego 3y agoAlso mentioned: "ML and MY have received travel expenses and compensation following presentations at P&G." It's worth noting that P&G sells an electronic smart home fragrance diffuser.
- h2odragon 3y agoYet another reason to have dogs on your bed at night. The don't specify the actual scents? Just that there was a selection of seven.
- ano-ther 3y ago> Individuals assigned to the olfactory enrichment group were provided with an odorant diffuser (Diffuser World) and 7 essential oil odorants (rose, orange, eucalyptus, lemon, peppermint, rosemary, and lavender; from The Essential Oil Company, Portland, OR) in identical glass vials that each fit into the diffuser. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2023.1200448/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2023.1200...
- darkclouds 3y agoCool I can go to bed with nosegays poking from my nostrils. Perhaps this is why people smelt posies during the plague because it increased their IQ, or is there some sort of antipathogenic effect in the odour?
- viciousvoxel 3y agoit's because the graveyards and charnel houses were overflowing with rotting bodies, and there were people were walking around with weeping, infected sores (buboes) -- it really stank!
- hkt 3y agoThey also believed miasma (bad smells) spread disease. They weren't a million miles away from the idea of airborne pathogens, but they were obviously incorrect about sweet smells having protective properties. That said, I've wondered if the flowers thing selected in favour of people with hayfever - if you're producing more mucus and expelling it, that might lower your exposure. I've never seen a study on it, though.
- darkclouds 3y ago> that might lower your exposure. I've never seen a study on it, though. You wont, the scientific community perfectly represent the Thomas Pynchon saying "'If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers" Besides (UK) Govt water quality legislation creates a massive health and cancer industry! Makes a mockery of the so called intelligence of the law! However serotonin does have a positive effect on the immune system, so is there an indirect effect smelling and seeing a nice bunch of flowers?
- Meculitio 3y agoUrgh no thanks. But I would be curious if a dog at that age is better or worse for the immune system.
- asimpleusecase 3y agonot too shocking. older people retain deep memory and they are often triggered by smell, music and other sensory inputs.
- yankput 3y agoSo the oils are really essential in the end?
- Clamchop 3y agoThey're called essential oils because they are the extracted essence of something with an odor, not because they are essential to us. Although I have no doubt that the industry enjoys this misconception.
- petesergeant 3y agohttps://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2023.1200448/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2023.1200...
- christkv 3y agoI guess it should be pretty easy to confirm or debunk.
- nntwozz 3y agoDoes it have to be a sweet smell or do all smells provide some benefit? My bedroom usually smells of farts; my own farts, my girlfriend's farts and my dog's farts. I wouldn't mind it so much if I knew it was helping me keep dementia at bay.
- bruce343434 3y agoMaybe crack open a window?
- nntwozz 3y agoI live in Sweden, it's cold outside and heating is expensive because of rising electricity costs due to the war in Ukraine. I accept the flatulence.
- oneshtein 3y agoYou may be interested in heat-recovery ventilation (recuperation). For example, you can buy this one from Ukraine: https://prana.ua/en/products/prana150ee/ https://prana.ua/en/products/prana150ee/ (not affiliated with them, just bough one similar unit for my own house).
- euazOn 3y agoHow much does a solution like this cost?
- oneshtein 3y agoFour years ago I bought mine for about $200.
- quinncom 3y agoCool! I never heard of this, so I had to look it up: Heat recovery ventilation, also known as HRV or mechanical ventilation heat recovery (MVHR), is a system that works by transferring heat from outgoing exhaust air to incoming fresh air. Here's a simple step-by-step process: 1. Stale air from the inside of a building is expelled through the system. 2. As the stale, warm air leaves, it passes over a heat exchanger. 3. Fresh, cool air from the outside is drawn into the system, passing over the same heat exchanger. 4. The heat from the outgoing air is transferred to the incoming air without the two air streams mixing. 5. The pre-warmed fresh air is then distributed throughout the building. This process ensures a constant, controlled supply of fresh air, maintains indoor air quality, and conserves energy that would otherwise be lost in the ventilation process.
- verytrivial 3y agoLiterally sponsored by the makers of Febreze™. When the LK99 mania has subsided, I'm looking forward to this being replicated by disinterested parties.
- qwertox 3y agoI would have upvoted you if it weren't for your second sentence. It surely is important to note that `The study was supported by Procter & Gamble.`
- verytrivial 3y agoA bit confused, sorry. Second sentence was a joke. But if the effect is real, it is a very strong claim and it does indeed deserve replication by people not financially vested in a positive result. And if it's cobblers, that also tells us something, but perhaps more about how science is funded, and how experiments are registered, and how result are communicated.
- hombre_fatal 3y agoWhy not critique the methodology instead of washing your hands of the paper? Corporations and industry are the only ones willing to sponsor all sorts of studies. Can you at least show us some sort of historical convergence rate of industry vs non-industry funded studies? Is it 10%? 90%? If you have such a fatal knee-jerk response just seeing the funding, you must be able to do that, surely. Frankly, I'd expect industry to simply discard studies that don't support their product (null or negative result) and publish the studies that do promote their products. Either way, I'm left reading the methodology no matter who publishes a study.
- BorgHunter 3y agoThe problem is, reading the methodology can only give you a negative signal or a null signal. If the methodology looks good, that still doesn't speak to the correctness of the study's conclusion, for exactly this reason: > Frankly, I'd expect industry to simply discard studies that don't support their product (null or negative result) and publish the studies that do promote their products. There could have been a hundred attempts at this study before, all with a negative result, and none of them got published because they didn't have the result industry wanted. We simply don't know. But theoretically, this is something peer review should be able to fix: Researchers without industry support should be able to get the same results if they run the same methodology. Until then, being skeptical of the result seen, even if the methodology is sound, is completely reasonable.
- TedDoesntTalk 3y agoRelated research from Feb 2023: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-28676-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-28676-z
- atleastoptimal 3y agoThis study purports an over 200% increase in cognitive function due to smelling oils at night. Either this is the dumbest scam ever or deserves the Nobel prize.
- tgv 3y ago8.5% better at reproducing German-Japanese word pairs, but ok. And not during sleeping, really. It's during learning, sleeping and testing that effect occurs. Ikd why the headline only mentions sleeping. Am I reading figure 4 wrong? It is known for a longer time that reproducing knowledge is somewhat better when it occurs in the same environment as learning took place. This might capitalize on that, but not really, as odor in learning and testing doesn't score well. But I agree, it might also be a fluke, bad design, drawer effect, etc. The statistics are not convincing. When I look at the difference between LS and LST on the last day, LST has a lump in the middle, which would mean most learners didn't benefit. LS is on average lower, but one or two bad learners in that group would account for the whole difference. So I'm not convinced. And then there's the "no significant differences in sleeptime" spiel, which is 100% bollocks.
- Modified3019 3y agoAs already pointed out by others >The study was supported by Procter & Gamble. Neat if true, but... I'm not holding my breath. In seriousness though, I've come across decently plausible information in the past that suggests that the volatile chemicals given off by natural wood has calming effects.
- coldtea 3y ago>I'm not holding my breath Of course! After all you'd want to take in all the aromas!
- balaji1 3y ago> In seriousness though, I've come across decently plausible information in the past that suggests that the volatile chemicals given off by natural wood has calming effects. That could be true, def can't be harmful. So I hoped people would lean towards natural aromas after reading. Like opening the window to the garden, more flowers in the garden, etc.
- qwertox 3y agoIt would be interesting to have a collection of aromas which one purposefully uses on different occasions. For example a tree-like aroma which you use only in the night after you've spent the day hiking, a lemon-like aroma the night after you've deep-cleaned the house, or a "fresh-air"-like aroma after you've had an extremely productive day. So you start to "Pavlov" yourself with aromas and then if one night you want to get productive dreams you use the "fresh-air" aroma, or the tree-like aroma if you want to dream of traveling. I wonder if this would work.
- smeej 3y agoI live in a studio, so I usually smell whatever I had for dinner while I'm sleeping. It probably couldn't hurt to get a diffuser and some oils. If it doesn't work, oh well. It's not going to hurt anything, and it's probably nicer than smelling onions. If it works by placebo, great! I'll take improved cognitive performance even if I'm tricked into it. And if it actually works, all the better! It reminds me of another study I read years ago that claimed people who were full-time caregivers could reduce their cortisol levels back to the level of non-full-time-caregivers by stopping every three hours to take three slow, deep breaths. Even if the study was flawed, and it very well may have been, there's no risk to breaking for 60 seconds every 3 hours to take 3 deep breaths. Might as well try it!
- technothrasher 3y ago> It probably couldn't hurt to get a diffuser and some oils. How did you come to the conclusion that this couldn't hurt? If you believe it could help, that means you believe it has a psychoactive effect and therefore you should also believe that it could hurt.
- quickthrower2 3y agoA few drops of snake oil in the diffuser for me tonight then.
- manmal 3y agoMaybe it’s not the aroma itself that improves memory, but a compound that comes with the aroma that improves nasal airflow, eg by reducing swelling or mild sleep apnea.
- coldtea 3y agoMore probably it's neither, this is a low effort, industry funded, sales-tailored research, of the kind that assured that cigarettes don't cause cancer because the tobacco industry funded them...
- jasfi 3y agoI've read good things about lavender oil aromatherapy preventing cognitive decline. Here's one such paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5424179/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5424179/
- IG_Semmelweiss 3y agoNot exactly oil, but just general caution of aerosols. I was trying to find information about lavender cancer causing properties and instead stumbled on this contaminated aerosol: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/lavender-spray-was-supposed-freshen-homes-instead-killed-two-people-rcna18136 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/lavender-spray-wa...
- lock-the-spock 3y agoInteresting but I guess the key here is that they sprayed something stretched with water. I'm not an essential oils person but I'd guess a pure oil would kill all bacteria. So I'd suggest better not to buy sprays, rather buy pure stuff and use a diffuser.
- alpaca128 3y agoThe last time I had some perfume bottles just standing around in the same room I woke up with the worst headache in years. I'll pass on this cognitive blessing.
- TheHumanist 3y agoBut you were more cognitively in-shape than ever before!! Right??
- joker_minmax 3y agoI'm surprised you could even fall asleep. Smells keep me awake, and I keep anything scented in my bedroom in a tupperware to keep it from waking me up.
- macrolime 3y agoThis is not that surprising. Sensory enrichment stimulates hippocampal growth and staves off cognitive decline. Long term sensory deprivation has the opposite effect. Getting poor hearing at old age for example results in a large increase in the risk of Alzheimer's disease.
- joker_minmax 3y agoI took one of my older relatives to an audiologist recently, and the physician told us that the memory issues are often because your working memory is working overtime to decipher every input and you don't get to commit as much to long-term memory.
- CrzyLngPwd 3y agoI'l stick with a sprig lavendar and rosemary from the garden under my pillow each night :-)
- mil22 3y agoWeak science. They ran a battery of 12 tests and looked for one with a statistically significant difference at the 5% level. If there were no actual differences, how many tests would you need to run to find at least one that by chance shows significance? If you run 20, you’d expect 5% to do so, on average, which is 1. Running 12 and finding 1 is not a significant finding. Then suspiciously, they found one significant result on trial 5 of the verbal learning test but little to no improvement on the other trials. That makes no sense. Finally the brain changes had a p-value of 0.046, which is barely significant by even the weak 5% threshold, and the changes weren’t correlated with the test result improvements. Perhaps interesting but only if replicated.
- yieldcrv 3y agothe only way to get replicated is by posting the poorly funded weak science version and having people talk about it maybe this could be a job for AI, the LLM reads studies and highlights ones worth replicating and funding, sparing the rest of us from every seeing them at all would probably be better than the politics involved with getting recognized
- freehorse 3y agoHave you ever tried to use LLMs to navigate around papers in academic research areas? They are not good in tasks like that, eg finding what is important, often they cannot even summarise papers properly, getting confused with causal directions and relationships between different parts.
- psychphysic 3y agoProbably not the aromas my partner is pumping out all night after a pizza or too much ice cream. Literally have woken up retching twice in the last week.
- RugnirViking 3y agoThat's way too much of an increase? Surely two hundred percent increase in cognitive capacity is unbelievable. It would be extraordinary