[HN Gopher] Simple fragrance method boosts cognitive capacity: s...
___________________________________________________________________
Simple fragrance method boosts cognitive capacity: study
Author : oblib
Score : 41 points
Date : 2023-09-03 15:16 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (scitechdaily.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (scitechdaily.com)
| ftxbro wrote:
| > It involved men and women aged 60 to 85 without memory
| impairment. All were given a diffuser and seven cartridges, each
| containing a single and different natural oil. People in the
| enriched group received full-strength cartridges. Control group
| participants were given the oils in tiny amounts. Participants
| put a different cartridge into their diffuser each evening prior
| to going to bed, and it activated for two hours as they slept.
| People in the enriched group showed a 226% increase in cognitive
| performance compared to the control group, as measured by a word
| list test commonly used to evaluate memory.
| oblib wrote:
| I'm in the beginning of that age group so I'm gonna have to
| look into this.
| rhelz wrote:
| I really wish I could just take these sort of results at face
| value the way I used to. But the replication crisis was real. It
| happened. No doubt its still happening. How could we ever read
| something like this and not just dismiss it out of hand?
|
| 226% boost in cognitive capacity? From a scent, delivered to a
| population which is old enough to be experiencing subtantial age-
| related smelling loss?
|
| Is it just me? If so what am I missing?
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| Garbage science, funded by Proctor & Gamble so they can sell
| snake oil to worried older people. Absolutely disgusting. These
| "scientists" should be ashamed of themselves.
| ed wrote:
| Yep! From the paper:
|
| > Conflict of interest > > ML and MY have received travel
| expenses and compensation following presentations at P&G.
| oblib wrote:
| I doubt that because I have personally felt the physical
| effects of fragrances, both good and bad, and they can be
| very noticeable.
|
| A 3x improvement maybe not really be all that surprising.
| Smell is a pretty strong sense when you're young but it doe's
| fade when you get older, especially after the age of 60. It
| may be rewiring/re-energizing neural connections that are
| getting rusty (so to speak).
|
| Should be pretty easy to test on one's self but you might
| have to be 60+ years old to get those results.
| gweinberg wrote:
| It's not just you. The result sounds ridiculously strong,
| impossibly strong.
| samstave wrote:
| Scent has a long history in the evolution of our memories.
| Remembering the smell of rotten food saved billions of lives
| over thousands of years.
|
| So if there is some neurotrophic result from any increase due
| to scents, then whatever it is, may be good.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| > Remembering the smell of rotten food saved billions of
| lives over thousands of years.
|
| Probably, yet somehow so many cultures still developed
| fermentation.
| effingwewt wrote:
| And thus, the spice must flow.
|
| When I was a child I looked forward to all the amazing medical
| breakthroughs that would come in my lifetime. Now all I can
| imagine are companies patenting them, stifling innovation and
| causing prices to skyrocket.
|
| Glad this 'article' is BS.
| cf100clunk wrote:
| Reminds me of the 1963 Czech SciFi film ''Ikarie XB 1'' and how
| deep space crew members used olifactory cartridges somewhat
| cigarette-like, triggering memories and stimulating earthly
| sensations. Fast forward to 15:48 for one of those scenes lasting
| about 1 minute:
|
| https://archive.org/details/ikarie-xb-1-1963
|
| It seems to me a market will be there if UCI's fragrance method
| is safe and inexpensive.
| morninglight wrote:
| "A product based on their study and designed for people to use at
| home is expected to come onto the market this fall."
|
| Obvious Question: Does Procter & Gamble have any involvement with
| this product?
| print_goto_ten wrote:
| They sponsored it
| Tao3300 wrote:
| They'd be stupid not to!
| levzhazeschi wrote:
| > The key analysis was a 2 x 2 mixed ANOVA with Time (Pre vs.
| Post) as the repeated (within subjects) measure and Group
| (Control vs. Treated) as the across-subjects measure. Given the
| matching of other variables including age, gender and years of
| education, we did not include these variables as covariates in
| the model. A two-sided P less than 0.05 was considered
| statistically significant. We used SAS9.4 for all statistical
| analyses.
|
| Can anyone explain why is it reasonable to assume normality here?
| terminalcommand wrote:
| Aside from comments claiming that the article is BS because it is
| funded by P&G, I can tell that aromatherapy works.
|
| Be scientific, try it yourself.
|
| 1. Get 100% lavender oil, put a couple of drops onto your pillow
| before sleep. Sleep and see how rested you are.
|
| 2. Get a diffuser. Set it up drop a few drops of lavender oil in
| it. Let it run while you watch a movie, read news etc. Feel the
| relaxation and calm.
|
| 3. Drop a few drops of peppermint oil into the diffuser before
| you do a task that requires concentration. Feel the alertness.
|
| I do not know about the health benefits, but essential oils work
| on me if I want to relax or increase my attention passively.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| More and more people are noticing you can actually feel
| lavender working, and there are studies proving it.
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17267908/
| https://factor.niehs.nih.gov/2019/9/feature/3-feature-lavend...
|
| This is a different (linked?) effect than what you were talking
| about but it's good evidence that some essential oils do change
| our bodies
| Tao3300 wrote:
| Anecdata, I've used lavender to deal with my misophonia in the
| past. A few whiffs from an inhaler after a trigger noise acts
| like a reset button for my senses. The tension and the touch-
| confusion lessen pretty dramatically.
| Scalene2 wrote:
| Someone will probably say that the (real and positive) results
| are due purely to the placebo effect.
|
| I say, so what, the results are real, who cares what the
| mechanism of action is as long as it's harmless.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| I think it's somewhere between real and placebo, if that
| makes sense. I doubt that any particular essential oils
| themselves actually have their own effects; rather they
| provide a degree of stimulation to the senses that is
| therapeutic.
| ggm wrote:
| Smell as a trigger for childhood memories in very old people is
| well known. All kinds of smells: horse poo for instance, woke up
| some very apathetic older people to talk about their memories of
| time before cars were common.
| jsocuwl wrote:
| Isn't that study financed by P&G aka maker of Febreeze?
| oblib wrote:
| Yes, Procter & Gamble funded it. That seems to like something
| they might and should be interested in.
|
| Personally, I realized at a young age I was very affected by
| some fragrances and perfumes. I got vicious headaches and felt
| sickened when exposed to some of those. It was especially bad
| at some stores that doused their store with fragrances, and in
| Churches where both men and women would slather fragrances on
| themselves before going there.
|
| They didn't bother my wife and daughters at all though and I
| finally had to demand they stop using them in our house.
|
| Because of that I learned to gtfo of places as soon as I walked
| in and smelled it. And I started buying my wife and daughters
| pure Rose Oil because that actually made me feel pretty good
| when I got a few whiffs of it, and they all loved that.
|
| Apparently I was not even close to alone with those adverse
| reactions because around mid 2000s stores began to quit doing
| that and I very seldom detect those toxins when I go in stores
| now.
|
| I never found out exactly what was that affected me, but it was
| sure vicious. I think it may have been some sort of "bonding
| agent" that made fragrances "stick" better and last longer.
|
| Procter & Gamble sells a lot of stuff with fragrances in them.
| It behooves them to make sure their products are not sickening
| folks and, if they can, provide some real benefit.
| rPlayer6554 wrote:
| I'm absolutely with you. Perfumes, new cars, things with
| artificial smells can really get me.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-09-03 23:00 UTC)