Effect of Pleasant and Unpleasant Odor on Recovery Period after Moderate Exercise by Different Types of Breathing

Effect of Odor Stimulations on Physical Activity: A Systematic Review

“…As presented in Table 1, studies took place in Belgium [19], Iran [9, 12, 18], Japan [13, 16], Korea [14, 15], Palestine [27], Philippines [20, 21], the United Kingdom [22, 25], and the United States of America [10, 11, 17, 23, 24, 26]. Most of those studies were conducted on young athletes [10-22, 24-27] and the rest on adults [9, 23].…”

“…Five studies placed the odor right under the nose with an adhesive strip [11, 12, 20, 21, 24] while other used small tubes [13, 22, 26], nasal spray [19], scented headphones [23], nasal cannula [10], odor on the wrist [15], odor in a mask [9, 16, 17], or odor diffused in the testing room [14, 18, 25, 27]. The period in which the participant inhaled the odor also varied between three seconds [26] to five minutes [27] before the PA. Odors that were presented more often in those 19 studies were peppermint [10-12, 18, 20, 21, 23, 24, 27], lavender [9, 20, 21, 24], citrus [14, 16, 27], and ammonia [22, 26]. There were also jasmine [17], essential oil mixture [15], and forest smell [25].…”

“…Eleven studies assessed cardiovascular variables such as heart rate and blood pressure [10-12, 14, 16, 18, 19, 21, 23, 25, 27], and two of them had no significant results using peppermint odor [12, 23]. However, peppermint seems to increase performance (e.g., 400m run faster by 2.94 sec) [10, 11, 27], VO2max [18], lung function [27], vigorous feeling [21] and seemed to decrease fatigue [10] and physical workload [10] in five studies.…”

“…However, peppermint seems to increase performance (e.g., 400m run faster by 2.94 sec) [10, 11, 27], VO2max [18], lung function [27], vigorous feeling [21] and seemed to decrease fatigue [10] and physical workload [10] in five studies. Other odors, such as lemon and orange, improved the well-being feeling of the participant during the PA [14, 16, 27]. The study using nasal spray also showed a significant increase of 2.4% in the average power during a time trial task while using the glucose spray [19].…”

“…The objective of this systematic review was to document the effect of odors on various types of PA. Out of the 19 studies selected, 18 were retained after the risk of bias assessment, in which Esfangreh’s study was removed [18]. The odors from the most to the least used for the tests were peppermint [10-12, 20, 21, 23, 24, 27], lavender [9, 20, 21, 24], citrus [14, 16, 27], ammonia [22, 26], forest smell [25], jasmine [17], an oil mixture [15], a glucose spray [19] and any participant’s choice odor [13]. With odor interventions, five studies out of six showed significant improvement in some parameters (e.g., 1RM, number of repetitions, abdominal and back muscles strength, participants’ attention, cardiac output) during a strength task [11, 13, 15, 22, 24]; eight out of ten for a cardiovascular task [10, 11, 14, 16, 19, 21, 25, 27]; two studies out of three also demonstrated an increase in precision [17, 20]; and an increase in postural balance was also tested and reported in one study [9].…”