Have Better, Sweeter Dreams Tonight!

What you smell may influence emotions in your dreams, according to this study:

When researchers gave dreaming subjects whiffs of rose scent, the subjects reported rosier dreams. The scent of rotten eggs, on the other hand, provoked unpleasant dreams, the study found.

“There was hardly any kind of a dream dealing with smelling and tasting,” he said.
Rather, the pleasant odor appeared to affect the subjects’ emotional ratings of their dreams.

Strong Emotional Impact
The sense of smell is known to be closely associated with the brain‘s limbic system, which governs emotion and behavior.

“If odor has a strong effect on your emotions when you’re awake, it makes sense for it to have a strong effect on your emotions when you’re asleep,” said Stuck, who presented the research Sunday in Chicago at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery. The findings have not been published.

Stuck and his colleagues studied the effects of rose and rotten-egg odors on 15 healthy women in their 20s. Young women have been shown to have the best sense of smell, they said.

Tubes were taped to the subjects’ nostrils, linking them to olfactometers. The devices pumped constant streams of air into their noses so a gust of odor would not wake them.

The subjects’ brain activity was also being monitored. When they reached the rapid-eye-movement (REM) stage of sleep, when most dreams occur, a shot of scent was administered via the olfactometer for ten seconds.

The dreamers continued sleeping for another minute until the scientists woke them up and asked them to describe their dreams and rate the experience as emotionally negative or positive.

Each subject was interviewed three times: Once after a rose-infused dream, once after smelling the sulfuric scent of rotten eggs, and once after no odor was administered.

The results showed that smelling roses gave nearly all dreams a pleasant tint, whereas the rotten eggs colored dreams negatively.

If you are the type of person who tends to have bad dreams, try an aromatherapy pillow liner from Sleep Scentsations! With our many scents to choose from, we’re sure you’ll find one that will have you dreaming of happy things  in no time!