(ORDO NEWS) — All people experience stress from time to time – since the 2020 pandemic, many men and women have been in this state.
When a person is under stress, a huge number of different processes take place in his body.
For example, his heart rate rises, various chemicals are released into the circulatory system, and much more.
Stress can be hidden from the people around you by putting on a smile and simply pulling yourself together.
However, there is no way to hide being under stress from dogs – this was proven in the process of a recent scientific experiment.
As it turned out, every stressed person releases specific odors into the surrounding space, which can only be detected by dogs with an excellent sense of smell.
Okay, let’s say this is true, but how can this discovery be useful to society?
Stress is the body’s defensive response to danger – to cope with the situation, whatever it may be, the hormones adrenaline and norepinephrine are injected into the bloodstream.
This phenomenon is especially important for animals, because after the injection of hormones, they have the strength to run or retaliate.
Stress was just as important to our distant ancestors, but today we do not have to be afraid of a sudden attack by predators.
Therefore, in most cases, the processes that occur during stress are largely in vain, simply warning us of some kind of danger, even a minor one.
As a result of the injection of hormones, a person’s heart rate increases and blood pressure rises. Breathing becomes frequent and very deep, and sometimes there is a spasm of the respiratory muscles.
From distant ancestors, we also inherited the expansion of the pupils, due to which vision is sharpened.
When all these processes occur frequently and for a very long time, people develop various diseases of the heart, blood vessels and other organs.
That is why frequent stress is considered dangerous for human health.
The fact that dogs have a keen sense of smell is not such a big discovery. After all, it is not in vain that they are used by the police to search for illegal substances and criminals?
In addition, scientists have previously proven that springer spaniels are able to diagnose malaria and other dangerous diseases like coronavirus – we talked about this in more detail here.
Recently, scientists set out to find out if dogs can detect stress. After all, if during stress many chemical processes occur inside a person, then a specific mixture of substances clearly comes out with air and sweat.
To test their hypothesis, the scientists assembled a group of four dogs: Treo, Fingal, Jester and Winnie.
Also, 36 people took part in the experiment – sweat samples were taken from them at rest and after solving a mathematical problem of increased complexity.
They were also asked to rate their stress levels. After trying to solve a difficult problem, they definitely had it, as evidenced by a rapid heartbeat.
After all this, the dogs were allowed to sniff sweat samples taken before and after the stress. To the surprise of scientists, they separated one sample from another without any problems – the accuracy was 94%.
It was quite surprising to see them so confidently tell me: “No, these two things definitely smell different,” said researcher Clara Wilson (Clara Wilson).
It is worth noting that dogs have no problem identifying stress in people completely unfamiliar to them. That’s the beauty of the results – scientists hope it will allow better training of dogs that are designed for psychological support.
The process of treating people for stress and other psychological problems is called canister therapy. In addition to stress, specially trained dogs are good at helping people develop their mental and emotional abilities.
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