"On days when you don't want to train your lower body"...Smelling the scent of this for 30 seconds before a workout leads to 18 more squats [Health Talk]

[Financial News] An unexpected workout "cheat code" has been found that may help reduce pain and improve performance when doing lower-body exercises that feel like they are tearing your thighs apart at the gym. Rather than eating something sweet and savoring the taste, simply smelling it for 30 seconds can significantly increase strength-training output, according to an intriguing new study.

According to the international journal Frontiers in Physiology on the 10th, a research team led by Professor Mohamed Nasruddin bin Naharudin of the Department of Sports and Exercise Science at the University of Malaya in Malaysia found that smelling chocolate while fasting reduces subjective fatigue and increases strength-training performance.
To examine how olfactory stimulation affects actual resistance-training performance, the team recruited 23 healthy men in their early to mid-20s who regularly exercised. To maximize workout efficiency, they were asked to remain in a fasting state and consume nothing for more than 10 hours.
The researchers divided them into three groups and had each group smell for 30 seconds either melted dark chocolate with 90% cocoa content, melted milk chocolate with 60% cocoa content, or a water sample with no scent. They then had the participants perform leg extensions, a representative lower-body strength exercise in which the knees are extended from a seated position to lift weights.
The results were striking. Compared with the control group that smelled plain water, the group exposed to the 90% dark chocolate scent completed an average of 18 more repetitions in the leg extension exercise. The group that smelled the sweet 60% milk chocolate scent also showed an increase of about nine repetitions.
Most notably, even though the number of repetitions rose sharply, the participants did not report any increase in their perceived exercise intensity, or how painful the workout felt.

The research team said the reason 30 seconds of olfactory stimulation alone prompted the muscles to work harder, even without actually consuming food and replenishing calories, was that the two chocolate scents sent different signals to the brain.
The dark chocolate scent, with its higher cocoa content and stronger, more bitter aroma, strongly triggered a past memory in the human brain of having eaten filling food. In effect, it suppressed the appetite-related urge to eat and led the brain to feel genuinely satiated. As the brain shifted from hunger to a sense of stability, the body became more resistant to the physical stress of fasting, improving exercise performance.
By contrast, the sweet milk chocolate scent stimulated the brain's pleasure center rather than regulating appetite. Participants said they felt best when smelling milk chocolate, and the sweet aroma is believed to have acted as a reward signal that made the dull and grueling resistance-training environment feel more pleasant, thereby improving efficiency.
In other words, even the smell of food can trigger psychological and physiological changes as the human body prepares in advance for digestion or anticipates the state after a meal, and that may translate into the power to push past muscular limits.

However, experts advise that several limitations should be kept in mind before applying this effect unconditionally to everyday exercise.
This study did not precisely measure blood hormone levels or the real-time activity of brain nerve cells, so the physiological mechanism has not been fully clarified. In addition, because the experiment was limited to 23 young men, further verification is needed to determine whether the same effect would appear in women, older adults, or professional athletes under different conditions.
Dr. Naharudin, who led the study, explained, "If a familiar and appealing food scent is strongly associated with satiety or positive emotions, scents other than chocolate may produce a similar effect."
moon@fnnews.com Moon Young-jin Reporter