Can Stress Change Your Sense of Smell? How Work Stress May Affect Your Perfume

Labor Day is supposed to give us a break from work. Your nose may appreciate the day off too.

Stress doesn't just affect your mood, sleep or ability to concentrate. Research suggests it can also influence the way your brain processes smell.

That raises an interesting fragrance question: could a perfume you normally love actually smell different to you during a stressful week?

The fragrance in the bottle hasn't changed. But you might have.

Stress can change the way your brain processes scent

Smell is unusually connected to the parts of the brain involved in emotion and memory. That is part of the reason a fragrance can bring back a person, place or entire period of your life almost instantly.

It also means your emotional state can influence the way an odor is experienced.

Studies examining anxiety and olfaction have found that stress can alter odor perception, particularly when it comes to unpleasant or threatening smells. In some situations, odors may seem stronger, more negative or simply different than they normally would.

That doesn't mean every stressful Monday will suddenly ruin your favorite perfume. It does mean smell isn't quite as objective as we sometimes assume.

Your nose detects the molecules. Your brain helps decide what those molecules mean.

Your perfume isn't necessarily the thing that changed

If you've ever put on a fragrance you've worn dozens of times and suddenly thought, Why does this smell different today?, there are several possible explanations.

Your emotional state is one of them.

We already know that the brain can reduce its response to familiar smells over time. This is known as olfactory fatigue, or nose blindness, and it is why you may stop noticing a fragrance even while other people can still smell it on you. We explain that process in more detail in Why You Can't Smell Your Favorite Fragrance Anymore.

Stress adds another variable. Instead of simply becoming accustomed to an odor, your brain may be interpreting sensory information through a different emotional filter.

Then there is what stress does to your body

Stress isn't only psychological.

When you're under pressure, your body can respond with increased perspiration, changes in temperature and other physiological shifts. Those changes don't rewrite the perfume formula, but they can affect the environment where you're wearing it.

Once fragrance reaches the skin, it is interacting with a living surface rather than a paper blotter.

Your skin chemistry, hydration and other individual factors can all influence how a fragrance develops. If you've ever wondered why perfume smells different on you than it does on someone else, our guide to skin pH and perfume explores that relationship further.

So during a particularly stressful day, what you're experiencing may be a combination of fragrance, skin, perspiration, environment and perception.

Work stress makes this especially interesting

There is a reason this conversation feels appropriate around Labor Day.

Work occupies an enormous amount of our attention, and for many people it is also one of the most consistent sources of everyday stress.

We tend to think about that stress in terms of headaches, tension, fatigue or being mentally exhausted. We rarely think about what it might be doing to the way we experience something as small as the perfume we sprayed before leaving home.

But fragrance doesn't exist separately from the person wearing it.

The perfume you wear into a relaxed Saturday brunch and the perfume you wear into a difficult Monday meeting may come from the exact same bottle, yet the two experiences don't have to feel identical.

Smell and emotion have always been connected

This is also why fragrance can work in the opposite direction.

A scent associated with comfort, confidence or a particular memory can sometimes feel grounding precisely because smell is so closely tied to emotion.

We've written before about why scent has such a powerful relationship with memory and emotion. A few molecules in the air can bring back details your conscious mind hasn't thought about in years.

That emotional connection is part of what makes perfume different from so many other things we wear.

You're not simply smelling it. You're experiencing it through everything else happening around you.

So should you judge a fragrance on a stressful day?

Probably not from one wear alone.

If you're testing a new fragrance, give it more than one day and more than one environment before deciding how you feel about it.

Wear it when you're at home. Wear it to work. Try it on a quiet weekend. Notice how it develops several hours after the first spray.

That gives you a better idea of how the fragrance actually fits into your life instead of judging it during one particular moment.

Perfume is personal partly because the person wearing it is never exactly the same from day to day.

Maybe your nose needs a day off too

If your favorite perfume has ever smelled strangely off during an especially stressful week, you may not have imagined the difference.

The fragrance may be exactly where you left it.

You might be the variable that changed.

And coming out of Labor Day, that feels like one more reminder that stepping away from work occasionally isn't indulgent. Your inbox will survive.

Apparently, your nose has been working overtime too.