“It's not just that the coffee-like scent helped people perform better on analytical tasks, which was already interesting," says Madzharov. "But they also thought they would do better, and we demonstrated that this expectation was at least partly responsible for their improved performance.” In short, smelling a coffee-like scent, which has no caffeine in it, has an effect similar to that of drinking coffee, suggesting a placebo effect of coffee scent.

— Read more in Wake Up, Smell the Coffee ... and Succeed at Business Traveler.

The nerves were rising, but – and I genuinely mean this – when I breathed in through my scarf I felt like my brain physically lowered itself downwards, like when you catch a helium balloon to stop it from floating off. By repeatedly inhaling lungfuls of scent every few minutes, I was gently pulled back from irrational, elaborate and dystopian fantasies to a very calm and sensible space, which kept my imagination (and consecutively I assume, my heart-rate) from spinning out of control.

— Alice du Parcq calms herself with perfume; read more at I spent a week trialling anti-anxiety perfumes and here’s what happened at Glamour UK.