Do Carpets Alleviate Stress?
,
Abstract
Background: Owing to increased complexity in the evolution of society, stress has become an important public health problem, and is responsible for more than 30 types of diseases. Most of the research on stress conducted to date has focused on physical and psychological aspects; however, there are very few reports about the association between psychological stress and elements within the residential environment, such as the home, room, and furniture. Therefore, in this study, we focused on the effects of indoor flooring in the residential environment on stress, as flooring is a feature that the human body is in contact with for long periods of time. We objectively measured the extent of psychological stress perceived while walking on carpeting and on wood flooring.
Methods: Forty-two healthy subjects were recruited for this study, and were asked to walk on carpeting and wood flooring for 10 min each. Their electroencephalogram (EEG) and skin impedance values were measured for each task.
Results: The α-wave content percentage in EEG data and skin impedance values were significantly higher just after walking on carpet than just after walking on wood flooring.
Conclusion: Walking on carpeting induces less stress than walking on wood flooring.
Tabibian A, Tabibian JH, Beckman LJ, Raf-fals LL, Papadakis KA, Kane SV (2015). Predictors of health-related quality of life and adherence in Crohn’s disease and ul-cerative colitis: implica¬tions for clinical management. Dig Dis Sci, 60 (5): 1366–74.
De Brouwer SJ, van Middendorp H, Storm-ink C, Kraaimaat FW, Joosten I, Radstake TR (2014). Immune responses to stress in rheumatoid ar¬thritis and psoriasis. Rheuma-tology, 53(10): 1844–8.
Orji F (2014). The influence of psychological fac¬tors in Meniere’s disease. Ann Med Health Sci Res, 4(1): 3–7.
Evans GW, Wells NM, Chan HYE, Saltzman H (2000). Housing quality and mental health. J Consult Clin Psychol, 68(1): 526–30.
Gifford R, Lacombe C (2006) Housing quali-ty and children’s socioemotional health. J Housing Built Environ, 21(1): 177–89.
Harris DD (2015). The influence of flooring on en¬vironmental stressors: a study of three flooring materials in a hospital. HERD, 8(3): 9–29.
Costanzo LS (2007). Physiology, 3rd ed. Saun-ders: Elsevier Inc.
Guyton AC, Hall JE (2006). Textbook of medical phys¬iology, 11th ed. Saunders: Elsevier Inc.
Barrett KE, Barman SM, Boitano S, Brooks HL (2012). Ganong’s review of medical physiolo-gy, 24th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill Com. Inc.
Muroishi K, Nakada O, Fujita T, Nogata F (2012). Effectiveness of a rating scale for emotional re¬laxation measured by skin impedance. Proceed¬ings of the 43rd Sym-posium on Stress-strain Measurement and Strength Evaluation 2012.
Ishibashi M, Akiyoshi H, Iseri T, Ohashi F (2013). Skin conductance reflects drug-induced changes in blood levels of corti-sol, adrenaline and noradrenaline in dogs. J Vet Med Sci, 75(6): 809–13.
Steptoe A, Greer K (1980). Relaxation and skin conductance feedback in the control of reac¬tions to cognitive tasks. Biol Psychol, 10(2): 127–38.
Nishifuji S (2011). EEG recovery enhanced by acute aerobic exercise after performing mental task with listening to unpleasant sound. Conf Proc IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc, 2011: 3837–40.
Ganpat TS, Nagendra HR, Muralidhar K (2011). Effects of yoga on brain wave co-herence in ex¬ecutives. Indian J Physiol Phar-macol, 55(4): 304–8.
Wu JJ, Cui Y, Yang YS, Kang MS, Jung SC, Park HK (2014). Modulatory effects of aromather¬apy massage intervention on electroencephalo¬gram, psychological as-sessments, salivary corti¬sol and plasma brain-derived neurotrophic fac¬tor. Comple-ment Ther Med, 22(3): 456–62.
Munch M, Silva EJ, Ronda JM, Czeisler CA, Duffy JF (2010). EEG sleep spectra in older adults across all circadian phases during NREM sleep. Sleep, 33(3): 389–401.
Fujita T, Fujii Y, Okada SF, Miyauchi A, Tak-agi Y (2001). Fall of skin impedance and bone and joint pain. J Bone Miner Metab, 19(1): 175–9.
Fujita T, Ohue M, Fujii Y, Miyauchi A, Takagi Y (2009). Comparison of the analgesic ef-fects of bisphosphonates: etidronate, alendronate and risedronate by electro-algometry utilizing the fall of skin imped-ance. J Bone Miner Metab, 27(2): 234–9.
Fujita T, Ohue M, Fujii Y, Jotoku T, Miyauchi A, Takagi Y (2013). Prompt analgesic ef-fect of an¬tihistaminic diphenhydramine ointment on bone-joint-muscle pain as as-sessed by skin im¬pedance. Pharmacology, 92(3-4): 158–66.
Japan Statistical Yearbook 2015. Available from: http://www.stat.go.jp/english/data/nenkan/
Winkins A (2005). Wall-to-wall carpeting is better. Allergie Konkret, 2005;2: 16–8.
Carpet & Rug Institute (2000). Acoustical charac¬teristics of carpet. CRI Technical Bulle-tin, 2: 1–8.
Berry MA (2004). Carpet and high perfor-mance schools. AATCC Review, 2: 1–17.
| Files | ||
| Issue | Vol 45 No 6 (2016) | |
| Section | Original Article(s) | |
| Keywords | ||
| Stress Carpeting Wood flooring EEG Skin impedance Plantar aspect | ||
| Rights and permissions | |
|
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. |
