WoW! Brilliant wife! Really fascinating. A long time ago I posted an experiment with mice that showed that just smelling coffee affected enzymes involved in antioxidant production. Smelling coffee is good for you!

I wonder if your result is related to that in some way. Or maybe it's a trigger like that found in the placebo effect.

Any ideas about why this works?

I thinks smells are much more important than we ever imagined. Heck, dogs can smell cancer. I wonder what our comparably tiny noses can accomplish!