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Shift worker’s stress and mental fatigue is often higher than the non-shift worker. In order to relieve stress and fatigue, a variety of essential oils are often used by shift workers. Owing to lack of objective measured data of the effect on dispelling fatigue for essential oil, the reliability of subjective experiment from questionnaire has always been challenged. The purpose of this study is to evaluate shift workers the effect on dispelling mental fatigue for inhaling essential oil by using physiological indices including electroencephalography (EEG) and heart rate variability (HRV). The basic and ratio indices of EEG power reflecting the drowsiness and relaxation levels, and the variety of HRV reflecting the condition of mental workload were used to evaluate the effect on decreasing mental fatigue substantially for shift workers inhaling essential oils. Fifty-one shift workers recruited for subjects participated as volunteer subjects from a hospital in southern Taiwan. The experiment was divided into four stages before work, after work, inhaling essential oils, after inhaling essential oils, at each stage (office) job subjective fatigue rating scale and 10 minutes EEG and heart rate variability (HRV) were measured. Test results showed that day shift-worker inhaling essential oils had remarkable increased in the θ/α and (θ+α)/β, inhaling essential oils. For the day shift-workers, the effect on decreasing fatigue was better than that for the night shift-workers. HRV test results showed no statistically significant level, which may indicate that individual differences in the subject's HRV is too great. By individuals subjectively indoor (office) job subjective fatigue assessment scale, shows that the essential oil for day shift-worker decreasing fatigue after inhaling oils feel better than the night shift-worker. The study finds that the effect on decreasing fatigue for essential oils on day shift-worker is better than that on night shift-worker.
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