Sniff this and feel good: male underarm sweat makes women feel more relaxed or sexually aroused?
Being exposed to the smell of a sweaty male armpit can make a female feel calmer or annoyed or awkward. Male sweat contains one or more chemical signalling compounds, known as pheromones, which can affect both a female's state of mind and her reproductive hormone levels.
Pheromones play varied roles in triggering ovulation and in sex drive. Pulses of this hormone released from the brain increase in size and frequency as women approach ovulation.
Researchers reported two years ago that men can tell by smell alone when women are at their most fertile. The had male subjects sniff T-shirts worn by women during fertile and infertile stages of their menstrual cycles and found the men overwhelmingly rated the smells from the shirts to be most pleasing or "sexy" when they had been worn during a fertile phase. The latest findings also suggest that if the active pheromones in male sweat can be isolated they may prove to be the basis of new fertility drugs or relaxant perfumes for women.
