New study says that women’s armpit BO can be relaxing for men

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In a shocking new study out of Japan, scientists had men smell women’s armpits — and discovered that their body odor could subtly sway male behavior, even helping them relax.

But the effect only kicked in at certain times of the month, when the men found the scent more appealing — and the women’s faces suddenly looked a whole lot cuter to the guys doing the sniffing.

Previous research has shown that women’s body odor changes throughout the menstrual cycle, with men often finding it more appealing around ovulation, when fertility peaks.

But the chemical cocktail responsible for turning sweat into a subtle signal has remained a mystery, until now.

Using high-tech chemical analysis, researchers at the University of Tokyo pinpointed three body odor compounds that fluctuate throughout the menstrual cycle and spike during ovulation.

When those compounds were added to armpit sweat samples taken from women, men consistently rated the scent as more pleasing and the matching faces as more attractive and feminine.

Fascinatingly, getting a whiff of those compounds also appeared to relax the male participants, reducing levels of a stress biomarker in their saliva compared to a control group.

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In the Japanese study, nailing down the right chemical mix was anything but easy.

“Of particular difficulty was scheduling more than 20 women to ensure that axillary [armpit] odors were collected at key times during their menstrual cycles,” said first author Nozomi Ohgi, a graduate student in Touhara’s lab at the time of the study.

“We also needed to interview each participant frequently regarding body temperature and other indicators of the menstrual cycle in order to understand and track their status,” she added, noting that each subject took more than a month to fully monitor and sample

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