from an email...
Male sweat relaxes women Men's underarms may hold clue to new fertility drug.
28 May 2003
HELEN R. PILCHER
Male underarms relax women and may make them more fertile.
Ladies! Looking for a way to relax? Then try sniffing a man's underarm. New research shows that armpit sweat calms female volunteers.
It also shifts menstrual cycles, so the discovery could give rise to perspiration-derived drugs to manipulate female fertility.
"The underarm contains physiologically active pheromones," says chemist George Preti of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelpha, Pennsylvania, who led the study.
These behaviour-altering chemicals - which are common throughout the animal world - can affect the brain, and hence our bodies, without our even realizing it.
For six hours, female volunteers were exposed to pheromones concentrated from manly armpit odour - mercifully masked by fragrance.
Levels of luteinizing hormone, a key player in the menstrual cycle, were monitored. Luteinizing hormone is released from the brain in pulses - these become larger and more frequent as a woman approaches ovulation.
Exposure to the male odour accelerated the arrival of the next hormone rush, Preti's team found1. The volunteers also reported feeling less tense and more relaxed as they sniffed. Both effects may be a throwback to our impulse-primed past, suggests Preti.