In most animals, body odor intensifies in moments of stress and danger. Humans
Sebaceous and apocrine glands become active at puberty. This, as well as many apocrine glands being close to the sex organs, points to a role related to mating. Compared to other primates, humans have extensive axillary hair and have many odor producing sources, in particular many apocrine glands. In women, the sense of olfaction is strongest around the time of ovulation, significantly stronger than during other phases of the menstrual cycle and also stronger than the sense in males.Humans can olfactorily detect blood-related kin. Mothers can identify by body odor their biological children, but not their stepchildren. Preadolescent children can olfactorily detect their full siblings, but not half-siblings or step-siblings, and this might explain incest avoidance and the Westermarck effect. Babies can recognize their mothers by smell while mothers, fathers, and other relatives can identify a baby by smell.Humans have few olfactory receptor cells compared to dogs and few functional olfactory receptor genes compared to rats. This is in part due to a reduction of the size of the snout in order to achieve depth perception as well as other changes related to bipedalism. However, it has been argued that humans may have larger brain areas associated with olfactory perception compared to other species.Studies have suggested that people might be using odor cues associated with the immune system to select mates.
Of the observed differences, they were found to vary with ethnic origin, but not entirely with ABCC11 genotype.It has been noted that there is currently no evidence that sweat secretion glands nor sweat production varies across ethnicities. One large study failed to find any significant differences across ethnicity in residual compounds on the skin, including those located in sweat. If there were observed ethnic variants in skin odor, one would find sources to be much more likely in diet, hygiene, microbiome, and other environmental factors.Research has indicated a strong association between people with axillary osmidrosis and the ABCC11-genotypes GG or GA at the SNP site (rs17822931) in comparison to the genotype AA. * ND indicates that no detectable peak is found on the [M+H]+ ion trace of the selected analyte at the correct retention time. * HMHA: 3-hydroxy-3-methyl-hexanoic acid; 3M2H: (E)-3-methyl-2-hexenoic acid; 3M3SH: 3-methyl-3-sulfanylhexan-1-ol. Alterations
Body odor may be reduced or prevented or even aggravated by using deodorants, antiperspirants, disinfectants, underarm liners, triclosan, special soaps or foams with antiseptic plant extracts such as ribwort and liquorice, chlorophyllin ointments and sprays topically, and chlorophyllin supplements internally. Although body odor is commonly associated with hygiene practices, its presentation can be affected by changes in diet as well as the other factors. Skin spectrophotometry analysis found that males who consumed more fruits and vegetables were significantly associated with more pleasant smelling sweat, which was described as "floral, fruity, sweet and medicinal qualities". Industry
As many as 90% of Americans and 92% of teenagers use antiperspirants or deodorants.