The next time you're stuck on a bus next to a sweaty guy who stinks, please thank him for it. He's doing the world a great service!
The New York Post released an article about a new study found that getting a nice big whiff of someone else's body odor might help with social anxiety. Researchers in Sweden had 48 socially anxious women sniff samples of people's ARMPIT SWEAT. And for some reason, it helped! They went through "mindfulness" therapy as well, which helped a little. That alone cut their anxious feelings by 17%. But when they also smelled a stranger's B.O., their social anxiety dropped by 39%. So more than twice what therapy alone did.
It was a small study, so more research is needed. But they exposed the women to different types of B.O. for two days. And no matter what kind of sweat it was, they saw the same result. Some of the sweat was taken from people while they watched a funny movie, and other samples were taken during scary movies. But both types of B.O. seemed to have a calming effect.