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by ibgames

EARTHDATE: June 4, 2017

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REAL LIFE NEWS: FIX BODY ODOUR BY SWAPPING BACTERIA

by Hazed

If you suffer from a personal problem that your best friend is too shy to tell you about, the cause is bacteria. I am talking about body odour – BO – and it’s the bacteria living in your armpits that determine how bad you smell.

In some people, the bacteria are so smelly that no amount of deodorant can disguise the whiff. But now scientists have found that it’s possible to replace your stinky bacteria with those from a less smelly relative.

Chris Callewaert from the University of California, San Diego, started looking into smelly armpits when he met a pair of identical twins a few years ago. One of the twins has a particularly pungent case of BO, but not the other. Callaewaert suspected the different personal smells might be down to the collection of bacteria living in their armpits.

To find out if he was right, he swapped out the armpit bacteria of the smelly twin, with that of his fragrant brother.

First, he asked the non-smelly brother to refrain from washing for four days – the bacteria in armpits lives deep in the skin, so it takes few days for them to be shed to the surface with dead skin.

At the same time, the smelly brother was given antibacterial soap, and told to scrub his pits thoroughly every day for four days. This was to remove as much of his noxious armpit bacteria as possible, leaving a clean slate for new bacteria to be added.

Then the scientists swabbed the clean twin’s armpits to collect his dead skin – now loaded with bacteria – and applied it to the armpits of the smelly twin. The result: the BO problem rapidly disappeared, and hasn’t come back a year later.

This procedure has been repeated with 17 other pairs of close relatives, where one of the two had a BO problem. 16 saw improvements within a month, and half had long-term improvements lasting three months or more.

This is very encouraging, and the team are now formulating a more general theory of bacteria that could be used in place of a bacteria transplant from a relative.

Meanwhile, if you do suffer from a BO problem, click the source link below to see a list of things you could try to encourage better-smelling bacteria in your armpits.

Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2120923-stinky-armpits-bacteria-from-a-less-smelly-person-can-fix-them/

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