New Study on Love Hormone, Strangers' Sex Appeal, Why You? Why Him? Why Her?
Posted: Sunday, April 12, 2009
by Yangki Christine Akiteng
The Real People's Love Doctor
In case you haven't heard it yet, a new study on oxytocin, the so-called "love hormone" said to heighten that warm and fuzzy bonding feeling is out.
The study published in the journal "Hormones and Behavior" (March, 2009) was conducted on 96 men and women in a double-blind placebo-controlled trial. After participants got either a whiff of oxytocin or a placebo, they were asked to rate pictures of 48 men and women for attractiveness and 30 for trustworthiness. The participants were also tested for mood.
Angeliki Theodoridou, a psychologist at the University of Bristol, UK, who led the study says that "we are more likely to see people we don't know in a more positive light" when oxytocin courses through our blood.
The study did not examine how oxytocin affects social judgements, but Theodoridou thinks that the hormone dampens brain activity in a region involved in processing fearful emotions, called the amygdala.
Jennifer Bartz, a psychologist at Mount Sinai Medical School in New York says that Theodoridou's study suggests that oxytocin acts similarly on men and women when rating strangers, but sex differences could emerge in real-world situations". She also said that more research is needed to see if this is the case.
I'll leave it to you the reader to decide for yourself if this is the Real McCoy or not; if this warm and fuzzy feeling is "love" or sexual attraction; and if "more attractive and trusting" when applied to a total stranger adds up to romantic love or true love?
But while you contemplate these mysteries that have plagued even the otherwise intelligent, successful, advanced, "liberated" and "enlightened" men and women of our time, you might also want to know that companies are already offering oxytocin body "love sprays" that they claim will calm the amygdale causing you (and the person who sniffs it from you) to experience that "in love" feeling.
Can a love spray help your love life? Angeliki Theodoridou doesn't endorse oxytocin "love sprays".
Fortunately for us, we have an entirely natural means of producing oxytocin in the brain and into our blood. Nurturing another, caring for a pet, giving selflessly, engaging in affectionate touch, massage, meditation, prayer, worship and exercise produce more oxytocin receptors, making these receptors more sensitive to oxytocin's effects.
In other words, we produce oxytocin naturally when we love and are loved. The more love we give and receive, the more "in love' we feel. And if this latest study is the real deal, then the more "in love" we feel, the more our "stranger's sex appeal"; the more our "stranger's sex appeal" the more attractive and trusting we are to another stranger; the more another stranger finds us more attractive and trust worthy, the more "in love" he or she feels.
Oxytocin isn't just for single men and women looking for Miss or Mr. Right. From what I read about oxytocin in other studies, apparently women who report having satisfying friendships and a committed sexual relationship exhibit large jumps in blood concentrations of oxytocin (study led by psychologist Rebecca A. Turner of the California School of Professional Psychology in Alameda).
According o this study, women who describe having lifelong troubles with close relationships and who have no current sexual partner show, during positive moods, oxytocin concentrations no higher than those measured at rest.
Stress, anxiety, fear, anger, resentment, discouragement, desperation, depression, emotional over-reaction and negativity weakens our ability to produce oxytocin.
About the Author: Christine Akiteng is an internationally renowned Dating Confidence/Relationships Coach who has devoted her life to the blending of indispensable age-old wisdom with modern realities into a prescription for passion, vitality, balance and effortlessness. Her thought-provoking message of conscious intentionality offers singles new, realistic and stimulating insights to rediscovering the mysteries and eternal beauty of men - women sexual relationships.Christine's main website: http://www.torontosnumber1datedoctor.com
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