oxytocin
A porn-loving woman finds that, after falling in love, her libido just isn't that into porn.
We hear about relationships torn apart by internet porn addiction, but where are the support groups for smut-loving women like me, who suddenly and inexplicably get turned off by porn when they fall in love? Before I met my boyfriend, I was visiting youporn.com about a half an hour a day, hunting through dozens of clips to find the one most perfectly calibrated to turn me on.
After I met my boyfriend, my visits to the site dropped off in equal proportion to how much I was getting off with a flesh-and-blood human being.
But my loss of appetite for porn … Read More
Oxytocin makes it easier for couples to talk by reducing anxiety.
Where there is a relationship, there is inevitably conflict.
When figuring out how to solve these issues, the experts pretty much agree on one solution: communication. So if the answer to our problems is at our fingertips, why is it so difficult for us to simply talk about it? After all the art of speaking is uniquely human. Whatever the road block, turns out our hormones might help us move past it.
ScienceDaily reports the natural hormone oxytocin, often referred to as the "love hormone," may actually help couples communicate. Oxytocin is naturally present during orgasm and … Read More
Oxytocin, the hormone for bonding, trust, breastfeeding and orgasm also helps us learn to love.
Oxytocin is quite a busy hormone. When released in the brain, it facilitates sex, orgasm, birth and breastfeeding, as well as feelings of bonding, connection and trust.
No wonder, then, that scientists want to recreate the chemical's effects. Drugs that simulate the hormone, like Pitocin, are given to pregnant women to help induce labor. A synthetic oxytocin nasal spray has been produced to help mothers create milk for newborns, and researchers are experimenting with how doses of it might combat memory loss and autism, and improve sexual functioning.
In her forthcoming book The … Read More
A website more known for diagnosing bodily ailments gets touchy, feely.
We equate WebMD with helping us diagnose our headache (is it a brain tumor?) or whether we should call in sick or toughen up and drink a power shake.So when we we stumbled upon a rather detailed feature called "Timeline of a Love Affair" we raised an eyebrow.WebMD is soft and fuzzy now? And you think you know someone!We're a sucker for these types of things because it's always fascinating to read what's going on biologically during the first pangs of a crush. (We're reluctant to call it "falling in love.")Why do our appetites … Read More
Locking lips is much more chemically complicated than we once thought.
Sure, we've always gotten a tingly, head rush when we kiss someone we're attracted to, but we never knew that swapping spit caused such a complicated hormonal rickashay.
During a recent study at Lafayette College, researchers studied the cortisol and oxytocin levels in 15 heterosexual, kissing couples. Cortisol, known as the stress hormone, is released to help the body get back to normal after a rush of agonizing events. Oxytocin, on the other hand, is the hormone to blame for all those girly, gooey feelings of closeness after sex.
It's often been said that women release oxytocin after … Read More
What if you could fall in love at will—and make him love you back?
If you could slip a drug in your crush's drink to make him fall for you, would you do it? If you were in love with the wrong person and you could take a pill to forgot all about him, would you swallow it? If there were a test you could administer to a first date to see if he'd be a good mate, would you make him take it?
It sounds like fiction, but the above fantasies may some day become reality, according to a report published in the heavy-hitting science journal, Nature.
We've heard the "love is a drug" … Read More
“Orgasmic Birth” promises pleasurable childbirth without anesthesia. Oh, baby!
New mothers rarely boast that giving birth is as satisfying as the quickie that left them with forty extra pounds, stretch marks and—of course—a bundle of joy.
However, Orgasmic Birth, Debra Pascali-Bonaro’s new documentary (completely unrelated to sadomasochism, by the way) is quickly closing the public’s perception of a nine-month gap between pleasure and pain. The film follows 11 pregnant women in their exploration of various labor options, and ultimately asserts that childbirth can be as sexually stimulating as the child’s conception—and even result in orgasm.
Bird-and-bee experts featured in the documentary say that … Read More