Love is in the Air, and so are Hormones!
Every February and Valentine's Day love is in the air... and so are Pheromones, Hormones, and Neurotransmitters.
The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: If there is any reaction, both are transformed. -C.G. JungEver wonder why you are attracted to a certain person and not another? What provokes gut feelings about certain people in your life? Why do you fall in love with one person and not another? Or are you experiencing a lack of these feelings? Are your senses dulled and emotions flatter than normal? Are you feeling the opposite of attraction and can't figure out why? Well the answer involves pheromones. Pheromones (from the Greek words Pherein, meaning I carry, and Hormon, to excite) are odorless molecules that are produced in the body and enter the world by wafting off the skin. They float up from the sweat glands and linger in strands of hair. Ever hug someone and hold a second longer to catch a whiff of his or her hair? What causes that subconscious action? Pheromones. Each unleashed pheromone is packed with information about your sexual desires, your level of aggression, and the attributes of your immune system. It carries your one of a kind chemical signature or fingerprint!
Pheromones bypass the logical, thinking brain and affect the center of the primitive, emotional brain. Can the simultaneously exhausting and exhilarating experience of being "love sick," or being impaled by the arrow of Cupid be reduced to a simple chemical reaction in the brain? Well, yes. Pheromones are chemicals that one individual emits to elicit responses in another individual of the same species. The female fruit fly exudes an intoxicating pheromone to inform the male fruit fly she is ready to mate, so powerful these pheromones make the spindly-legged male weak at the knees. The female essence attracts him instantly to her to mate at that exact moment. It is unavoidable, he is compelled by nature. Pheromones are powerful, but they aren't the only antidote to love. When we are struck by Cupid's arrow we produce a number of
hormones and neurochemicals as well. The hormones are produced from our Endocrine Glands (pituitary, testes, ovaries, adrenals, thyroid, and pancreas) and released into our bloodstream. The neurochemicals originate in the brain and travel delicately down pathways and synapses through our entire body.