If two people “hit it off,” you can be certain pheromones are at play. Each is producing, emitting, and processing pheromones through the VNO. And this is happening at a subconscious level.
Why is this pheromone discovery so important? Pheromones are responsible for a key role in the bonding between mother and child and between lovers. And, contrary to what Freud believed, gender identification and sexual orientation are heavily influenced by pheromonal imprinting. And it’s “determined” by one’s preference for the pheromones of one sex or another. Heterosexuality and homosexuality are determined by one’s preference for a particular odor or pheromone.
Pheromones influence sexual practices such as kissing and oral sex. These pheromones come from glands on the face and on the genitals. What begins with kissing can often lead to oral-genital contact. And we will argue that we are “hard-wired” to do these things. Aside from the physical pleasure these activities provide, both also promote emotional bonding. And this can help build and sustain a relationship and affect our morale so important to sexual confidence.
Each of these concepts demonstrates the important role that real pheromones play. Not only in our sexual health but how it contributes to our sexual maturation and ability to establish healthy relationships.
Pheromones and Menstrual Cycles
Perhaps the most well-known study regarding pheromones is the study conducted in 1988 by researchers Stern and McClintock. College-aged women living together synchronize their menstrual cycles after being exposed to pheromones generated by others in their group. Pheromone secretions were gathered from special pads worn under the arm. They were later collected and swabbed on the upper lip of several women. It was learned that one woman acted as the “driver,” establishing the dominant menstrual cycle that the other women followed. In later studies, a similar synchrony was established between mothers and daughters living in the same household.
As these studies and others like them demonstrate, regular exposure to pheromones from both sexes can provide health benefits. In studies by Winnifred Cutler. Ph.D., it was discovered that these benefits included better urine health, defined as healthy estrogen levels. And it included a decreased risk of developing osteoporosis and heart disease.
To date, there are a few pheromone products that enable the user to boost their social confidence. And as a result, enhance their existing intimate relationships, as well as prove business and other social relationships.
Subconscious Influence
More studies are necessary to fully examine the potential for other therapeutic uses of pheromone-based products. For instance, menopausal women might be able to employ pheromonal-based products to help revive estrogen levels for good health. And, in the arena of the workaday world, commercial pheromone-based products can be particularly useful. Especially in fields that rely heavily on person-to-person contacts – such as in sales and customer relations.
Want to learn some cool stuff about pheromones? This olfactory subconscious, while a remnant of our primitive brain, is a key to broad aspects of human behavior.
There are special anatomic features of our brain that relate responses to odor with distinct behavior. The accessory olfactory lobe distributed in our brain, which response to sexual scent signals, triggers a wide range of behavior. It influences but it isolated from cognitive control. These responses include sexual behavior such as courtship, reproductive behavior, and maternal response.
Also important to human behavior is the influence of these odors on male aggression. Thus, our interest in odor awareness goes beyond love and romance. It must include the origin of group hatred, madness, and war.
How Pheromones Influence Behavior
This article is an effort to focus scientific and public attention on pheromones. As you may know, pheromones are scent signals which serve communication between members of the same species. Pheromones elicit immediate behavioral responses or over time they trigger endocrine or neurophysiological responses of significance to species survival.
Pheromones, as mentioned previously, were first discovered as paramount mediators of insect behavior. But, they are also active in mammals, including our own species. Nasal receptors pick up these scent signals for processing in the brain. Pheromones are scents, sexually derived, that are distinct from odors related to food or noxious stimuli. Specialized nasal receptors, nerves, and brain centers make the determination.
These special odors are like a finger stretching through our nasal passages and tickling sexually essential brain areas. They impinge on anatomically distinct areas which, although interactive with the main olfactory system, are functionally different.
The study of pheromonal influences in animals cover a wide range of instinctive and/or sexually important responses. Although, until recently, humans were thought to be distinct from other mammals because of our lack of response to pheromones. Wiener, in 1966 saw their importance as critical to human normal and pathological behavior. He coined the term, “external chemical messengers” (ECM) and provided evidence for an olfactory pheromone-influenced subconscious in humans. Wiener developed the concept that pheromones, could be responsible for human behavior, and, most importantly, mental illness.
Sexual Odors and Non-Verbal Communication
Wiener’s observations were ahead of their time. He anticipated the important role of pheromones, sexual odors, in human physiology long before anyone else.
He believed that tears, saliva, blushing, coughing, and yawning were also physiologic devices emitting pheromones.
Most importantly, he anticipated that pheromonal stimuli provide a channel of nonverbal communication. And that pheromones could be received as a “stimuli beyond those consciously noted” in taste and smell.
He postulated that hallucinogens, e.g., LSD, can act as stimuli to pheromonal production or sensitivity. And that pheromones act as signals that may be incorporated into our unconscious thought processes. He observed that humans perceived sex odors via smell with profound effects on human sexual response.
It was Weiner’s thesis that these pheromones constituted an olfactory language based on their chemical components. And they made up a vocabulary wherein emission of mixtures of these substances provide a sensory language. Rapidly changing olfactory signals provide a script of specific meaning to the recipient.
Wiener labels our response to this olfactory language, “the olfactory subconscious”. And, in anticipation of future research, he stated: “We shortchange ourselves by comparing the olfactory powers of animals with our own conscious sense of smell while ignoring our olfactory subconscious.”
An excellent physiologic analogy to explain our sensitivity to odor involves the effect of removing the adrenal cortex.
Clearly, as seen in the behavior of cats and dogs, uncontrolled pheromonal responses could disrupt organized social behavior. While to some extent this may be true. However, we now also see sexual odor repression as having a broad cultural basis.
Not all societies and cultures show so much inhibition. Dawn Lamb, in collaboration with June Cleverland, in the late 1930s, explored the jungles between Oaxaca and Chiapas north of the Gulf of Tchuantepec. In one village, La Junita, they found the following.
The Power of Pheromone Attraction
“Dances held during these fiestas are primarily for the choosing of a mate by scent. The Indians believe that since everything in Nature has an odor and the human odor is most important. They believe that it reveals sickness, fear, hate, and love, and it indicates sexual affinity. This belief plays an important role in their lives. They say that partners are chosen by scent always form lasting unions. Frequently you will hear: “I chose him (or her) because he (she) smelled good.”
They also relay the story that if a woman finds a particular man attractive, she will sometimes ask the medicine man to place some article of her clothing near or in his bed. Wives do this if their husbands show signs of disinterest towards them.
As demonstrated by these customs, these Mexican Indians have largely anticipated the revelations of our text. Why these Indians were so aware of the power of their sexual odors, while we Westerners, with all our knowledge of perfumery, denied this aspect of our identity is a puzzle worthy of review.
The human response to pheromones is instinctive. It functions in similar fashion to what we see in newborn babies who mimic the facial expressions of their mothers. They also smile instinctively in the same manner. This inborn behavior results in the mutual exchange of emotional impact. And it undoubtedly contributes to childhood and adult patterns of social exchange and conditioning.
Increasing your awareness of the role of human pheromones in your life will help you to understand the selection of the one you love, your bonding to family and friends, and sexual behavior such as kissing and other intimate sexual behavior. Having this knowledge will enable you to improve all of your relationships.
Leave a Reply