Play Hormone! Hormonal background as a cause of fears and love

Hormones are signaling chemicals produced by body cells (mainly endocrine glands) that affect human growth and development, metabolism, and more.

Examples of hormones: melatonin, serotonin, adrenaline, dopamine, testosterone, estrogen and others.

It is the ratio of testosterone and estrogen in the body that primarily determines how much a real man and woman will resemble M and F or both of them at once — if there is a lot of both hormones in the body. As it turned out, F and M do not exclude each other: in a psychologically asexual person there are very few M and F, in a feminine person there are few M and a lot of F, in a masculine person there are a lot of M and little F, in an androgynous person there are a lot of both M and F .

Hormones affect us much more than most of us are used to thinking. The fact that hormones largely determine the mood of a person, especially women, is quite well known, but the fact that hormones affect both the mind and the temperament, gender is less known.

In some songbirds, only males have a vocal gift. But if you give a female an injection of testosterone, she starts to sing. The administration of testosterone to pregnant monkeys makes the females born to them aggressive and self-confident. Conversely, if a boy is exposed in utero to abnormally high levels of estrogen, he will end up in a male body but with a female brain and grow up peaceful, sensitive, feminine.

In 2004, two American researchers Lim and Yang conducted an unusual experience that would change our attitude towards love, if we were not so inclined to romanticize it. The experimental subjects were meadow voles (rodents), or rather their separate species — Microtus Ocrogaste. This species of voles is distinguished by the fact that sexual partners after the first mating form a pair for life.

Lim and Young injected the voles with the hormones vasopressin and oxytocin into their brains and monitored their response. Oxytocin had no effect on the male voles, and the female immediately tried to form a bond with a partner of the opposite sex. But vasopressin worked completely differently. Female voles, on the contrary, did not react to him in any way, and the male sex immediately fell in love.

It is hormones that give male or female forms not only to our body and brain, but also to the soul. The most obvious differences between M and F, such as aggressiveness, risk-taking, dominance, energy, self-confidence, impatience, desire to compete, are determined primarily by the level of testosterone in the blood.

In turn, estrogen develops in F an attraction to a dominant male, strong and experienced, recognized in society, and provides a number of other benefits: improves coordination and accuracy of movements (W is better than M to cope with tasks that require quick skillful movements), enhances language abilities.

Testosterone causes M to see around more sexuality than F tends to notice: what a woman takes for a friendly disposition, M understands as flirting and draws appropriate conclusions. Another source of mutual misunderstanding between M and F is related to the fact that the amount of testosterone in the body is stable, and the level of female hormones fluctuates with the menstrual cycle, determining mood swings in M ​​that are inexplicable for M (in one Russian study, it was shown that girls are more successful in passing exams during the period ovulation — when they have the most estrogen in their blood).

In studies by neurophysiologists, it has been shown that if women are injected with testosterone (a male sex hormone), they improve their ability to solve tasks for quick wit, as well as tasks that require spatial (topographical) thinking.

One of the participants in my (N.I. Kozlov) trainings, Vera, was surprisingly smart — with a grasping, clear, very logical mind. But her voice was masculine, gooey, her manner a little masculine, and there was a black mustache on her upper lip. It was not good, and Vera went for hormonal treatment. Hormonal treatment reduced her level of male hormones, the skin of her face became smooth, clean and without mustaches, Vera’s manners became more feminine — but suddenly everyone noticed how Vera (in comparison with the former Vera) had grown stupid. She became like everyone else … By the way, she had fears that had not been noticed before.

An interesting testimony from the Sinton forum:

Hormones and age negativism

It seems that age-related negativism has a hormonal base as well.

hormones and love

Love is directly related to hormones. These include oxytocin and vasopressin, already familiar from the vole experiment, as well as dopamine, serotonin, testosterone, estrogen, and adrenaline. Moreover, each of them is responsible for a separate reaction of our body, which we used to associate with falling in love:

Adrenaline is responsible for blood pressure, and excessive release of adrenaline increases stress and tension, causing the heart to beat faster.

Dopamine, in turn, is responsible for the sensations that we like so much: pleasure, slight dizziness, delight, and imaginary wings behind our backs.

Serotonin, or rather its lack, is responsible for those cases when we cannot get the object of adoration out of our heads. A lack of serotonin is the main symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder, when a person cannot get rid of intrusive or frightening thoughts.

Testosterone is responsible for attractiveness, and, contrary to popular belief, in both sexes. The more testosterone a man has, the more attractive he is to women. And at the same time, the more attractive women seem to him.

Estrogen affects a man’s attraction to a woman. A study by the American Psychological Association showed that testosterone levels in men who smelled a woman during ovulation increased.