Message in a Pheromone

Last week a study was released that brought chemosignals (messages we send subconsciously to other humans through bodily fluids and scents) back into the limelight. Apparently men are universally turned off when women start to cry, which kind of sucks for all the emotionally-wrecked females out there. Male participants in the study were given female tears to smell and then had their brains scanned for lobal activity. Activity in the hypothalamus and fusiform gyrus (areas affected by sexual arousal) immediately dropped.



Sending signals through tears is an interesting concept, as were the results of another chemosignal-related study conducted in 2008, one relating to your girlfriend’s nightly cell phone alarm and that strange little calendar of pills she carries in her purse.

The birth control pill as a marketable contraceptive hit its fiftieth anniversary last year, causing cautious females across the globe to pat their pill pack and cross their fingers that they hurry up with the male version already. (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/08/opinion/08collins.html) Though the pill’s positive contributions to society are widely noted, increasing awareness that birth control can cause adverse side effects has caused many women to drop it. One woman particularly susceptible to fear mongering told me she got off the pill because she was afraid she’d be infertile forever.

This particular study fuels the anti-BC fire: birth control, it concludes, may cause women to sniff out the wrong suitors. Men and women communicate their genetic compatibility through pheromones, subconsciously choosing those with whom they’d make the fittest babies. All humans possess what’s called a major histocompatibility complex (MHC), which encodes molecules that are an integral part of the immune system. Men and women are supposed to seek out partners of the opposite sex that have a different MHC coding than themselves, as breeding between two MHC-similar couples leads to less genetic variance and weaker immunity in future generations. Birth control meddles with everything, causing women to seek out suitors that actually smell more like their dads than their ex-boyfriends, making them choose men that are histo-incompatible.

Unnerving news, sure, but human relationships and successful child rearing are based on more than just a cocktail of scents. Besides, there are at least a billion and one other things out there that could adversely affect female fertility and the strength of their offsprings’ immune systems.



Was it birth control that made her say “l-l-lick me like a lollipop”? WHO REALLY KNOWS?