New mothers may improve other womens romance
11 October 2004
by Richard
Conan-Davies
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Research recently published in th Journal Hormones and Behaviour suggest that women who have recently given birth and are lactating (producing milk or breastfeeding) may be producing chemical signals that improve sexual desires or romantic fantasies around other women. Dr. Martha McClintock and her collegues of The Institute for Mind and Biology at The University of Chicago did a study analysing the the smells collected from bra pads of breastfeeding mothers and then exposed the smells to a range of women from 18-35. This resulted in those women exposed to the smells having reporting increased desires and romantic fantasies. The experiments were also done using a double bllind method that just means some women were given samples that had no collected smells and they had no increase in desire. This research highlights the importance of chemical signals and hormones in human reproduction and may have been important back in our evolutionary past. |
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