Tag: chemicals

Love triggers all four happy brain chemicals: dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin and endorphin. No wonder it’s so motivating!

However, life is complicated because the happy chemicals are not designed to be on all the time. The job of this brain stew is to reward you for steps that promote your genes. They dip after they spurt, which is why we’re always struggling to get more. Fortunately, when you know how your happy chemicals work, you can stop blaming your partner and stop blaming love. You can better manage the neurochemical roller coaster when you know how you create it.

Days are becoming balmy, daylight lasts into evening, and the flowering trees are now awash in color. If ever there was a moment that the kiss was invented, somehow I feel sure it was when the world awoke to springtime.

In fact, the earliest recorded kisses date back to India in 1500 BC where early Vedic scriptures describe lovers "setting mouth to mouth." But other historians date the origin of kissing to the biological drive of survival and reproduction, which is why the earliest forms of kissing, with the practice of brushing noses to smell potential mate’s makes so much sense.

Stress is an inevitable part of life. Finding ways to manage and reduce relationship stress in your life is one of the best things you can do for yourself and your relationship.

Stress in a relationship can cause a type of feedback loop. If I’m stressed, it makes Katie, my wife, stressed. If Katie is getting stressed, then it makes me even more stressed. And further down the hole we go.

Although your marriage can be a source of stress in your life, which is totally normal, it is also the best tool you have to reduce stress.

One of you has had an affair. Or you know someone in the throes of uncovering one or is dealing with the confusion of the aftermath. What do we really know now about what drives affairs and what is needed to repair? What do we now know about affair-proofing your marriage? This may be surprising—what do we know about how your marriage can actually get better post-affair? Read the fine print: if you take certain clear steps.

What's really going on when you're attracted to someone? The infatuation phase is when you see only one side of a person: the positive traits, the potential for a happily ever after. You don't even notice that her feet stink or that he scratches his butt. No, she's Cinderella and he's Prince Charming—for now.

Your body chemistry only heightens the whole lopsided process, giving you regular doses of dopamine (a hormone that mimics the effects of cocaine), resulting in phenomena such as energy boosts, appetite suppression, heart palpitations, accelerated breathing, hyperactivity, and insomnia.

If you are like many women, the act of venting your frustrations can be healing—you get out all the bad feelings, work through them a bit, and start to move on. Just talking about it makes you feel better.

Except that often it is not better for your relationship. Your partner—on the receiving end of this venting—can end up feeling bruised and resentful, particularly if the venting was about him personally, or about his behaviors.

"Virtually all hyperosmolar lubricants need to be reformulated… Normally the mucosal lining of the vagina is a good barrier to infection all by itself, but when that barrier gets compromised, all bets are off."  ~ Richard Cone, biophysicist Johns Hopkins

Personal lubricants may be the last frontier of health care products to experience it, but there is a revolution afoot and there are many brands of organic and all-natural products that are entering the market to replace the dangerously toxic effects of bad chemistry.