Hug the Monkey

Oxytocin Hype and Backlash

I read New York magazine, and they have a regular item called something like "We ride the shifting curve of expectations." They chart where cultural events like books and films fall on the cycle from hype to backlash against the hype.

In the past couple of weeks, I've watched oxytocin follow a similar path. Because I look at every news article and study regarding oxytocin, as well as all the blog posts discovered by a couple blog search tools, I can see what studies spark news coverage, and what kinds of memes spread.

Oxytocin hype has been rampant for the past three weeks. As far as I can tell, it got started with study led by Thomas Baumgartner at the University of Zurich showing that inhaling oxytocin increased people's willingness to trust other players in an economic game, even after they'd been shafted once. This is the team at the University of Zurich that did the very first human oxytocin studies showing that oxytocin increased trust. (Read my blog post about the previous research here.)

In this study, "We find that subjects in the oxytocin group show no change in their trusting behavior after they learned that their trust had been breached several times while subjects receiving placebo decrease their trust."

Some genius copywriter translated this to, "Oxytocin Makes Us Trust after Betrayal," leading to a spate of stories about how "Spray Said to Turn People into Pushovers." And it also led to my appearance on the Fox Morning With Mike and Juliet show.

Not to be outdone, Markus Heinrichs, who leads the Zurich team, talked to reporters (but did not, I believe, actually publish anything new) about their work using oxytocin to treat social anxiety disorder, which has been under way for several years. That sparked another news rush.

They mostly followed the lines of this one, Scientists Find Childbirth Wonder Drug That Can Cure Shyness, kindly sent to me by Blaine. Is that a sexy headline or what? The articles finally recognized the work of Paul Zak, who has been giving oxytocin to humans for several years, without a lot of notice. I didn't blog all these articles, partly because they were so ubiquitous and partly because I was finishing the manuscript of my book, ta daaa!

Already, though, oxytocin hype has faded into the final cycle, backlash. In part this is simply because news reporters have to come up with new stories every day. Once you've written a story hyping the prospects of oxytocin -- or worse, when your competitors have and you haven't -- where do you go from there but to write another one decrying the first. Ideally, at least in the olden days when I started my career as a journalist, you were supposed to find naysayers to quote in every story. But that was then.

The Neurocritic links to an ABC News story now insisting, "Researchers Balk at Media Reports Hyping 'Love Drug' Hormone's Effects."

And Paul Zanucci of American Sentinel calls it, "The Oxytocin Nightmare to Come -- Drugging America." I agree with his premise, and have been saying for a while that oxytocin will be the next Prozac. That is, while oxytocin-based or oxytocin-like drugs will be developed for social anxiety disorder and ASD, it will eventually be prescribed for much milder psychological situations. Zanucci writes,

Every time someone blows their nose, there’s a new prescription written for nasal sprays and antihistamines even though products like Zyrtec can now be bought OTC in generic form.  Every time someone is stressed out by work, another prescription is written for anti-anxiety medication.  People are happy as clams to pay $30 to $50 for the latest in pharmaceutical living, not considering that their insurance is paying another $300 behind the scenes and that their cost for insurance is going to go up again next year.

Nevertheless, I think calling this a nightmare is way too anti-hyperbolic. I'd much rather we revise labor, birth and parenting practices to allow individuals to form a healthy oxytocin response naturally. But our society is probably too sick and mechanistic for that. In which case, a nation of loved-out citizens who inhale oxytocin several times a day would be preferable to our extant war-mongering, paranoid, crabby society.

At any rate, I think we can shortly expect oxytocin to fall off the news cycle for at least a few months.

Get Oxytocin Safely in Clinical Trials

In response to a recent comment, I took a new look at the database of clinical trials that are recruiting subjects for oxytocin studies, available at ClinicalTrials.gov. I see that Daniel Feifel of the University of California San Diego is recruiting subjects for two studies to test oxytocin on symptoms of schizophrenia.

And it looks like Evdokia Anagnostou of Eric Hollander's Mt. Sinai team is recruiting for a couple of studies of adults with ASD, although it's hard to tell if the database is current.

Meanwhile, the National Institutes of Mental Health is recruiting for a study of people without psychiatric diagnoses on "Identifying the Role of Oxytocin and Vasopressin in the Functioning of Neurocognitive Systems Involved in Mood Disorders."

We can expect more and more of these as #1 scientists strive to learn more and more about the neurochemical basis of emotion and #2 pharm companies look for new classes of drugs they can sell.

Way to Exploit the News!

Oxytocin was all over the news last week, thanks to the latest study from Zurich showing that inhaling oxytocin increased people's willingness to trust while playing economic games. Those who snorted oxytocin were willing to trust again even after the other player shorted them.

This is one of a series of studies in which people in the lab exchange money in a controlled situation; I think it got so much attention because of the juicy word "betrayal" used to describe a player's refusal to play fair. But it should be pointed out that sitting in a lab engaging in a simple interaction is far from true betrayal -- and it's unlikely that inhaling oxytocin would make you trust someone out in the real world who did something truly mean.

At any rate, a new company has gotten onto the oxytocin bandwagon. HBC Protocols, a ten-year-old Los Angeles company that specializes in wellness and nutritional supplements, has released a new product, Oxytocin Formula Homeopathic Product, that does contain oxytocin. They've backed up the product with a very well-produced website.

The product is designed to be put under the tongue, a good place to absorb chemicals and not as unpleasant or potentially damaging to the mucous membranes as inhalation. I'm going to try to find out more information about the product. The fact that it's "homeopathic" makes me wonder how much oxytocin it contains. The label says "oxytocin 2C," as opposed to other ingredients, which are "6X" or so. I assume this is the homeopathic style of describing formulae.

I have no idea whether there's enough of a dose to do anything, or how well the oxytocin solution would hold up. But it shows the keen interest in oxytocin that's out there.

Where Can I Get My Hands on Some Oxytocin?

The latest report about how oxytocin makes people more willing to trust after betrayal really struck a nerve. People really really want to get their hands on this stuff: For everyone who is afraid of being hurt, there are five people who are dying to open up.

Someone wrote to me asking where to get oxytocin; he and his wife are having problems. I wrote about my experience taking oxytocin in 2006, here. This is how I answered:

I performed this experiment on myself a couple of years ago, when it was quite easy to purchase oxytocin over the internet. At the time, searching for oxytocin brought up several paid ads from reputable companies that supply chemicals to researchers, and I was able to purchase with a credit card. I notice that these ads no longer appear, probably because these companies realized that many people ordering the product were consumers.

In any case, when you buy oxytocin this way, it's difficult to handle. It degrades quickly when it's mixed with water, and it's a minuscule amount. I was guided by the blog of a guy who made all sorts of wild experiments with such chemicals that he ordered online.

I don't think it's ethical or wise for me to provide any more details about where or how to buy oxytocin. I believe -- but don't know for sure -- that it's not a controlled substance in the United States; I don't know about in other countries.

Someone wrote me that he had tried the oxytocin spray that had been prescribed for his lactating wife. And a psychiatrist in Canada sometimes prescribes this inhalant for kids with autism. These are called off-label uses: the doctor obtains the drug legally and prescribes it legally, but for a condition that the drug hasn't been approved for.

Several drug companies are working to develop oxytocin-based drugs to treat social phobia and some trials have begun.

All that said, let me propose an alternative: Oxytocin is usually released naturally when we are with another person in a situation where we feel safe. Also when we're stroked, make love and orgasm. However, this brain response seems to be learned after we're born, in the first few years of life -- although the brain continues to grow and change throughout our lives. If you and your wife have "normal" oxytocin responses, it could be a matter of simply making love, making sure that you  move very slowly through her arousal to orgasm. Often, when couples have problems, sex is the first thing to go. But I think that a lack of happy satisfying sex also can lead to relationship problems. I experience this myself in my relationship. Oxytocin makes us calmer and more easy-going, so the partner's bad habits don't bother us as much.

Other things you can try are massaging each other, if you're both able to do so in a soothing way that feels good; getting massages together at a spa or weekend retreat; taking some kind of workshop that has exercises which allow you to go into "limbic resonance," the state in which your bodies are attuned. Attunement likely invokes the oxytocin response.

Oxytocin Keeps Us Trusting after Betrayal

Researchers at the University of Zurich, where they did the first experiments with giving humans oxytocin via nasal spray, announced a new study showing that oxytocin makes people more willing to trust again after betrayal.

Their earliest experiment showed that oxytocin reduced activity of the amygdala, the part of the brain thought to make split-second friend-or-foe decisions. And Paul Zak, one of the researchers in that experiment, went on to show that inhaling oxytocin makes people more trusting and more generous.

In the latest experiment, people played the Trust Game, where an investor can give some money to a trustee in the hope that he'll return some. This time, however, they made sure the trustee kept all the money. While the subjects couldn't tell if they'd inhaled oxytocin or placebo, the oxytocin group was more likely to trust in the next round of the game.

Zak points out that women are more susceptible to oxytocin than men, due to estrogen's enhancing its effects, so women might show a stronger effect.

Science News said, "Oxytocin may help people move on after betrayal." World Science put it as, "Spray said to turn people into pushovers. Re­search­ers have iden­ti­fied brain cen­ters acti­vated by be­tray­al of trust—and a way to keep them quiet."

At least some members of the public aren't worried about that. My traffic is up today, thanks to searches for "where to buy oxytocin," I assume in response to the news. (My answer: It's not a controlled substance but it's getting more difficult to buy, no doubt due to non-scientists wanting to try it. I don't provide information about how and where to procure oxytocin.)

Oxytocin May Increase Fertility of Sperm -- in Swine

  Happy piglet 
  Originally uploaded by barto.

Here's an off-the-wall news item -- or maybe not so.

According to the Tumpline Stackyard, a British online publication surfaced by Google News, some pig farmers mix oxytocin in with the semen they use for artificial insemination of their sows. This is an off-label use, that is, veterinarians don't prescribe oxytocin for this. The article gives no details, just that farmers are showing "increasing interest" in the procedure.

Why this may not be quite so loony: A lot of human drugs find new uses through off-label prescriptions, a process in which doctors sort of use their patients as guinea pigs.

I can't think of a reason why oxytocin would increase the insemination rate for a batch of sperm, but molecular biologists might.

Oxytocin Deficit Disorder

Everything that's outside the norm or seems unhealthy is considered a disorder these days. This partly reflects Big Pharma's desire to increase profits by finding new diseases it can treat. Nevertheless, I believe that recognizing some things that used to be considered character flaws or hopeless cases as disorders that might be treatable have benefited millions of people.

Now, instead of being classified as a bad or stupid kid, children who disrupt class and have trouble learning may be given the less pejorative label of ADHD. While how to help them remains controversial, with many people thinking these kids are over-medicated, many others are thankful the drugs are working.

The same thing is true with clinical depression, as well as its cousin, post-partum depression. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, can alter neurochemistry and help many sufferers lead better lives. Dario Maestripieri of the University of Chicago has shown that the kind of mothering a baby rhesus macaque monkey gets influences the serotonin levels of its brain on into adulthood. Baby rhesus with mean mothers show symptoms of depression.

Evidence is mounting that babies and children who don't get enough or the right kind of nurturing may have abnormal brain development. This can result in an overactive stress response and an under-active oxytocin response. Similarly, some scientists are looking at abnormalities in the oxytocin system as causal factors in autism.

I think the day will come -- in the next three to five years -- when something like "oxytocin deficit disorder" will make its way into the DSM -- and into psychopharmacology. Drugs that introduce an oxytocin-like substance into the body, or increase its production by the hypothalamus or other oxytocin-producing sites, may provide a quicker fix for people who feel they can't connect emotionally with others.

Oxytocin Therapy for Indifferent Moms?

Oxytocin is being tested as a treatment for autism and social phobia, and it's under consideration for treating a variety of other disorders.

What about a mother who doesn't love her baby enough?

Despite the myth of the absoluteness of mother love, many new mothers don't feel attached to or excited about their newborns. There are myriad reasons for this, from the mother's inability to attach to anyone -- because of her own abuse or neglect as a child -- to a problematic or stressed pregnancy to that poorly understood neurochemical state known as post-partum depression.

Craig Kinsley, Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Richmond's Department of Psychology, has shown, in research with Kelly Lambert, how motherhood remodels the brains of rats. It increases the number of oxytocin receptors, increases the sensitivity of the receptors and also improves their memory.

Kinsley has begun to apply this research to human mothers. At the International Congress on Women's Mental Health, he suggested that this  research could lead to  interventions  aimed at helping new moms form a  secure bond.

According to the article in News in Science,

It may be possible, he says, with this template to then identify potential 'bad' mothers by examining how their brains behave when the mother is first interacting with the baby.

Kinsley says if females with a deficit of a critical neurochemical, such as oxytocin, can be identified, then "when they are first interacting with the baby you can give them a boost of oxytocin at a critical time".

The Women's Bioethics Blog predicted  this back in August 2007. See my post, Will Bad Mothering Become the Latest Disorder?

Kinsley's collaborator, Kelly Lambert, has found that fatherhood creates changes in the brains of male deer mice, as well. Maybe they could also give oxytocin to deadbeat dads.

Lithium May Increase Oxytocin while Trying to Kick Pot

A very small study in Australia of cannabis addicts found that giving them lithium helped.

Lithium was commonly prescribed to people with bipolar disorder before the new generation of drugs. The study was of 20 people who had smoked marijuana every day for nine years. They took 500 milligrams of lithium twice daily for seven days. Three months later, most were getting high less and some had quit entirely.

Adam Winstock, chief investigator in the study, and on the staff of the Corella Drug Treatment Services and the University of New South Wales, admits the sample was really, really small.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald,

Studies in rats had shown they experienced an increase in levels of the hormone oxytocin when given lithium during withdrawal from cannabis. Oxytocin is dubbed the "happy hormone" and is released during lactation, orgasm, childbirth, hugging and touching and can produce feelings of wellbeing.

"When the rats were made to go through withdrawal without lithium they appeared to be aggressive and moody, but when they were given lithium they were a little more chilled," Dr Winstock said. "Many people say they smoke a lot of pot because they are depressed, but the truth is that most people in our trial cheered up significantly when they stopped."

Bipolar Medication Helps Addicts Quit Cannabis

Acupuncture for an Oxytocin Boost?

When we learn about the amazing benefits of oxytocin for health, happiness and connection, the natural response is, "How can I get more of it?"

Research on oxytocin has quickly moved from the study of its effects on pair bonding in simpler mammals to whether administering it to people in an inhalant can reduce the symptoms of psychological disorders such as social phobia and autism spectrum disorder.

That leaves those of us who don't have diagnosable disorders hanging. I suspect that the purveyors of oxytocin products over the internet are making money hand over fist. The only well-studied method of boosting our own endogenous oxytocin is to have great sex -- not always a possibility.

But there is another way, for the somewhat adventurous: acupuncture. (In California, it's not considered so adventurous -- many HMOs cover acupuncture. I've found it to be an excellent treatment for many things, such as recovering from flu.)

The folks at acupuncture.com.au pointed out that the ancient art of acupuncture has identified "forbidden points" that are never to be stimulated during pregnancy. Stimulating these points can lead to miscarriage, they're taught. On the other hand, these points can also be used to encourage the start of labor when necessary, according to Peter of acupuncture.com.au.

Kerstin Uvnas-Moberg, one of the goddesses of oxytocin research (and author of The Oxytocin Factor), speculates in "Oxytocin -- a possible mediator of anti-stress effects induced by acupuncture?"  that the pain-relieving effects of acupuncture could be due to an oxytocin release.

A study from China showed that acupuncture caused a release of oxytocin in the brains of rats. See my previous post on this topic, Acupuncture Stimulates Oxytocin, for more.

So, there's very strong evidence that acupuncture on these points would stimulate the oxytocin response in anyone, making it a reliable way to feel more relaxed and more open to others.

If you're skeevish about the needles, you might try acupressure massage. These practitioners stimulate the acupuncture points with their fingers. You could also learn where these points are and massage them on yourself or on your partner. The possibilities are intriguing.