A researcher at UC San Diego is recruiting people with symptoms of anxiety for a six-week, double-blind trial to see whether inhaling oxytocin can help.
David Feifel is actively recruiting study participants now. Because it's double-blind, only some of the group will get oxytocin, the rest will get placebo. The idea is to see whether oxytocin can enhance the effects of other medications, rather than replace them. The does is 20 IU per day.
By way of the San Diego Reader blog: http://www.sandiegoreader.com/weblogs/news-ticker/2012/jan/04/controversial-love-hormone-trial-conducted-at-ucsd/
Studies of European countries with substantially longer paid maternity leave find that the benefits of up to 40 weeks off are huge. Not only does it reduce infant deaths, according to Sharon Lerner, writing for Slate:
One study tracked Norwegian children who were born after 1977, when that country increased its paid leave from zero to four months and its unpaid leave from three to 12 months, and found that the kids born after the change had lower high school dropout rates. Military draft data, moreover, tied lengthened leaves to increases in male IQ (and height, too).
Lerner looks at several studies showing benefits of longer maternal leave periods, although the reasons aren't entirely clear. It's possible that it's simply that women with better, better-paying jobs have plenty of other resources to keep their babies and children healthy and engaged.
Trimel says it's had favorable results from trial of TBS-2 to treat female anorgasmia. The testosterone product is a low-dose gel you place inside the nose to increase libido. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/trimel-to-present-anorgasmia-fsd-phase-ii-clinical-trial-results-2011-12-16-731200
Trimel will also discuss CompleoTRT, a similar product for men, designed to treat low testosterone, at a conference on February 14 in Toronto.
Using Trimel's testosterone delivery system, you place a small amount of gel inside the nose, where it's absorbed and goes into the blood stream.
According to the company, when used on women to treat lack of orgasm, "The Phase I/II study further demonstrated positive physiological effects related to orgasm with a physical response seen within 30 minutes of dosing."
Here's a video showing how the gel delivery system works:
Variations in the genes for oxytocin receptors may influence empathy -- and we can tell who's got them in 20 seconds.
In the study, by Aleksandr Kogan of UC Berkeley, 24 couples provided DNA samples and then the couples recounted to each other a time when they had suffered. The conversations were videotaped.
Then, observers wached 20-second segments of the videos and were asked to rate each person as kind, trustworthy and compassionate. The observers tended to pick the people in the couples who hada variation in the oxytocin receptor gene known as the GG genotype.
It's interesting enough that empathy might be linked to variations in our genes. And also interesting that we humans are so exquisitely sensitive to social cues that we can easily and quickly pick this out.
In this Pickup Podcast, I talked with Jordan Harbinger @AJandJordan from The Art of Charm about the chemistry of attraction. I am not only fascinated by pickup, I also think it's really good information about how human beings relate socially.
Men: Women are not as mysterious, delicate or cautious as you think. Jesse, Jason and Kong from Simple Pickup prove that women are as interested in sex as men are. http://youtu.be/hqV-c_npeJ4
They took to the streets of San Francisco with a box of awkward items: packages of tampons, a used tampon, anal beads, a vibrating dildo and a transexual porn magazine -- and a used condom.
"Why are you holding a porno mag? What is that?" one asks.
"To beat off to," the man responds. "Why else would I be holding it?"
Do the women they approach shriek in disgust? Do they run away? Do they pour contempt on these men? Not at all. Watch sweet young college girls laugh, stay curious and engaged, and even direct a man to the nearest restroom so he can masturbate. (Video is embedded at bottom of this post.)
They also give their phone numbers -- although @SimplePickup doesn't let us know how many of those numbers are real.
There's a lot men can learn from this:
Jesse, Jason and Kong take what I would call a wholesome approach, even as they dangle anal beads and wave porn in women's faces. They're unapologetic and make it clear they're having fun. They're not ashamed of their interest, and therefore, they give the women permission to be curious and have fun with sexual content, as well.
Given this kind of permission and invitation, women will respond with their own sense of play. That sex drive is there in women, too. So, invite it out.
Evidently, there is a characteristic odor that comes when a woman in natural labor is close to giving birth -- and it's lovely. http://blogs.babble.com/being-pregnant/2011/10/03/what-does-birth-smell-like/
According to this article on Babble.com:
It’s a ‘deep’ scent… not musky, necessarily, but primal and vaguely familiar …” Maybe birth smells like the opposite of death? The opposite of decay.
Author Nicholson Baker's pornographic House of Holes is great reading for kids, says Elaine Blair in the New York Review of Books.
In the House of Holes alternate universe, men and women are full of desire and matter-of-fact about expressing even the most outlandish sex wishes. While the characters enthusiastically couple in the frictionless, athletic and exotic ways common in porn, what's different here, according to Blair is that, not only are all relations completely consensual; they are without shame or degradation.
Blair writes,
The book’s sex is never colored by real-world social relations. There are no chambermaids, whores, virgins, handymen, babysitters, bosses, nurses, teachers, teenagers, uncles, or incestuous couples at the House of Holes—none of the picturesque stock characters, in other words, whose corrupt authority or bashful submission or gleeful abjection lends such haunting piquancy to whatever pornographic stories they star in.
... having banished these troubling reprobates from his paradise, Baker can draw a magic circle of wholesomeness around sexual situations that we normally interpret as scenes of defilement.
Even though we may not buy into the concept of the female slut any more, Blair says, the concept still seems to creep into our relationships.
However, while today's adults, having grown up, most of us, under the shadow of the Scarlet S, can't approach Baker's material with the candor and joy his characters do, our kids could -- and should.
Blair says,
In the traditional sex talk, parents don’t say much about pleasure—presumably neither party wants to get into details. But wouldn’t it be nice for parents to have a way to convey our highest ideals on the subject? House of Holes will introduce impressionable readers to many interesting sexual possibilities without a whisper of stereotype or slur. You can be sure that no matter what scene your children are masturbating to, they are not objectifying women.
People always ask me how they can try oxytocin, and I always suggest they find a doctor willing to prescribe it off-label. Fresno's Dr. Matt French is their man.
I've seen his name come up before in news alerts for oxytocin. According to this news article, Dr. French "prescribes oxytocin to women who feel they don't produce enough of it naturally." It profiles one patient who has been taking oxytocin daily for months.
I think such women would be better served by teaching their menfolk how to make them feel cherished, loved and well-rested. But that's just me. What do you think?
Shelley Taylor, the UCLA psychologist who identified the "tend and befriend" response, says the gene that produces the oxytocin receptor is responsible for influencing self-esteem, optimism and a sense of mastery.
This isn't so surprising, because oxytocin seems to produce most of the positive social emotions -- as well as some less positive ones.
According to the UCLA press office:
At a particular location, the oxytocin receptor gene has two versions: an "A" (adenine) variant and a "G" (guanine) variant. Several studies have suggested that people with at least one "A" variant have an increased sensitivity to stress, poorer social skills and worse mental health outcomes.
The researchers found that people who have either two "A" nucleotides or one "A" and one "G" at this specific location on the oxytocin receptor gene have substantially lower levels of optimism, self-esteem and mastery and significantly higher levels of depressive symptoms than people with two "G" nucleotides.
Taylor stressed that genetic variations do not "cause" depression or poor mental health. As I discussed in my book, there's direct scientific evidence from rodents and indirect evidence in humans that early nurturing -- and perhaps a baby's experience of labor and birth -- can influence the proliferation and sensitivity of oxytocin receptors.
Also, please don't forget that our brains can change throughout our lives through positive experiences.
Researchers have found that lower expression of the oxytocin receptor gene (in other words, fewer receptors) was linked to menstrual pain. And differences in expression of the OXTR gene may be linked to autism.
