The Science of Love

There may be more to a kiss than meets the lips, as we are discovering that kissing is more of an evolutionary advancement than a romantic gesture that has motivated poets and musicians for decades.  Ninety percent of the world's population shows intimacy in this way and many believe it began as a feeding ritual between mothers and their young.  Kissing is now understood world wide as a sign of love and affection.  This is an extremely interesting topic in my opinion, because there is both a lovey-dovey laymans and a scientific side.

After some more research I came across a new book called "The Science of Kissing: What Our Lips Are Telling Us" by Sheril Kirshenbaum.  She speaks of the research Helen Fisher conducted as an anthropologist at Rutgers University from which she declared that this form of intimacy fulfilled the three needs of sex drive, romantic love, and attachment.  Some even believe that kissig helps to find and initiate relationships with partners long enough to conceive children.  While this is all fun and cute, it's also important to understand what is happening in our brains.

Kissing causes an increase in the neurotransmitter Dopamine, which is responsible for craving and desire, why most of us feel addicted or like we can't get enough of our significant others.  Serotonin and Oxytocin levels both also sky-rocket rendering a happy go lucky mood while thinking about our partners and attachment respectively.  Oxytocin has also been called the 'love hormone' and is found in the largest quantities after an orgasm.  This is responsible for mother-child attachment as well.  It's not surprising that during a passionate kiss all senses are heightened, pulse quickens, pupils widen making vision unfocused (the reason we close our eyes), blood vessels dilate, and our nose tells us about the other persons hygiene.  With all of this happening at the same time, its common for a bad or good kiss to have a big effect on a relationship.  A study from the State University of New York - Albany recently stated that between 50 and 65% of people have ended a relationship due to a bad kiss, more commonly women.  Considering human lips are packed with tons of nerve endings, making it the most sensitive part of our face due to its disproportionately large representation in the brain, it makes sense that sparks literally fly when you are crazy about someone.  No really, electrical impulses are passed between the brain, lips, tongue, and skin during a good lip locking session.  In the estimated 20,000 minutes, or 2 weeks, that we spend kissing in our lifetime people have noticed a difference between how the genders go about this act.  Men most often prefer french kissing, while some may just find it sexy, scientists hypothesize that it also has to do with the amount of testosterone transferred from the male to the female within saliva.  This in turn raises the woman's libido.  Supposedly women follow more of a histocompatibility complex in which they are 'drawn' to men whose DNA is very distinct and compatible to their own.  If this is true, their children will be more immunologically favored to survive.  I also found it interesting that 2/3 of the world's kissing population tilts their head to the right when locking lips, despite what their dominant side or hand is.

Fun fact of the day: 1 minute of intense kissing burns 26 calories!!