Pheromones: what are they and how do they influence our sex life?

A series of chemical signals that play an important role in the search for a partner.

Romantic dinners, intimate and fascinating conversations in which seduction fills everything, sophisticated ways of finding attraction in each other's intelligence? It seems that human sexuality is one of nature's most subtle creations, one in which everything related to reproduction is precisely what matters least of all.

However, it remains true that, rational or not, we are still part of the animal kingdom. And in the animal world there is a chemical element that influences sexuality, also in our case: pheromones..

What are pheromones?

Pheromones are chemical substances generated by living beings and used to generate reactions in other individuals, of the same species or of another. They are, so to speak, the raw material with which some forms of life establish communication with others.

Of course, pheromones are a very simple and primitive communication, which even has problems to fit into what can be understood as non-verbal communication. On the one hand, this transmission of information, but it uses neither semantics uses neither semantics nor signs that can be cognitively processed.. In fact, the whole process is automatic and non-conscious (and no, not in the way Sigmund Freud would have imagined it).

There are no interpretations possible. One simply receives a chemical signal and reacts accordingly, almost always in a predictable and stereotypical way. Thus, pheromones are like pheromones are like parts that can only fit a certain way of life in a certain way.

This definition is very broad, but in practice one of the most important roles of pheromones has to do with a very specific one: reproduction.

Pheromones and the search for a mate

When human beings are looking for a partner (stable or occasional), the search for information about the people among whom they are in doubt rarely has to do with the analysis of speeches and verbal messages. Non-verbal communication, such as gestures and postures, are very influential, because they are expressed through aesthetics and physical appearance.

A person's exterior is not everything, but it is a layer of reality that natural evolution has taught us to appreciate greatly, because we have developed ways to find relevant information in it. We have been developing ways of finding relevant information about potential mates in it for millions of years, before we developed the ability to use language.

Pheromones are part of this very primitive packaging that we tend to judge first before trying to analyze the way people think and feel. Their importance has to do with the following points:

They give an idea of sexual compatibility 2.

Pheromones make a lot of sense from the point of view of reproduction because, unconsciously, they give us an idea about the characteristics that a common son or daughter would have. In particular, pheromones express aspects of the immune system of the person who secretes them, and it has been seen that in many animals tend to prefer individuals with an immune system that is more different from their own.. In this way the offspring have a more complete and comprehensive one.

2. They indicate the presence of a state of sexual activation.

Pheromones induce to orient one's behavior towards sexuality (either to feel attraction to someone or to feel the opposite), but they also tell us about the degree to which the one who secretes them shows a predisposition or not to have sex.

3. They give information about the ovulation cycle

This has been proven in non-human animals, and there is some evidence that it could also be true in our species. In fact, it has been possible to record how the smell of ovulating women causes men's testosterone levels to rise. Something similar has been seen in women, who, through odor, may be able to detect possible detect possible "competition" by detecting the ovulation of others..

This need not matter much from the point of view of how sexuality is experienced in modern societies, where sexuality and reproduction have been separated, but for species selection it does matter a great deal.

Studying pheromones in humans

What is known about pheromones is basically from research in biology with non-human animals. The clues as to what role these chemicals might be playing in the reproductive and affective behavior of humans is unclear, because their effects are difficult to register in a species as sophisticated as ours..

In the end, it is easy to see how pheromones work in small animals with less developed and with a less developed nervous system than ours, but as the complexity of behavior and the influence of society and culture increase, the role of these chemicals is blurred and hidden behind many layers of convoluted behind many layers of convoluted psychological processes.

Just as it is not the same to investigate memory by experimenting with chains of neurons as it is to do so with living human beings performing complex cognitive tasks, the study of pheromones in humans will need to be developed over many years to give us detailed explanations of how this element affects us.