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How does love change your body chemistry?

, medical expert
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
Published: 2012-10-08 09:00

Surely many are familiar with those feelings that overwhelm and rush out, when the brain is focused only on positive emotions and ignores everything negative, and thoughts about a loved one do not leave for a minute. For some, love inspires so much that it awakens all the best and all the positive spills out into poems, pictures and pushes to the most unpredictable actions. And all this in the name of love and for the sake of love. This is the most mysterious and most amazing feeling on earth!

However, love is not just words; a person in love experiences a number of changes in the chemical composition of certain areas of the brain.

So what is love from a scientific point of view?

All pleasures that a person experiences are accompanied by the release of dopamine, be it gambling, drug use or love. A lack of this substance leads to the opposite consequences - a person cannot enjoy life, he becomes sad and gloomy.

This substance invades the brain of lovers to cool their ardor a little and tune in to a stronger relationship, because passion cannot last forever, including for biochemical reasons. It is oxytocin that awakens in a person the desire to simply fall asleep in each other's arms when passions subside a little and you want to take care of each other. It is not for nothing that it is called the hormone of fidelity.

Despite the fact that women produce testosterone in much smaller quantities than men, it is this hormone that is responsible for sexual activity and violent expressions of feelings.

Causes a feeling of sexual arousal and pleasure. This hormone acts like a drug and makes you melt when the object of your love approaches. After a while, your knees no longer shake and your head stops spinning, but the desire to see your loved one remains.

  • Major histocompatibility complex

It is a region of the genome responsible for recognizing foreign substances and the immune system's response. Our bodies are capable of emitting MHC through body odor, sweat, and saliva. As is known, genetic diversity is an advantage for reproduction, so a relationship is likely to arise between a man and a woman whose genes are very different.

  • Pheromones

We are used to using the phrase "love at first sight", but it would be more correct to say "love at first smell", because a person's smell plays a very important role, it carries information about a person. If you like a person's natural smell, then you have a biologically compatible partner in front of you.

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