Explore..Experience..Enjoy!: October 2008

You've just met that special person. Your heart is racing, your hands are sweating, you've got butterflies in your stomach and you tingle all over. You go to dinner together and you feel as high as a kite. At the end of the evening, your date kisses you and it makes you melt. For days after, you don't eat but you've never felt better and you've noticed your cold is cured.

Neural evidence shows that the phenomenon of 'falling in love' is a series of chemical reactions taking place in the brain that cause mental and physical reactions. There are an estimated 100 billion neurones that make up the brain's communication network. Candace Pert, author of Molecules of Emotion (1999), pioneered the research that discovered neuropeptides, a string of amino acids that float around the body and attach themselves to welcoming receptors. So far, 60 different neuropeptides have been discovered and they trigger emotional reactions in the body when they attach themselves to the receivers. In other words, all our emotions- love, grief, happiness- are all biochemical. When English scientist Francis Crick and his associates won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for deciphering the DNA code that defines genes, he stunned the medical word by saying, 'You, your joys, sorrows, memories, ambitions, your sense of identity, free will and love are no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells.'

The main chemical released to give you the elated physical feelings of being in love is PEA (phenylethylamine) which is related to amphetamines and is found in chocolate. This is one of the chemicals that make your heart race, hands sweat, pupil dilate and gives you 'butterflies' in the stomach. Adrenalin is also released, speeding up your heart, making you alert and helping you feel great. Along with that are also endorphins, which build your immune system and cure your cold. When you both kissed, your brains made a rapid chemical analysis of each other's saliva and it made decisions on your genetic compatibility. The woman's brain also made chemical determinations about the state of the man's immune system.

All this positive chemical reaction explains why people in love have been shown to have a better health and are much less likely to contract an illness than those who are not. Being in love is usually great for your health. (from the book Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps by Allan and Barbara Pease, pp.170- 171)