The Love Hormone Oxytocin Helps Men Stay Monogamous, Eat Better and Lose Weight

Oxytocin (the love hormone) reduces caloric food intake, says a new study.

How Oxytocin Helps Men Eat Better and Lose Weight

A new study finds that men treated with oxytocin nasal spray began immediately to eat fewer fatty foods. The love hormone lowered the number of calories consumed by men at a breakfast, no matter if they were overweight or normal weight. Oxytocin also improved insulin sensitivity – the ability of the body to clear sugar from the bloodstream. Oxytocin nasal spray is not approved in the US. There it is used as an injectable drug to induce labor and facilitate nursing. In Europe, oxytocin is approved and it is a treatment for obesity and metabolic complications. The lead investigator Elizabeth Lawson, assistant professor of medicine, and her colleagues recruited 25 men the age of 27 years, half of them were overweight and the other half had a healthy weight. The men were assigned to a single dose of a dummy drug (placebo) or oxytocin nasal spray after fasting. After receiving oxytocin compared with dummy drugs, the men ate fewer calories and less fat at the meal.

Oxytocin Helps Men Stay Monogamous

The hormone oxytocin promotes trust and love between partners and bonding between moms and their babies. The question is whether this hormone can stop men from cheating or not. Men that were given the love hormone oxytocin wanted to stay farther away from an attractive unknown woman. This applies to men in a relationship. To test these effects, researchers included 40 men, who reported that were in love with their partners passionately and had a relationship for six months at least. They were first given an oxytocin nasal spray and then a placebo. These forty men were shown pictures of other women and also pictures of their partners. Their brain activity was studied with magnetic resonance. The team examined if oxytocin enhances the activation of the reward system when seeing the partner or if there is the same effect with pictures of other women. And it was indicated that oxytocin maintains the bond between partners, Atlantic People are trying to stimulate the reward system in the brain, in love, and in taking drugs. That shows why they fall into mourning and depression when they separate from their partners. Anyway, the therapy with the love hormone could be counterproductive. The oxytocin can also increase the suffering and make a greater longing for the missing partner.

How does Oxytocin act on the Male Reproductive Tract?

In the mammal, the man, the hormone oxytocin is represented in the same quantities as in women. This hormone at discharge is released from neurohypophysis in systemic circulation and indicates contractions of the reproductive tract helping sperm release. The presence of oxytocin in the reproductive tract supports an action for this peptide and it is proven that it is synthesized in the prostate, mammalian testis, and epididymis. In the prostate, oxytocin affects gland growth, both with its interaction with androgen metabolism and directly. As an understanding of paracrine growth mediators, oxytocin is likely to provide new ways for healing this kind of pathology.