Hormonal Cycles
I found this piece from The Economist to be absolutely fascinating. It’s not about “male” and “female” brain types, as we deal with in our EQSQ personality tests, rather, to do with the surge of hormones through a woman’s brain over the month. The differences in the levels of progesterone and oestrogen at different points in the cycle mean that women will be more or less sensitive to certain stimuli at different times.
It’s long been known, for example, that women’s reactions to illegal drugs like cocaine vary over the month and indeed, treatment with progesteropne has been used as a way to reduce the desire for it (by lessening the pleasure gained).
By looking at things like oxygen flow to the amygdala (a part of the brain closely associated with pleasure) researchers were able to show that greater pleasure would be had from these stimuli when it is oestrogen that is the predominant hormone (that is, when leading up to ovulation) rather than when progesterone is also present, as it is after ovulation.
The speculation is that there is an evolutionary component to this: women will be more open to the pleasures of gifts and attention in the lead up to their fertile period than after it.
As I say, this is little or nothing to do with our personality tests but it does provide an interesting diagnostic tool. It appears that those parts of the brain which increase the enjoyment of sex over the cycle are also those that enjoy chocolate. Finally, science provides an answer for why men buy women chocolates: it’s a signalling mechanism. If that first bite of a Belgian chocolate causes a dreamy look, better order pizza and stay in tonight.
February 6th, 2007 at 4:05 am
Some researchers have found that women who eat chocolate have higher sex drives. No wonder men can be seen hauling the stuff home by the truckloads for Valentine’s day and anniversaries! But before all you guys spend your retirement on Cadbury’s, keep in mind the most recent study, in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, on chocolate and sex drive that found once the researchers controlled for age, chocolate had no effect on libido.
February 6th, 2007 at 4:08 am
That link to http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1743-6109.2006.00236.x” rel=”nofollow”>the article about chocolate and sex drive didn’t seem to make it through. Here it is.
February 8th, 2007 at 9:37 pm
Also, there’s the obvious dangerous cycle of eating too much chocolate (or of anything of high fat content), becoming dissatisfied with your body, seeing that dissatisfaction reflected in your beloved’s eyes (whether it really is there or not), feeling insecure, especially about body and attractiveness, sexiness, etc, and as a result, not ever feeling in the mood. Or maybe only feeling in the mood with the lights off and eyes closed.
February 8th, 2007 at 10:45 pm
Lucy, my intelligence moles tell me it’s only the English who do that (there’s a famous phrase from the more straitlaced Victorian times, “Lie back and think of England”):-) And surely it should be the beloved’s eyes closed?
Millie, by correcting for age you have ruined my new dating technique! And tell me, is that journal part of your regular reading? (Being serious for a moment, are you still gravid? If not, what’s the little blighter’s name?)
More seriously, the intelligence in this report is more about receptiveness to the two things, enjoyment of them, as determined by hormonal changes. Any individual will be operating from a base level for that individual: what we’re looking at here is the variance over the cycle, not the base level. In a way, we can connect this into our EQSQ personality tests. The number that’s important is the ration between the results, not the actual numbers themselves. For each individual applies a different meaning to “important” (sex) or “interested” (chocolate) but by looking at the variance we can find something out.
February 19th, 2007 at 7:21 am
There shouldn’t be any surprise whatsoever in the findings that say women are more open to gifts such as chocolate shortly before menstruation. The term “pre-menstrual syndrome†may have negative connotations, but I as a woman would be the first to say that there’s a great deal of truth in it. During this time—at least from what I have seen— women are indeed more sensitive to various stimuli, meaning yes, we will probably lose our tempers more quickly; yes, we will probably cry more easily; yes, we will probably have more active libidos; and yes, we will most certainly enjoy chocolate even more than usual. It would make sense that all of this heightened sensitivity leads to boosted emotional intelligence, but the fact of the heightened sensitivity itself shouldn’t be news to anyone who has lived around a female for a few months!
February 20th, 2007 at 9:28 pm
Shabanx, yes, I should have applied my intelligence to this point a little more. Age means that such hormonal changes are something of a memory in this household. Doesn’t excuse the lapse of course.
The thing I found most fascinating about this intelligence though was the way in which libido was so closely tied to chocolate (or at least the enjoyment of). I’ve wanted to know for years (make that decades) why it had to be chocolate rather than, say, onions. Or apples. Now I have at least an inkling of the answer: although as you say, the increased emotional sensitivity might mean that any gift will be more gratefully received, but chocolate even more so.