Found this on-line recently... thought it made some interesting points. I\'m not sure though how accurate it actually may be or if perhaps assumptions were presented as fact. So take it as most information detailed on this medium... skeptically with a grain of salt so to speak. However, for those who are more typically in the know, please feel free correct any or all errors. Thanks [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]


Using Pheromones for Attraction and Bonding

The purest union that can exist between a man and a woman is that created by the sense of smell and sanctioned by the brain\'s normal assimilation of the animate molecules emitted by the secretions produced by two bodies in contact and sympathy, and in their subsequent evaporation. --Auguste Galopin in \"The Perfume of Women and the Sense of Smell in Love\"

Make Them Look at Your Face!

When you wear clothes, your body heats the air around it. This causes the air to rise toward your highest opening in your clothes. As the heated air rises, it picks up the pheromones secreted from your skin, and, as this air emerges around your neck, it causes people to look at you more directly and notice your face.

However, human pheromone levels peak at around age 18, then slowly decline throughout our lives. This is why we are always aware of teen-agers in a room. By age 40, your pheromone signals no longer excite others when you enter a room as they did when you were 18. We all tend to think that the physical beauty of young people is the source of their attractiveness; however, smells activate the emotions. Thus, the declining interest of others as we age may be more due to pheromone declines than physical changes in our bodies.

So, to make people look at you (and not the lovable teen-agers), you should enhance your natural pheromones signals with supplemental pheromone signals - just as supplements of anti-oxidants keep you healthy and ward off diseases.

Pheromone scientists have said that mammals think through their noses. Virtually all organisms, from yeast to insects to humans, produce volatile smelly pheromones that act as sexual magnets and send other messages such as dominance or fear. Pheromones are substances secreted by one animal that causessome behavioral response in a second animal. Pheromone is from the Greek words pherein, which means to bring or to transfer, and hormon, which means to excite. Most studied pheromones are volatile smells but other are transferred by direct skin-to-skin contact. Pheromones are primarily present in the skin and the glands of skin, in saliva, urine, and vaginal liquids. (Cohn 1994)

Some pheromones are oil-like chemical odors that can be put into perfumes and oils. However, other pheromones are proteins which must be transferred by physical skin to skin contact or by kissing. (Singer 1991) Kissing is nearly universal in human culture and may be an unconscious method of transferring protein pheromones.

However, in recent years the definition of pheromones has been expanded to include both attractive or repulsive pheromones which play a major part in attraction between persons. While you may be attracted by the pheromones of one person, those of another person may repel you. (Nicoli and Nicoli 1995)

After the final no there comes a yes. And on that yes the future world depends. --Wallace Stevens

Why Mothers Kiss Babies - Pheromone ID Swapping

While the effects of pheromones on humans are less obvious than in other mammals, they still strongly affect our behavior. Many pheromones are air borne particles that pass through air after evaporation by the heat of the body. Some pheromones are heavy proteins that cannot be passed through the air by evaporation. These are passed by physical contact such as by kissing or skin-to-skin contact. Kissing occurs in all human cultures and is a way of passing identification pheromones. When a mother kisses her baby, this increases the mother-baby bonding.

Pheromones act in two ways. The first is \"signal pheromones\" that cause others to become aware of your presence and cause immediate changes in behavior by activating certain areas of the brain. The second class is \"priming pheromones\" which trigger increases in GnRH production and which often require kissing or skin-to-skin contact. This, in turn, increases production of many hormones that affect development, metabolism, and mating behavior. Often, fertile women have difficulty becoming pregnant. In married couples, it takes, on average, six months of sexual intercourse to produce the first pregnancy. One theory is that the woman\'s body is slowly adjusting to her husband\'s pheromones before becoming receptive to pregnancy.

Pheromones activate pre-coded genetic programs. They increase production of GnRH (Gonadotropin Releasing Hormone) that starts the pulses and cycles of sex hormones which govern sexual development. GnRH also affects activity in the brain that affects sexual development and behavior.

Pheromones Attraction More Powerful Than Physical Strength in Animals

In goats, sheep, and pigs, male dominance in competition for females is determined by the strength of the male\'s pheromone - and not physical strength or beauty. The animals with the strongest pheromones have more confident threat displays without giving signals of fear. This reduces the incidence of actual physical combat for females - especially among deer and moose. The pheromones of the male with the strongest pheromone causes a psychological castration of other males which helps remove them from competition. In pigs, the pheromone androstenone triggers the female\'s receptivity to the male.

This type of pheromone dominance may also apply to humans since many researchers think human pheromone responses are very similar to pigs (Hard on our ego but probably true.) Truffles, which are a fungus that grows underground near oak trees in France and Italy, are highly valued as human aphrodisiacs. Pigs also are passionately attracted to truffles and are used to locate them.

So if you are a man, your pheromone smell may affect females more strongly than your good looks, money, or wit.

Why Women Call Men Pigs

Women often call men pigs (or vertical pigs). On the other hand, men very rarely use this term when talking about women. Since the domestication of wild pigs 7,000 years ago, women have intuitively known that many male human hormones are very similar to those of pigs.

The key pheromone in pigs is androstenone, which gives the characteristic odor to urine from boars (male pig) and some of the odor to human male urine also. Female pigs are extremely aware of the smell of androstenone as are human female to male smells. Pig breeders spray androstenone from aerosol cans on the backs of female pigs to determine whether the female is ready for breeding - if the sow arches her back, she is sexually receptive.

Nipple Pheromone - Why Men are Attracted to Large Breasted Women

Newborn infants follow the breast odors emanating from their mother\'s nipple/areola region. These odors exert a pheromone effect that guides the infant to nurse at their nipples. (Winberg and Porter 1998, Porter and Weinberg 1999) Within minutes after birth, the mother\'s breast odors cause a head turning of the baby for the nipple and helps guide the baby to successful sucking for milk. Newborns soon learn to recognize their own mother\'s unique odor signature which build- mother-infant attachment.

Nipple pheromones also may explain a lot of behavior in young men. The irrational obsession of men with women\'s breasts has long been a puzzle. It may be that this is a natural bonding pheromone that men require for their emotional stability and helps tie them to women.

This is the reason that men are instinctively attracted to large breasted women.

1,500 human genes for smell

Interpersonal attractive pheromones are the air-borne pheromones which often have a distinct smell. Smells and our response to them are extremely important to proper body functioning. A very significant part of the human genome - about 5.0% or about 1,500 genes of our 30,000 human genes - is used to code the receptors of smell. Two anatomically distinct organs respond to smell, the olfactory system located in the upper part of the nasal cavity, and the vomero-nasal organ or VMO in the nasal septum.

Even though human interactions are more complex than other warm-blooded animals, odors and pheromones still influence attraction and bonding. The wiring of the brain in humans and other animals sends signals from smells directly from the nose to the limbic area of the brain where our deeply felt emotions reside.

When we smell another\'s body, it is that body that we are breathing in through our mouth and nose, that we possess instantly, as it were in its most secret substance, its own nature. Once inhaled, the smell is the fusion of the other\'s body and my own. --Jean-Paul Sartre

Insufficient pheromones - Inadequate emotions

A lack of smell limits emotional attachment. Approximately 1.3% of persons are born with a total lack of smell or Anosmia. And most of us lack the ability to smell certain fragrances. A study found 5 to 8% of students at Oxford University could not smell freesia, a very fragrant flower.

Persons with Anosmia often complain about a lack of libido. While they may marry, behavior that is emotionally distant remains a problem. Some researchers have noted that the decline in sex drive with aging coincides with the decline in smell.

One answer to reduction in the ability of smelling as we get older is to increase our pheromone signal with essential oils and pheromones.

Pheromones act even if you cannot smell them

While many pheromones have distinct smells, one may be influenced by a small amount of a pheromone which is not enough to create a conscious odor. Male dogs can respond to pheromones from a female dog at distances up to three miles and at concentrations that the dogs are unlikely to consciously smell.

Women often like to wear unwashed T-shirts previously worn by men. In the Middle Ages, a man would wipe his brow after dancing and present it to his lady as a love token. The reason for this behavior may not have even been consciously realized but it meant that the lady would have her man\'s smell with them. In Shakespeare\'s Merchant of Venice, Othello goes into a rage over one of his missing handkerchief. The wives of Welsh miners working on night shifts would put their man\'s nightshirts in their pillows where they could smell them.

Humans also respond to pheromone levels that are too low to smell. Sobel and colleagues (Stanford University) found that an air-borne fragrant pheromone (oestra- 1,3,5(10),16-tetraen-3yl acetate) would activate brain centers even when present at concentrations below a threshold of conscious detection. Sobel used Magnetic Resonance techniques to prove that exposure to pheromones (at undetectable levels) activate brain centers. Even when the experimental subjects could not smell the chemical, their brain centers that respond to the pheromone, were activated. (Sobel et al 1999). Other studies of brain EEG patterns of behavioral evidence have also come to the same conclusion: that we can be strongly affected by pheromones that we are not even conscious of smelling.

Smells Directly Affect the Emotional Center of Your Brain

Smells activate nerves in the vomero-nasal organ or VMO in the nasal septum that act directly on the brain\'s emotional control areas. All other senses such as sight, touch, sound, and temperature are transferred through a series of nerve connections that change and moderate the effects so that the brain does not over-react to new stimuli.

However, the nerves that respond to smell are wired directly into the brain and the stimuli are sent pure and unmodified to the limbic center of the brain. There are three general areas of the brain, the first and most basic is the brain stem which controls basic functions such as breathing and heartbeat. The next higher area is the limbic system in the central area of the brain. The limbic system is where emotional responses are concentrated. When various areas of the limbic system are activated, a person feels intense emotions. Some limbic areas cause feelings of peace, contentment, attraction while other areas causes feeling of anger, rage, hostility, loneliness and so on. The conscious brain is the topmost and outer area of our brain. This is where we spend our time thinking but the conscious mind is not where our emotions are developed. Why we love someone is more how they smell to the limbic system than what we consciously think of them.

In rats, surgical ablation of the vomero-nasal organ or VMO in the nasal septum produces dramatic impairments of mating, dominance status, and gender recognition.

I will be arriving in Paris tomorrow evening. Don\'t wash! --Napoleon - Message to Josephine

Washing, Cultures and the Decline of Bonding

Numerous scientists have observed that as cultures advance to higher levels of bathing, interpersonal bonding seems to decline. They suggest that the washing removes skin pheromones and weakens the interpersonal bonding in families and between couples.

In the Roman Republic, family ties were very strong. However, as it evolved into the wealthy Roman Empire with its adequate water supplies and free municipal baths, personal bonds became weaker, divorce became common, and social disorganization increased. With the rise of Christianity, with its dislike of nudity and bathing, family ties began to strengthen again. It is said that few people bathed for the next 1,500 years in Western Europe.

In North Africa and the Middle East, where Islam prevailed after the collapse of classical Roman culture, a somewhat different scenario occurred. Musk, a strong pheromone obtained from the male musk deer, was a special favorite of the Prophet Mohammed. The El Ktab, a classic Islamic text, describes musk as \"the noblest of perfumes and that which provokes men and women to venery.\" Islamic culture always emphasized the use of perfumes and pheromones. (Kohl and Franceour 1995).

\"The Lonely Crowd\" - Cleanliness Can Produce Loneliness

In the United States, California led the way on personal cleanliness. By the 1940\'s, many Californians bathed or showered daily and washed away their personal pheromones, while most of the USA stuck to weekly bathing. However, California soon led the USA in divorce rates and family breakdown. Likewise in Europe, Scandinavia led the way in personal cleanliness in the 20th century and soon experienced family breakdown and chronic cultural complaints of interpersonal coldness and a lack of bonding. Immense social programs, prosperous economies, and a basic friendliness of people both in California and Scandinavia have not solved these problems.

While many social historians would disagree that a lack of pheromones could cause family breakdown, there are other precedents where chemical changes may have altered history. The poor leadership of the upper classes in the Roman Empire may have been influenced by chronic lead poisoning. Wealthy people use lead cooking pots and the bones of wealthy ancient Romans often have lead concentrations 100 times the normal level which causes brain dysfunction.

Low Pheromones Reduce Your Attractiveness

Human pheromone levels peak at around age 20 then slowly decline through our life. By age 40, your pheromone signals no longer excite others when you enter a room as they did when you were 18. We all tend to think that the physical beauty of young people is the source of their attractiveness - however, smells activate the emotions. Thus, the declining interest of others as we age may be more due to pheromone declines than physical changes in our bodies.

Thus, to increase your pheromone signature as you move beyond puberty, you need supplemental pheromones - just as supplements of anti-oxidants reduce degenerative diseases.

Expensive Perfumes Do Not Work

Studies by Alan Hirsch and Jason Gruss (Smell and Taste Treatment Research Foundation, Chicago, Illinois and University of Michigan) found that expensive perfumes are much less effective than many essential oils and common foods. They studied the effects of many different scents on sexual arousal of males and females by comparing their blood flow in sexual-aroused tissues while wearing scented masks and while wearing non-odorized, blank masks. Expensive perfumes increased blood flow by only 3%. In contrast the combined odor of lavender and pumpkin produced a 40% increase and many other scents worked better than perfumes.

While these results are for men, the researchers reported that women also responded poorly to expensive perfumes.

While these scientists tested lavender which has a reputation as a mild attractant, they unfortunately did not test many other pheromones with reputations as bonding smells such as Ylang Ylang, Asian Oud and others.

Hirsch postulates that scents may act by on the brain (1) by reducing anxiety, which inhibits natural sexual desire, or (2) increasing alertness and awareness, making the subjects more aware of sexual cues in the environment around them, or (3) by acting directly to the septal nuclei, a portion of the brain that induces sexual arousal.

Effect of Perfumes and Scents on Blood Flow in Male Sexual Tissue

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Effect of Perfumes and Scents on Blood Flow in Male Sexual Tissue

Item Tested: / Median % Penile Blood Flow:

Lavender and pumpkin pie = 40.0
Pumpkin pie and doughnut = 20.0
Orange = 19.5
Black licorice and cola = 13.0
Black licorice = 13.0
Lily of the valley = 11.0
Vanilla = 9.0
Pumpkin pie = 8.5
Lavender = 8.0
Musk = 7.5
Peppermint = 6.0
Cheese Pizza = 5.0
Roasting Meat = 5.0
Rose = 4.0
Strawberry = 3.5
Oriental spices = 3.5
Expensive Perfumes -averaged = 3.0
Chocolate = 2.8
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Women - Effect of Perfumes and Scents on Enhancement of Vaginal Blood Flow

Item Tested: / Median % Vaginal Blood Flow:

Cucumber and Good & Plenty™
(Licorice candy) = 13%
Baby Powder = 13%
Lavender and Pumpkin Pie = 11%
Charcoal Barbecued Meat = Inhibited - Anti-arousal
Cherries = Inhibited - Anti-arousal
Expensive Men\'s Colognes = Inhibited - Anti-arousal
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Why Perfumes Fail

The key to using oils as pheromones is to put them into contact with large areas of your body. Then the heat of your body biochemically alters the odors and blends them into your overall pheromone signature.

Your personal pheromone \"odor signature\" is a complex mixture of pheromones, body oils and fatty acids, sweat, and hormones such as androsterone secreted onto the skin from your apocrine glands. In addition, the 40 million skin cells that you shed each day add to your pheromone signature.

Perfumes that are dabbed on a small area - such as the wrist - do not effectively mix into your overall pheromone signature. Thus, they exist as a separate smell and do little to change your total pheromone signature. Furthermore, the mixing of many different scents in perfumes produces a confusing pheromone signal.

Human Pheromones Increase Attraction But Also Aggression

A possible drawback to using human pheromones is that they may also trigger aggression. On the other hand, traditional plant pheromones all seem to have soothing properties, encourage calmness, and have been also used for meditation and religious ceremonies.

In humans and other mammals, sexual attraction can also trigger aggression. Androstenone, a pheromone in pigs, triggers both sexual attraction and aggression in boars. Human men produce the same chemical in their armpits.

In mice, certain pheromones cause male mice to kill other male mice. The attacks depend largely on odor cues (male odors increase attacks, female cues decrease attack). In many mammals such as lions and bears, males will kill the offspring of a female so that they may mate with the female. Sex hormones stimulate production of urinary pheromones that increase the intensity of fighting in rodents. But the urine of castrated rats lacks the aggression-provoking pheromone. Conversely, the urine of female rats contains an aggression-inhibiting pheromone.

For these reasons, it might be beneficial to stick to traditional plant pheromones.

Plant Pheromones Can Be A Safer Alternative

Plants use chemicals to attract bees and other pollinators to their flowers. Some plant pheromones have similar chemistry to animal pheromones. Musk is a strong pheromone from musk deer, musk ducks, musky moles, muskrats, musk ox and musk beetles. But similar pheromones exist in musk melons, musk hyacinths, musk cherries, musk thistle,musk rose, musk plums and musk wood.

The truffles prized by French gourmets as aphrodisiacs are a fungi that has an odor nearly identical to androstenol, a sex attractant for pigs and very similar to chemicals that act as sex attractants in humans.

Perfumes arose from plant oils with smells similar to animal pheromones. Plant oils with the strongest similarity to human sexual pheromones are from Jasmine, Ylang Ylang and Patchouli.

After Bath or Shower

While your skin is still damp,you can rub the oil on your skin to impart a silky smoothness to your skin. Then pat dry with a towel.

In Your Bath

Add to the bath water to soften and protect your skin as you bathe. The oil will float to the surface and adhere to your skin as you leave the bath.

Using Oils For Attraction and Bonding

For attraction of others, you should not always use an oil that you personally prefer. For example, Patchouli oil is loved by women but not men. It is felt to mimic sweat pheromones from men that attract women. So if you use Patchouli oil, you may increase your attractiveness to women but not to men. Ylang Ylang Oil, on the other hand, seems to have stronger effects on men.

Some oils seems to enhance mutual attraction such as musk and sandalwood. Jasmine attracts women but most men also like jasmine.

Testing Pheromones & Oils

By using an appropriate version on your body - instead of a perfume - you can strongly modify your personal pheromone signature. To test the effects of a version, after you normally bath or shower and dry yourself, rub it on your torso - especially the chest and breast area. If you bathe at night, an oil mixture can be applied to your dry skin in the morning. The heat of your body will evaporate the scents and then blend the pheromones and scents into your body pheromone signature.

Dress normally and go about your daily work and visits. Responsive people unconsciously notice you at about 3 to 5 feet. Watch for people who unexpectedly turn around and smile at you or extend conversations. (This is a little like trolling for salmon with different lures - it takes some time but you find the right lure.)

Aromatic molecules travel through the air at about 100 miles per hour. So people will become aware of the your pheromones and scents - even if it is at an unconscious level.

Try one thing one day - another the next. You will become aware of the pattern of people who are responding to you and can decide what scent works best for you.

While general responses of people to essential oils and pheromones can be predicted, some humans may react differently. For attraction of, or bonding to, women, Jasmine and pheromones or Patchouli and pheromones are very good. Ylang Ylang is considered a strong aphrodisiac for men and might be a good attractant for men. Sandalwood is similar to Musk which is considered the universal attractant. But also keep the Jasmine for men since it is the traditional favorite of French women who know how to attract anything.

Oils and Effects:

Lavender - Calming/Relaxing/Soothing - effects on both sexes.

Jasmine - Erotic/Aphrodisiac/Very pleasant smell, Said to increase arousal, attractiveness, seductiveness, appeal and allure - Strong effect on women/Moderate effect on men.

Oud - Very Erotic - Strong effect on both sexes.

Ylang Ylang - Erotic/Aphrodisiac, said to increase arousal, fascination and attachment - Moderately Strong effect on women/Strong effect on men.

Sandalwood - Erotic/Musk-like, Scent is very similar but more pleasant to musks from animals which are traditional aphrodisiacs for both men and women - Moderate effect on women/Strong effect on men.

Nutmeg - Energizing/Very Stimulating - Strong effects on both sexes.

Patchouli - Mildly Erotic, a favorite erotic of women - Strong effect on women/Low effect on men.

More About Pure Essential Oils

The term oil in \"essential oils\" is not truly accurate but a traditional term. Essential oils are very volatile fragrances that easily evaporate and very different in character from oils such as olive oil or safflower oil. Essential oils are complex mixtures of plant produced chemicals - essential lavender oil has more than 50 plant chemicals.

Pure essential oils are expensive and must be obtained from reputable sources. Adulteration of essential oils is very common since a product like rose oil yields just 0.2% essential oil. While the finest natural French lavender oils harvested in the Haute Provence up to 70 percent linalyl acetate, many lavender oils from France have higher levels of linalyl acetate but such oil is fortified with synthetic products and may have no traces of natural lavender. Sandalwood oil can be adulterated with diverse oils such as caster, palm and linseed.

Essential oils are remarkably free of side effects - which is reflected by their long use by humans.

Some persons may have allergies to oils such as Cinnamon Oil and Juniper Berry Oil.

Skin health and essential oils.

Surprisingly, many of the traditional mood altering essential oils also have been historically used for skin care.

Patchouli has also been used as an anti-inflammatory and an aid for dry, cracked skin. The oil of Lavender has soothing effects on the skin and has been on wounds in ancient Greece and Rome and still is today. Sandalwood has been used for skin regeneration, and to treat acne, dry skin, rashes, chapped skin, eczema, itching and sensitive skin. Ylang Ylang has been used to treat eczema, acne, oily skin, and irritation associated with insect stings or bites.