May, 2004

Hello Again Readers,

Our resident pheromone researcher James Kohl is just back from the annual conference of the Association for Chemoreception Sciences, which among other types of “chemoreception” has a lot to do with pheromone communication. James was kind enough to give us glimpse into the conference for this month’s PheroNews. Please have a look below.

We have added a new type of product to our lineup of sample packets, and they are free (except for the shipping and handling), so avail yourself if you are so inclinded:
Go get ’em:
love-scent.com/wacky11/index.html

We are also offering a good deal on a couple of great products over here:
love-scent.com/wacky12/index.html

Bruce Boyd
editor
news@love-scent.com
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Pheromone News may be distributed freely, if the sign-up information is included. Original material is copyright protected.

Back issues and sign up located at:
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This Issue’s pheromone “News”:

*pheromone Q and A
*Feature Article: Report from the Association for Chemoreception Sciences
-James V. Kohl
*New Products
*pheromones in the Cinema
*User Corner; Reader pheromone Story
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pheromone Q and A:

This month, some technical points for experienced users:

Q: What constitutes a ‘drop’ with the Primal Instinct bottle? Should I use the AE (Alter Ego) ‘drop’ as a gauge?

A: Don’t use the AE dropper for PI. PI is very thick. My bottle of PI requires a little shaking to get the stuff to come out, but others have told me they just turn the bottle over and the oil will drip out on its own. In any case, a “drop” is what comes out of that dripper-top plastic sleave when you turn the bottle over. It is not very much.

Q: I am not getting results as strong as I would like. Should I be using more?

A: I would try more only gradually. And also different combinations of the products you have. Your strongest horse there is the Alter Ego. I would experiment quite a bit with that one on its own too. Personally, I would experiment mostly with different amounts of AE (using your nose as your guide since it is a cologne), adding a drop or 2 of PI sometimes. Then just keep at it. 1 in 4 women are fairly immune to pheromones (even natural ones sadly enough). Women on the pill don’t react very well. Women with colds don’t get it. Women who are very uptight in publlic will be almost impossible to read. Married women with young kids will be immune. And the list goes on. Your available targets are not as many as you might think based on a quick survey. Just keep at it. Try tallking to women working in clothing shops or behind fragrance counters. Young working women are usually single and available.

Q: Is it possible that my product has become inert due to cold? It was shipped FedEx overnight and was pretty cold when I received it (live in the Northeast). What is the temperature range for these products?

A: No, that should not be a problem. You could store them in the fridge and not hurt them.

Q: How long does AE or PI remain effective after application? How often should I re-apply?

A: It will begin fading immediately after application, but the pheromones are very tenacious, more so than cologne. You can reaply whenever you want, but like I said, the fragrance will fade before the pheros. In hot weather the pheros will morph into undesireable smells sometimes, and you need to wash them off.

All the Best,
Bruce

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Feature Article:
Report from the Association for Chemoreception Sciences
-James V. Kohl

Conference attendance continues to grow every year. I heard that there were 580 people who registered. In the past, conference abstracts have been posted on-line, long before they become available through subscription to “Chemical Senses”, the association newsletter. There’s been a change in organizational structure, so I’m providing a selected overview here. Of course, the focus is on presentations that deal with aspects of pheromonal communication.

Several presentations focused on the role of the main olfactory system in processing pheromones. I expect this will lead to increased public awareness that the vomeronasal organ (or “VNO”; secondary olfactory system also located in the nose and often credited with the ability to sense pheromones) is not essential to the unconscious affect of pheromones. Just because pheromones come through the nose, doesn’t mean we are consciously aware of them. Like other mammals, we don’t need to think about pheromones for them to have their effect on our hormones.

Note the difference here: “unconscious affect” versus a “cause and effect” relationship. An unconscious affect is a hormonal change (e.g., gonadotropin releasing hormone induced change in levels of luteinizing hormone) that we are not consciously aware of. A cause and effect relationship would be something like linking pheromones to a specific behavior (a scenario that is common in the insect world). pheromones from a female moth attract males for mating. Mammalian behavior is more complicated, yet we know it is affected by pheromones, so “unconscious affect” applies better to mammals, including humans. In contrast to insect pheromones, mammalian pheromones are only likely to elicit cause and effect relationships when the pheromones are present in high enough concentrations to be consciously perceived, and they will typically be negatively perceived. For example, excessive consciously perceived natural body odor almost always has a negative effect on someone who smells it. Don�t mean to labor too long on this point, but in a recent journal submission review, the reviewer wrote:
It is stated “Postnatal affective reactions that occur “This is an example of a vague statement that conveys little meaning. What are these postnatal affective reactions? On a related note, the author states that “an arbitrary odor will elicit a male LH response.”

From one small part of one paragraph (quoted above), it becomes obvious that the reviewer does not understand that the luteinizing hormone (LH) response is the postnatal affective reaction. Actually, the reviewer didn’t seem to understand anything about the concept of human pheromones (as presented in an award winning review article). Reviewers are supposed to be knowledgeable about the papers they review. Obviously, this wasn’t the case. This made it difficult for the reviewer to understand how pheromones could be linked to homosexual orientation (the topic of the journal submission).

The reason I mention the reviewer’s lack of understanding is to contrast the review with the level of understanding/intuition of high school students. One AChemS 2004 researcher presented a study, which was designed by a high school class; she simply supervised and offered some suggestions. The students’ intent was to find out whether one’s friends had a more pleasant odor compared to casual acquaintances, or to people that were unknown to the student. Their findings were that, yes, friends smelled best. The astute researcher asked what the students would like to do in a future study of human pheromones. What about the pheromones of homosexuals, they asked?

At last year’s conference, a research report stated that homosexuals can distinguish between the odor of heterosexuals and other homosexuals, and that homosexuals prefer the odor of other homosexuals. On a related note, Dr. Anne Perkins and colleagues published a paper (a decade ago) that succinctly states homosexual rams do not respond with the typical LH response to the pheromones of estrus ewes. To me, the absence of this typical LH response to pheromones of the opposite sex is very revealing. Anne and I discussed this in a 1993 Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality symposium. There’s something about this unconscious affect (on LH) that goes along with the rams’ homosexual orientation.

As some of you may have guessed, I’m thinking that the homosexual rams are processing the pheromones of other sheep in an atypical manner, and that the lack of the LH response to estrus ewes is central to the explanation of homosexual orientation. Well, even if you had not guessed, that�s the focus of my journal submission: “Human pheromones, Neuroscience, and Male Homosexual Orientation.” I explain that, just like heterosexual attraction, homosexual attraction is a function of the unconscious affect of pheromones on levels of our hormones. But, unlike high school students, so far the reviewers of my journal submission just don’t get it! Yes, it’s frustrating. It appears that it would be much easier to teach high school students about human pheromones and sexuality than it is to teach people with doctoral degrees in behavioral development.

Information about homosexual pheromones is geared to hit the mainstream media sometime soon, when Yolanda Martins, Charles Wysocki, and George Preti publish their findings (presented last year) in a peer-reviewed journal. While many reviewers may wonder what all the fuss is about, readers of the Pheromone News–whom I’m certain have intuitive understanding greater than high school students–will already know what extending the concept of human pheromones to explain homosexuality means. Simply put, in a 2001 Neuroendocrinology Letters review, colleagues and I explained how pheromones determine heterosexual orientation. And obviously, if this is true, pheromones must also determine homosexual orientation. Granted, the research that supports extension of a mammalian model both to human heterosexual and to human homosexual orientation, will continue to be challenged/misunderstood, politically charged, and be unlikely to appear in any peer-reviewed journal. But the support is very conclusive. Besides, no one has ever presented any information on how homosexuals become visually attracted to other homosexuals. And, if you explain the biology of heterosexual attraction, you had better explain homosexual attraction with the same model.

Change of focus here. There were several presentations on olfactory/pheromonal communication in birds, for example, “Preen Gland Secretions of a Scented and Unscented Seabird;” “Behavioral and Physiological Responses to a Putative Alarm Odor in European Starlings.” Typically, research on avian communication has focussed on song and on visual cues (e.g., the peacock’s tail). Some evolutionary psychologists are in for quite a surprise when they find that even the behavior of birds is likely to depend on olfaction/pheromones.

Back on topic: Colleague Matthias Laska’s slide presentation clearly stated that “between species comparisons of neuroanatomical features or of the number of functional olfactory receptor genes are poor predictors of olfactory performance.” Simply put, “We found that contrary to the traditional view, human subjects do not generally perform poorer than monkeys” And, human and nonhuman primates show an olfactory sensitivity, which for several substances, matches or is markedly better than species like dogs, rats, or mice.

Since we know that the sexual behavior of dogs, rats, mice and other mammals, is dependent on pheromones, it should be no surprise that human sexuality, including human homosexuality, will be found to be equally dependent on pheromones. I wrote a little about this in the 2002 update of my book “The Scent of Eros.” Since 2002, findings have become more conclusive in this regard. I’ll try to keep you posted as more data arrives.

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New Products

pheromone gel packs
These are really great. They are single/double use packets which contain a non-oily gel version of several of our best selling products (more to come in the future). Easy to carry in pocket or purse and can be applied to large areas of the body after showering without overdosing and/or getting oily.
Go here to have a look:
love-scent.com/gel-packs/index.html
You can also get a few freebies here today:
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pheromones in the Cinema

–From “Don Juan De Marco” starring Johnny Depp–
It’s an old movie, but if you haven’t seen it and are interested in what makes romance happen and what makes it *not* happen as well, drop everything and run out and rent this movie NOW! In fact, you might want to buy it and maybe even memorize a few parts.

Here is Don Juan’s reaction to a question regarding the depth of his love.
“Have you ever met a woman who inspires you to love until your every sense is filled with her? You inhale her, you taste her, you see your unborn children in her eyes and know that your heart has at last found a home. Your life begins with her and without her, it must surely end.”

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User Corner

Hello Bruce and company,

I was having friends over for a BBQ the day I got my Alter Ego in the mail, and this woman that I hooked up w/ the night before crashed the party. We were getting ready to go to a club soon, so I went into the next room to apply my new pheromones. Susie Q. walks in right after I finished, took one whiff of my neck and…so much for getting dressed to go out. She didn’t care if there were a bunch of strangers in the next room. She had to have me right then and there. Was it all mones…no, but I definitely think she was affected, judging from that “hungry” look in her eye. Not the same one she had the night before…something was different about it. I have seen that “look” quite a few times lately, since I’ve been experimenting w/ different combos and mixes. I virtually never got those kinds of looks before. Probably a combination of things, which is what it’s all about. Pheros can’t work miracles for you, but they can add a nice edge to what you’ve already got goin’ on.

Thank you!
–SG

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Bruce Boyd
news@love-scent.com