Health & Medicine

Hormone That Can Boost Love And Sex Has Been Studied, Hopefully Can Heal Sexual Problems, Research Shows

Alex Davis
First Posted: Jan 26, 2017 04:00 AM EST

Love and sex is a gift given to mankind. Thus, a new British research may have found a way to boost this activity of a hormone associated with love and sex.

The research team said that there is a naturally occurring hormone called kisspeptin. It stimulates the release of other reproductive hormones in the body.

Consumer Health Day reported that the study that has been published online in the Journal of Clinical Investigation includes 29 young, healthy heterosexual men. The participants received either an injection of an inactive placebo or kisspeptin. The participants then underwent brain scan while looking at different types of images.

The findings revealed that for the study participants who were injected with kisspeptin, seeing romantic or sexual images of couple triggered an increased activity in the brain areas. It is typically activated by sexual arousal and romance.

Now, the researchers wanted to study whether kisspeptin could help treat some of the psychosexual disorders that are the sexual problems with a psychological cause. These problems usually happen to people with infertility, according to the study authors.

A professor of endocrinology and metabolism in the department of medicine at the Imperial College London who is also an author of the study, Waljit Dhillo, said that, "Most of the research and treatment methods for infertility to date have focused on the biological factors that may make it difficult for a couple to conceive naturally. These, of course, play a huge part in reproduction, but the role that the brain and emotional processing play in this process are also very important, and only partially understood."

Thus, the first author of the study that is also with the Imperial College London's department of medicine, Alexander Comminos, added that the study shows that kisspeptin boosts the sexual and romantic activity in the brain. Also, it decreases the negative mood.

Comminos said that, "This raises the interesting possibility that kisspeptin may have uses in treating psychosexual disorders and depression, which are major health problems which often occur together, but further studies would be needed to investigate this," according to RT.

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