Semen makes you happy, according to a report comparing
women who have sex using condoms with those who have
unprotected sex. The study shows that the women who were
directly exposed to semen, because a condom wasn't used,
were less depressed, and the researchers think this is
because there are mood-altering hormones in semen that are
absorbed through the vagina. "I want to make it clear that
we are not advocating that people abstain from using
condoms," says Gordon Gallup, a psychologist at the State
University of New York. "Clearly an unwanted pregnancy or a
sexually transmitted disease would more than offset any
advantageous psychological effects of semen."
Gallup divided 293 female students into groups according to
how often they had sex using condoms, and measured their
happiness using the Beck Depression Inventory, a standard
questionnaire for assessing mood. People who score over 17
are considered moderately depressed.
His team found that women who never used condoms scored
8 on average, those who sometimes used them scored 10.5,
those who usually used them scored 15 and those who
always used them scored 11.3. Women who weren't having
sex at all scored 13.5, which is higher than those who always
had protected sex.
And the longer the interval since they last had sex, the more
depressed the women who never or sometimes used
condoms became. But the length of time since their last
sexual encounter made no difference to the moods of women
who usually or always used condoms. The team also found
that suicide attempts were more common among women
who used condoms regularly compared with those who
didn't.
The researchers found all this hard to believe, so they looked
for alternative explanations. They thought that maybe
women who rarely used condoms took oral contraceptives
instead, since these can affect women's moods, but this
didn't turn out to be true. They thought maybe the results
were related to how often women had sex or the strength of
their relationships. They thought it was possible that certain
personality types were more likely to use condoms than
others. But none of these factors could explain the outcome
of the study.
Actually, it's known that semen contains several mood-
altering hormones, including testosterone, estrogen, follicle-
stimulating hormone, luteinising hormone, prolactin and
several different prostaglandins.
But why should semen have a mood-elevating effect? "It
makes no sense to me for this phenomenon to have
evolved," says Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary
psychologist at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
He should have asked some women instead of trying to
figure it out for himself. It's advantageous for the male if a
woman feels happy, despite the fact that her lover is
gathering up his clothes and creeping home instead of
staying for breakfast. And gals need to ward off depression
in case they pay the ultimate price and have to get up
regularly for 4 am baby feedings nine months later.
Maybe if she's lucky, she'll have an Indigo child. Read all
about them in "The Indigo Children" and "An Indigo
Celebration" by Jan Tober and Lee Carroll,
click here.
For more information, click here.
