Oxytocin is a hormone of love between both sexes. It performs various functions, many of which are not yet known accurately. One knows, for example, that it allows us to connect with others, to experience affection, which drives us to reproduction and nursing, to love in all its innumerable shapes and shades. It is the hormone that induces birth and gives shape to life.
Nowadays, when we talk about oxytocin, many of them relate it almost immediately to synthetic oxytocin, which allows to give light. A reality not exempt from certain controversies, which somehow blurs the magic and the great transcendence of oxytocin. A hormone that we produce in the hypothalamus and is secreted by the hypophysis.
Studies devoted to this tiny organic molecule, which acts as a hormone and a neurotransmitter, do not cease to be sequential. Recently, the Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Science Magazine has demonstrated the role played by mentality oxytocin for relaxation, calmness, and all processes that are activated, for example, during meditation.
To put it another way: oxytocin not only connects us to others, but also favors those psychological and emotional mechanisms that help us connect better with ourselves, in search of our inner equilibrium.
You reveal some of its functions and recognize its importance, we try to find out more about this incredible hormone: oxytocin.
What Function Oxytocin Do In Human Body
Oxytocin is an oligopeptide composed of nine amino acids. It was discovered at the beginning of the last century and was synthesized by the biochemist Vincent Du Vigneaud artificially in 1953. The moment when this compound, powerful and indispensable for our brain, began to be the main object of study in laboratories: l ‘the goal was to identify the role it played in important aspects of our lives, such as social relationships.
We now know that this chemical is the engine that shines and shapes most of our prosocial behavior, such as empathy, trust, friendship , generosity, and altruism. It also plays an important role in the dopaminergic reward center: it is the oxytocin that generates, for example, pleasure during orgasm. Well, given such features, there is no one who has taken for granted that oxytocin is responsible for such intense and significant romantic constraints typical of a couple relationship.
However, as explained in a research published in the Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews magazine , this latter data is much more complex than we can imagine, because emotional relationships come into play with many other components, many other dynamics to that neurotransmitter recipe in which Oxytocin plays a concrete role.
When we are in love and experience an intense, chaotic and almost obsessive passion, oxytocin acts as a disinhibitor. Scientists argue that this hormone causes our neuronal circuits an effect similar to that triggered by alcohol: it drives us to risk, to trust ourselves and to not see the possible dangers or implications that a particular relationship may have, though is harmful or toxic. There is also no one who sees in this effect a dark side, without losing its charm to oxytocin.
Oxytocin makes life easier
If generosity, affection, trust and compassion are regulated by oxytocin, we will understand without a doubt because it is often called the “human hormone”. However, a very important point is not to be missed: even in the animal kingdom, mothers protect and defend their children’s life at the expense of their own life, because their behavior is also governed by oxytocin. In fact, it is known that among the dogs and the men is established a prodigious magical bond, regulated by this same hormone.
More than labeling it as the human hormone, therefore, we should see it from a wider and transcendent perspective, as something that simplifies life. Because through oksitocin, we connect with others, with other species, with our surrounding environment and with ourselves, to coexist with greater harmony, understanding that affection, selflessness, self-care and self-care others guarantee survival.
At the moment, however, we are deepening on an aspect as interesting as important. It has been discovered that oxytocin increases our focus on the social and emotional information of our environment. It leads us to certain stimuli, to process them as meaningful and to remember them. Once again, that connection, that force invites us to concentrate on what surrounds us, appears to form part of it.
This opens a track for people with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Indeed, it has been shown that oxytocin deficiency could contribute to the onset of autism, leading to the first clinical trials to improve social integration and the quality of interactions. We really hope so, and we also hope that the new discoveries about the functions of this hormone will not be surprising to show us the wonders that hide our biology.
