After noisy holidays, it would not hurt to relax a little. It's time to think about yourself, nourish your soul with beautiful and warm emotions. For me, February is associated with love. I think it has a lot to do with Valentine's Day, when all lovers take the opportunity to openly express their feelings. Under these circumstances, when love is in the air, I thought to analyze this feeling more deeply and see what effect love has on our mental and physical health.
What is love and why is it needed?
Each person represents love in his own way, so it is not easy to study it. According to the three-component theory of love, love is like a triangle that relies on intimacy, passion, and commitment. Intimacy is the emotional aspect of love associated with the enjoyment of relationships. Passion is due to physical attraction. And commitment is an intellectual aspect associated with a conscious decision to maintain a long-term relationship.
At the physiological level, love is a complex set of hormonal reactions, which, like an orchestra, is controlled by the brain. Moreover, intimacy, passion, and commitment provide their own set of hormones and neurotransmitters. These substances affect both the mental and physical health of a person in love.
How does love affect mental health?
- Makes you want to have sex with your partner. When we fall in love, part of the brain – the hypothalamus – stimulates the body to produce many sex hormones: testosterone and estrogen. Sex relieves symptoms of depression, stress and helps with insomnia.
- Enhances feelings of confidence and security. The hypothalamus of lovers intensively produces the hormone oxytocin. This “love hormone” enhances feelings of attachment, trust, and security. And that is why you are so calm and comfortable in the company of a partner.
- Makes lovers less irritable. According to some reports, lovers almost effortlessly suppress impulsive behavior that arises from anger.
- Has a positive effect on intelligence. The feeling of love develops creativity, promotes the assimilation of a large amount of new information, as well as analytical thinking. In lovers, areas of the brain responsible for attention, motivation and memory, as well as centers that control the activity of the autonomic nervous system, are activated.
- Causes happiness. Love brings a person into a state of euphoria. Hormones of joy produced during the period of intense love make us feel happy and special.
How does love affect physical health?
- Relieves pain. Research has shown that love can help relieve pain. Women in love who were in a relationship for six months or more experienced pain more easily if they looked at a photo of their partner. Magnetic resonance imaging of the brain confirmed that when viewing a photo of a partner, there is increased activity in the brain area responsible for pleasure, and decreased activity in the area responsible for pain.
- Maintains the viability of nerve cells. At the beginning of a relationship, lovers have more nerve growth factor in their blood – this is a protein that forms connections between neurons, maintains their viability, stimulates their development and activity.
- Improves immunity. Patients who are in love are more likely to recover faster than those who suffer from depression. It has long been known that the state of mutual love can strengthen the immune system, as well as increase the effectiveness of both medical and osteopathic treatment and reduce the recovery time.
- Protects the heart. Regularly expressing your feelings to your partner can help normalize blood cholesterol levels, which in turn, along with normal blood pressure, helps reduce the risk of heart and vascular disease.
- Prolongs life. Married couples have been proven to live longer than single people. Research shows that this longevity is largely due to consistent social and emotional support, greater adherence to health care, and having a partner who can insist on a healthy lifestyle and help deal with bad habits.
That's all! As you can see, love just turns everything upside down! The main conclusion that I draw is this: happy and mutual love improves everything: strengthens the immune system, strengthens health, makes everyone smile!