Found this article intriguing, thought you might, too.
Kathleen Fallon Pasakarnis, M.Ed. IBCLC
Strange Signals From Breastfeeding
April 24, 2002 (New Scientist) -- How you smell really can change the way
people around you behave-and it has nothing to do with bad BO. Breastfeeding
women and newborns give off odours that boost the sexual desire of other
women.
The finding adds to the growing body of evidence suggesting that our natural
smell influences other people on an unconscious level, and strengthens the
argument that human pheromones exist and still exert a subtle influence over
us.
In the study, smells associated with breastfeeding increased feelings of
sexual intimacy in childless women volunteers. Why this should be so is a
mystery, but the researchers suggest it may be a way that women signal to
each other that the environment is a good one in which to reproduce.
Julie Mennella of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia and a
team at the University of Chicago asked 26 nursing mothers to wear absorbent
pads in their bras and under their armpits. The odours collected on the pads
probably came from both the mother and the feeding baby.
Another 45 women, who had never given birth, then spent the next three months
undertakng a "sniff challenge". For a month, all the women sniffed control
pads with a phosphate buffer on them four times a day. For the final two
months, some women were randomly chosen to sniff pads with the breastfeeding
compounds, while others continued with the control scent. Each day the
volunteers measured their temperature, took a urine sample and recorded
sexual activity.
Last year, Mennella's group showed that exposure to breastfeeding odours
disrupted the menstrual cycles of volunteers: longer cycles got longer and
shorter ones got shorter.
The new study reveals a more subtle effect. While the women smelling the
breastfeeding compounds did not report increased sexual activity-this
behaviour was most obviously influenced by the absence or presence of a
partner-they did report significantly heightened and more enduring sexual
desire and fantasies. "The data are pretty striking," says Mennella, who
presents her evidence this week to a meeting of the Association for
Chemoreception Sciences in Sarasota, Florida.
She concludes that the chemicals encourage other women to reproduce, and that
they may have evolved as a signal that the environment is suitable for
raising young. In many cultures, newly-wed young women are encouraged to
spend time around new mothers to increase their own chances of having
children, she says. "I wonder if these cultures have tapped into something."
She is eager to find out if the breastfeeding smell has any impact on
fertility.
Richard Brown, a psychologist at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova
Scotia, notes that these are only preliminary findings. But he points out
that breastfeeding women have higher than normal progesterone levels. "Maybe
the high progesterone acts like an androgen," he speculates. "Maybe it's the
weirdest of possible things and they're producing male-like odours."
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