Oxytocin: The Trust Hormone

Hormones. They're responsible for alot of things, especially how we act and react.  Testosterone for example, helps men grow facial hair, increase muscle mass, as well as help grow male organs.  I think that's pretty incredible, but we always hear about testosterone and estrogen and never really about the other hormones like oxytocin.  Oxytocin is often known as the trust hormone or the cuddle hormone.  It's what makes humans humane.  The link above provides a list of ten reasons while oxytocin is the best thing since sliced bread.  From helping in social situations to helping moms be moms, oxytocin boosts pleasures.  Although it is notoriously known for trust and love, oxytocin's perhaps most important role is helping stimulate contractions of the uterus during deliver of a baby.  To me, I think that helps the most. Imagine if women had nothing to naturally assist ease child birthing.  Today we have medicine and technology and fancy things to help us, but imagine before.   If our bodies didn't produce this hormone in the past, I can't imagine how women would have gotten through that.  The video below is a study on how oxytocin helped men become “nicer”.  Men took either a placebo or oxytocin nasal spray and the ones with the oxytocin typically acted nicer.  It’s amazing how our body has all these chemicals that work for different things.  As time moves on, technology helps us discover newer and more natural remedies to our problems.  For example, the video also states how oxytocin may also be used to treat social anxiety or autism in the future.   One day perhaps all dangerous drugs can be replaces with natural things our body just makes on it’s own.