Pheromones

The first question is what are pheromones? The word actually comes from the Greek meaning to bear impetus, “phero” means to bear and “hormone” means impetus. And what it is, is a secretion that sets off a social response. It’s not just a human response, pheromones exist in all plants and animals. For instance, if you get startled and you feel fear, that’s the alarm pheromone. Some plants as well as animals communicate using pheromones. There are food pheromones and there are sex pheromones.

The concept of pheromones among humans has been around since the late 50s. There are also trail pheromones, especially in ants, and that’s why when you see ants walking along a trail, what they do is they mark their path with pheromones. That’s to track their way back to the colony with food, other ants can pick up on the pheromones and follow along, either back to the nest or to the food.

Sex pheromones set off signals that the female is available for breeding. This isn’t just for humans either, even sea urchins release sex pheromones, the pheromones travel to the water near them sending out a message that it’s time to eject their sex cells. While the whole concept of pheromones can be very complicated, the process is fairly simple. While animals and plant life need pheromones to communicate, and humans have the ability to speak.

Pheromones work at a much more basic level. Most of the time, people don’t even realize that they’re sending out pheromones, people will talk about some as having sex appeal. Even if that person is not an attractive, dynamic type of person, but if they’re sending out pheromones, they’re sending out the notion that they have sex appeal. This is why sometimes people have what they call love at first sight, what they really have is attraction at first sight, and that’s simply a matter of one or both of them emitting pheromones.

Pheromones aren’t just about sex as we’ve already mentioned, but you can send out pheromones showing that you’re dependable or that you’re trustworthy or that you’re friendly. The types of pheromones that humans have are the androstenone, androsterone, and the androstenol.

The andro part refers to humans. The first one makes you appear masculine, it also comes across as domineering. The second one just gives out the message that the person is masculine, but leaves out the dominating part and shows you as someone very trustworthy. The final one, the androstenol, sends out a message that you’re very friendly, this is also the pheromone that women tend to produce. It’s interesting to know that a simple shower will wash away the pheromones, and deodorant keeps the glands from secreting more androstenol. This particular pheromone is only secreted in little amounts, and it doesn’t last very long anyway. It is possible to buy pheromones that you can apply that do last longer.