Tip No 1 for Attracting Love

1) Do new, exciting, slightly risky  things together

Visit a foreign city, walk a challenging mountain trail, go white water rafting, swim after dark, buy last minute tickets to a sports event or theatre show…. Any new activity, but particularly risky or dangerous ones, prompts spontaneous attraction by stimulating adrenaline (closely related to dopamine and norepinephrine).

“Adrenaline makes the heart grow fonder,” says psychologist Art Aron.

Several studies show couples who do exciting things together feel more satisfaction in their relationship.  But it appears sharing an exciting activity can also stimulate romantic love.

In a typical study, 28 dating and married couples were asked to fill our various questionnaires, then do an activity together, them fill out more questionnaires. One activity was exciting, the other dull.

Questionnaire responses showed those who did the exciting activity experienced increased feelings of relationship satisfaction, and more intense feelings of romantic love.

Danger Heightens Response

We’ve probably all known friends who have found a new love during an extreme experience – being brought together in seemingly random circumstances through unusual or tragic circumstances.

The “love matches” birthed during New Orleans’ Hurricane Katrina are the perfect example of circumstances where responses are heightened by the brain chemicals of adrenaline and dopamine produced  in response to the danger.

The so-called “creaky bridge” experiment – which involved getting men to walk across either a steady, broad low bridge or a flimsy high suspension one above boulders and rapids – confirmed the idea that sharing exciting experiences can enhance feelings of attraction.

The two walking bridges span the Capilano Canyon in North Vancouver; In the middle of each bridge stood the same beautiful young woman (part of the research team) who asked each passing man to fill out a questionnaire. After each man completed the survey, she casually told him that if he had any further questions about the study he should call her at home. She gave each her telephone number. No one knew the woman was part of the experiment.

Nine out of thirty-two men who walked the narrow, wobbly high bridge were attracted enough to call the woman at home, while only two of those who met her on the low safe bridge contacted her.

Psychologists Donald Dutton and Art Aron concluded that the novelty of the situation – being on a high scary bridge – elevated levels of dopamine, the hormone of pleasurable attraction/addiction.

Boost Sexual Health

Many of the hormones involved in sex and love – including dopamine, serotonin and testosterone – are susceptible to stress or aging. They can be boosted by eating the right foods – including cottage cheese, chicken, dark chocolate, yoghurt, eggs, and oats, or by herbal and nutritional supplements like Herbal Ignite.

Smelling Good and Bad Love

When it comes to discerning a new hot love, we should trust our noses. That’s the message from new research which shows that amongst the 10,000 different odours we humans can smell, the one that might be most critical to our future is the unconscious one of sniffing out a compatible mate.

Scent not only tells males which females are primed to conceive, but it also lets both sexes sense compatible and incompatible partners.

That’s because scientists are discovering smell helps attract us to partners whose MHC complex (part of a constellation of genes that control the immune system) is most different to our own, increasing our chances of good sexual chemistry and successful reproduction.

Varied MHC receptors not only increase our ability to fight infection, but MHC is also involved in tissue rejection. Conceive a child with a person whose MHC is too similar to your own, and the risk increases that the womb will expel the fetus. Find a partner with sufficiently different MHC, and you’re likelier to carry a baby to term.

The T shirt test

Studies show that laboratory mice can smell too-similar MHC in the urine of other mice and will avoid mating with those individuals. In research at the University of Bern in Switzerland, human females were asked to smell T shirts worn by anonymous males and then pick which ones appealed to them.

Time and again, they chose the ones worn by men with a safely different MHC – except for women who were on the birth control pill. The Pill – which chemically simulates pregnancy – – throws women off the MHC scent, vastly increasing the chances of choosing a “Bad Love” partner. When women discontinue the daily hormone dose, the protective smell mechanism kicks back in.

Risking bad love

Another hormone to mask our ability to detect incompatible MHC is adrenaline. Any overwhelming emotional experience that ratchets up your sensory system can distort your perceptions, persuading you to take a chance on someone you should avoid.

Research shows that people who meet during a crisis–an emergency landing of their airplane, say–may be much more inclined to believe they’ve found the person meant for them.

If that sounds a lot like what happens when people meet and date under the regular influence of drugs or alcohol, only to sober up later and wonder what in the world they were thinking, that’s because in both cases powerful chemistry is running the show. When hormones and natural opioids get activated, psychologist and sex researcher Jim Pfaus of Concordia University in Montreal told Time magazine, you start drawing connections to the person who was present when those good feelings were created. “You think someone made you feel good,” Pfaus says, “but really it’s your brain that made you feel good.”

Breaking the No 4 Food Addiction – Caffeine

Do you reach for a caffeine fix every time you’re feeling tired? While some people drink just one cup of coffee a day, there are others who seem to be holding a coffee mug every time you turn around.

Those who have serious cravings for caffeine throughout the day are most likely suffering from an addiction to caffeine. Caffeine stimulates activity in the brain, which in turn, causes the release of the hormone adrenaline. Despite achieving the desired effect, after the dose of caffeine wears off, it often creates a craving for additional caffeine to recreate the effect.

Breaking Caffeine Cravings

There are healthier, more effective ways of preventing fatigue throughout the day. First, make sure you are getting enough sleep! Second, exercise daily. Although many people mistakenly think that they will be more tired by exercising, they are actually wrong. Overall, exercise will increase your energy level and will enable you to overcome your food cravings.

As well:

• Eat five to six small meals a day and include some protein in each meal. This will help keep your blood sugar stable and provide you with the energy to keep going all day long.

• Drink at least eight glasses of water. Water will help keep you energized
• Drink a glass of water or green tea in the morning to help you wake up.
• Get plenty of fresh air and sunshine each day. Use your usual coffee break to take a little brisk walk outside.
• Switch to green tea. In addition to tasting great and giving you energy, it is packed with flavonoids and antioxidants, both of which are beneficial to your health.

Start by cutting down on your caffeine consumption and replace as much of it as possible with green tea and water. Keep cutting more caffeine out every few weeks. Before you know it you will break the caffeine habit for good.