Can You Attract Women With Pheromones?

Evidence Clearly Indicates that a Pheromone System Exists.

If they do exist in humans, this does not mean that someone can just “use” these pheromones on some person he/she wishes to attract, and that person will simply come running. We may perhaps be prey to biological processes like other animals, but we are of course self-conscious animals. Therefore the personal, moral, and sociological concepts each human holds is of course at least as important in helping someone to choose who they will be with in the end--and who they won’t.


Human Pheromones vs. Animal Pheromones

In short, our psychology makes us very different from the other animals--biological processes and all. Every animal eats, as we do; yet they don’t decide to perhaps be vegetarians on moral or spiritual grounds, as some of us do. All animals relieve themselves as well; but our self-consciousness keeps us from just letting everything fly, wherever we are, as other animals do.

Well, most of us anyway...

The confusion some in the scientific community exhibit regarding human pheromones appears to center around what is called, in rhetoric, a ‘false dilemma’, or a ‘dilemma of extremes’. This is when the speaker claims that there are only two extreme positions regarding some subject--one is either entirely in one camp or entirely in the other. There is, the speaker insists, no middle ground, no other choice.

On one side, the public is bombarded with sweeping statements of the "undeniable" power pheromones will certainly give you over the opposite sex--statements which are usually put out by companies and/or doctors who just happen to be selling ‘pheromone boosters’ to desperate men and women.

Regardless of who they are, if they’re selling the very things they’re praising, always take them with a heavy grain of salt.

Then there are those on the opposite side, who are clearly uncomfortable with the prospect that we superior humans may not always be in total control of our own processes.


If Men Produce Pheromones, So Do Women?

They sometimes produce charges that those who seriously consider the possibility of human pheromones are “sexist”--a strange charge indeed, since the evidence indicates that men respond equally to certain pheromones in women, just as women respond to others from men.

Another is that “the very idea of a ‘human pheromone’ is a contradiction of terms.” Not exactly--unless you seriously believe that humans can’t possibly be animals themselves, and follow certain biological imperatives. You’d have a tough time explaining our need for food, water, sleep, or indeed sexual desire itself; people, after all, do not decide to be attracted to other people, but simply find them attractive. Such imperatives aren’t learned or chosen responses.


A Pheromone System Exists -- In Insects

Evidence clearly indicates that a pheromone system exists--in insects at least. The question of whether the basic chemical interaction exists in mammals has not yet been determined. An increasing number of studies, however, indicate that pheromones play a role in human interaction.

Consider this: isolated on a remote island for several weeks, a man’s beard sprouts at a pitiful rate. Back in the company of women, his whisker growth returns with a vengeance.

Peculiar scientific tidbits such as this have piqued researchers` curiosity. Is it a sign that humans, like insects, may communicate silently? Male moths will detect the scent of a fertile female from as far as a mile away. The pheromone causes them to drop all business and meet the female for mating.

While its influence may not compare to that found in the insect system, investigators are beginning to discover that many mammals ranging from pigs to elephants can exhibit a pheromone-type response to a scent of secretions. Even humans appear to respond.


Evidence of Pheromones In Humans?

Scientists have not yet found confirmation that pheromones are responsible for human beard growth. However, years of study on another human conundrum has revealed evidence of the pheromone system in humans.

It`s well-established that groups of women who live together also tend to get their period during the same time of the month. Researchers have found that female rodents share the same characteristic.

Furthermore, pheromones emitted from a female rat during one part of its reproductive cycle will lengthen a fellow rodent`s cycle. Pheromones from another part of the cycle will shorten that cycle.

According to the Journal of Neuroscience, “a new finding shows that compounds collected from the armpit and dabbed under the nose have the same effect on women. A woman`s compounds collected during one part of the menstrual cycle will shorten another female`s cycle an average of 1.7 days. Compounds from another part of the cycle will lengthen another female`s cycle an average of 1.4 days. This indicates that two [human] pheromones exist.”


Chemical Identity Of Pheromones

Currently scientists are trying to pinpoint the chemical identity of the possible pheromones. Their identification would verify the existence of human pheromones, and could lead to finding new ways to help couples either conceive or block a pregnancy through cycle manipulation.

As evidence continues to increase, researchers also are trying to answer some outstanding questions regarding the possibility of a human pheromone system. For one, it`s unclear if humans have a working vomeronasal organ (VNO). In animals, this structure sits in the nose and has been linked to pheromone perception.

Some animal studies show that suspected pheromone-induced activities will not occur if the VNO is removed or its link to the brain is severed. Researchers know that adult humans possess two small pits which might represent the opening of the VNO. But evidence is insufficient to determine if they’re part of a working organ that has nerve connections to the brain.

Humans could however use another part of the nose to detect the molecular signals. Some research indicates that the VNO is not the sole sensor of a pheromone system. These studies suggest that blocking the VNO in swine with surgical cement did not muffle the behavioral response to a well-studied pig pheromone.

Researchers now are working to better define the VNO system in mammals. They recently found evidence of two groups of detector proteins, known as receptors, in the VNOs of mice and rats. Scientists currently are trying to determine those receptors` biological roles.

Here’s how the Journal of Neuroscience recently put the essential question:

“Once a rich coffee aroma enters the nostrils, the smell or olfactory system`s nerve cells relay scent information to the brain. Pheromones also may do their business inside the nose. In humans, the chemical signals may act in the VNO where they appear to operate in many mammals. But so far, while researchers have found remnants of the organ in humans in the form of pits, it`s unclear if a full-fledged VNO exists. Possibly the olfactory system`s nerve cells detect the pheromones in humans because they appear to help sense some pheromones in animals.”