The Science of Pheromones

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• Pheromones
• The Science of Pheromones and Scents
• The Effect of Pheromones on Our Behavior
• Washing, Cultures and the Decline of Bonding
• Expensive Perfumes Do Not Work
• Plant Pheromones vs. Human Pheromones
• Calypso's Essential Oils and Pheromones
• The Goddess Calypso
• More About Essential Oils

Expensive Perfumes Do Not Work

Why Perfumes Fail

The key to using oils as pheromones is to put them into contact with large areas of your body.

Then the heat of your body biochemically alters the odors and blends them into your overall pheromone signature.

Your personal pheromone "odor signature" is a complex mixture of pheromones, body oils and fatty acids, sweat, and hormones such as androsterone secreted onto the skin from your apocrine glands.

In addition, the 40 million skin cells that you shed each day add to your pheromone signature.

Perfumes that are dabbed on a small area - such as the wrist - do not effectively mix into your overall pheromone signature.

Thus, they exist as a separate smell and do little to change your total pheromone signature. Furthermore, the mixing of many different scents in perfumes produces a confusing pheromone signal.

Studies by Alan Hirsch and Jason Gruss (Smell and Taste Treatment Research Foundation, Chicago, Illinois and University of Michigan) found that expensive perfumes are much less effective than many essential oils and common foods.

They studied the effects of many different scents on sexual arousal of males and females by comparing their blood flow in sexual-aroused tissues while wearing scented masks and while wearing nonodorized, blank masks.

Expensive perfumes increased blood flow by only 3%. In contrast, the combined odor of lavender and pumpkin produced a 40% increase and many other scents worked better than perfumes.

While these results are for men, the researchers reported that women also responded poorly to expensive perfumes.

While these scientists tested lavender, which has a reputation as a mild attractant, they unfortunately did not test many other pheromones with reputations as bonding smells such as ylang ylang, Asian oud and others.

Hirsch postulates that scents may act on the brain by

(1) reducing anxiety, which inhibits natural sexual desire, or

(2) increasing alertness and awareness, making the subjects more aware of sexual cues in the environment around them, or

(3) acting directly to the septal nuclei, a portion of the brain that induces sexual arousal.

Effect of Perfumes and Scents on Blood Flow in Male Sexual Tissue

Women - Effect of Perfumes and Scents on Enhancement of Vaginal Blood Flow