For any woman who has had sex -- and enjoyed it -- this may not come as a huge surprise.
Could the stuff in semen actually be nature's own antidepressant?
In the 2002 study, 293 college women filled out questionnaires about their sexual histories and took the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), a widely used measure of depression symptoms. Women who always had unprotected sex had significantly lower levels of depression symptoms than those who usually or always used condoms, as well as those who abstained from sex. There was no significant difference in depression between condom users and abstainers, indicating that the physical act of sex itself wasn't the mood-boosting factor.
Gordon Gallup, Jr., an evolutionary psychologist at SUNY Albany and lead author of the study, said "Seminal plasma evolved to control and manipulate the female reproductive system so as to work toward the best interests of the donor -- the male," Gallup explains. "If you begin to think about semen in those terms, then the fact that semen might have antidepressant properties becomes a lot more interesting in that it may promote bonding between the female and her sexual partner." Such bonding, Gallup says, could increase the male's chances of developing a long-term reproductive relationship with a female that would work to his reproductive advantage.
Semen is a complex mixture of different compounds, and sperm actually only makes up a small amount of it. When you remove the sperm, what's left is seminal plasma, a fluid that contains an array of ingredients, some of which can pass through the vagina and be detected in the bloodstream after sex. Three compounds of interest in seminal plasma are estrogen, prostaglandins and oxytocin. Estrogen and prostaglandins have been linked to lower levels of depression, while oxytocin (which women release during birth, breastfeeding and orgasm) promotes social bonding. These and other compounds in semen could function to keep women coming back for more. "I think there's reason to believe based on some of the evidence we've collected that females that are in committed relationships that are having unprotected sex may use sex in part to self-medicate," Gallup says. "It's discovered after the fact that being inseminated has effects on mood, and they use sex to modulate their mood."
Theres also evidence, he says, that women may actually go through semen withdrawal.
In an unpublished study he conducted a few years ago, women in committed relationships who were having unprotected sex and were exposed to semen were "far more devastated and adversely affected [after a breakup] than those that were using condoms."
He also found a risk of a rebound effect, where women who were not using condoms had sex with a new partner after a breakup within a couple of weeks versus several months for those who had used condoms. "I don't think the evidence is conclusive, but it's certainly very suggestive that it's a response, in effect, to semen withdrawal," Gallup says.
But couldn't there just be fundamental differences between women who have unprotected sex and women who use condoms? That's the question most often posed by skeptics of Gallup's work, he says. "What we've discovered is that if you look at depression scores on the Beck Depression Inventory as a function of the amount of time that has elapsed since the respondents' last sexual encounter, it turns out that those that are using condoms show no effect of time since sex. Their depression scores are independent of whether they've had sex recently or not. For those that are being exposed to semen, BDI scores increase as the time since sexual encounter increases. This implies that the difference between those that are using condoms and those that are not is not an enduring fundamental trait difference. Rather, it's a state difference that's induced by semen."
Sexual....get me some sperm!!!
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-05/controversial-ideas-semen-natures-antidepressant
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