You’ve just met that special person. Your heart is racing, your hands are sweating, you’ve got butterflies in your stomach, and you tingle all over. You go to dinner together and you feel as high as a kite. At the end of the evening, your date kisses you and it makes you melt. For days after, you don’t eat, but you’ve never felt better and you’ve noticed that your cold is cured.
Neural evidence shows that the phenomenon of “falling in love” is a series of chemical reactions taking place in the brain’s communication network. Candice Pert of the American National Institute of Health pioneered the research that discovered neuropeptides, a string of amino acids that float around the body and attaché themselves to welcoming receptors. So far, 60 different neuropeptides have been discovered, and they trigger emotional reactions in the body when they attach themselves to receivers. In other words, all our emotions — love, grief, and happiness — are biochemical. When English scientist Francis Crick and his associates won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for deciphering the DNA code that defines genes, he stunned the medical world by saying, “You, your joys, sorrows, memories, ambitions, your sense of identity, free will, and love are no more that the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells.”
The main chemical release to give you the elated physical feeling of being in love is PEA (phenylethylamine), which is related to amphetamines and is found in chocolate. This is one of the chemicals that make your heart race, hands sweat, and pupils dilate, and give you “butterflies” in the stomach. Adrenaline is also released, speeding up your heart, making you alert and helping you feel great. Along with that are the endorphins, which build your immune system and cure your cold. When you both kissed, your brains made a rapid chemical analysis of each other’s saliva and it made decisions on your genetic compatibility. The woman’s brain also made chemical determinations about the state of the man’s immune system.
All this positive chemical reaction explains why people in love have been shown to have better health and are much less likely to contract illness than those who are not. Being in love is usually great for your health.