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Semen acts as an anti-depressant
19:00 26 June 02
from New Scientist Print Edition
Semen makes you happy. That's the remarkable conclusion of a study
comparing women whose partners wear condoms with those whose partners
don't.
The study, which is bound to provoke controversy, showed that the
women who were directly exposed to semen were less depressed. The
researchers think this is because mood-altering hormones in semen are
absorbed through the vagina. They say they have ruled out other
explanations.
"I want to make it clear that we are not advocating that people
abstain from using condoms," says Gordon Gallup, the psychologist at
the State University of New York who led the team. "Clearly an
unwanted pregnancy or a sexually transmitted disease would more than
offset any advantageous psychological effects of semen."
Suicide attempts
His team divided 293 female students into groups depending on how
often their partners wore condoms, and assessed their happiness using
the Beck Depression Inventory, a standard questionnaire for assessing
mood. People who score over 17 are considered moderately depressed.
The team found that women whose partners never used condoms scored 8
on average, those who sometimes used them scored 10.5, those who
usually used them scored 15 and those who always used them scored
11.3. Women who weren't having sex at all scored 13.5.
What's more, the longer the interval since they last had sex, the
more depressed the women who never or sometimes used condoms got. But
the time since the last sexual encounter made no difference to the
mood of women who usually or always used condoms.
The team also found that depressive symptoms and suicide attempts
were more common among women who used condoms regularly compared with
those who didn't. The results will appear in the journal Archives of
Sexual Behavior.
And Gallup told New Scientist that his team already has unpublished
data from a larger group of 700 women confirming these findings. In
this study, the always-use-condoms group were more depressed than the
usually-use-condoms group, suggesting the discrepancy in the smaller
study was a sampling error, he says.
Alternative explanations
But is it really the semen that affects women's mood? The researchers
say they looked at alternative explanations such as whether women who
seldom use condoms took oral contraceptives, how often they had sex,
the strength of relationships, and the possibility that having a
certain type of personality influenced the decision to use condoms.
But none of these factors can explain their findings, they say.
In fact, the results aren't a complete surprise because semen does
contain several mood-altering hormones, including testosterone,
oestrogen, follicle-stimulating hormone, luteinising hormone,
prolactin and several different prostaglandins. Some of these have
been detected in a women's blood within hours of exposure to semen.
The question many people will ask is whether oral sex could have the
same mood-enhancing effects. "Since the steroids in birth control
pills survive the digestion process, I would assume that the same
holds true for at least some of the chemicals in semen," Gallup says.
"I understand that among some gay males who have anal intercourse, it
is not uncommon to attempt to retain the semen for extended periods
of time," he adds. "Suggesting, of course, that there may be
psychological effects." But further research will be needed to
confirm whether exposure to semen through oral or anal sex really
does affect mood in heterosexual or homosexual partners.
But why should semen have such an effect? "It makes no sense to me
for this phenomenon to have evolved," says Satoshi Kanazawa, an
evolutionary psychologist at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
But Gallup counters that men whose semen promotes long-term mood
enhancement might have more chances to indulge in sexual activity.
Raj Persaud
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992457 links you to the actual article
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Semen makes you Happy! It's Official 
