Men Surrounded by Women Live Longer

…or, if you look at it the other way around, men deprived of women’s company die younger! This is the conclusion of a recently published study. Of course it is worth looking at it in more detail to find out what the scientists really discovered. The study, published in Demography magazine, explains the effects of the “sex ratio”.

What is the sex ratio? The sex ratio determine the rate of men to women in a society. The ideal sex ratio (from a biological and demographical perspective) would be 100 men to 100 women or one man for every women. The study is particularly interesting, because the sex ratio is becoming more and more unbalanced, due to the idealisation of men in some cultures.

The study shows that this is not a good thing at all. In addition to the known negative effects in rural areas where many young men can’t find women to have a relationship or start a family with, a negative sex ratio affects the life expectancy of men.

The conclusion is pretty clear. The more an environment lacks women, the higher the risk for men to die younger. Whenever the ratio is balanced at the adolescence, life expectancy rises by 3 months or more. Of course, 3 months aren’t much, but the effect is clear.
And at the end of the day, being surrounded by women is so much nicer for men than living only with other men.

>>>If your environment is suffering from a negative sex ratio, be2 is the perfect place for you to find women! In fact, there are more women than men registered with be2, so what are you waiting for…

Kinsey’s Sex Study – The Newest Sex Studies Online

Did you see the film Kinsey? (Trailer after the jump)?

Then you don’t just know about Alfred Kinsey’s studies on sex, but also about his personal sex life. He was the first to ask people questions about sex that no one before him had dared to ask – and he put his theories to the test. And because he was a scientist and asked so many questions (500) of so many people (20.000) that the results were statistically relevant, the Kinsey report made him famous.

What many don’t know: The famous Kinsey report on the sexual habits of Americans wasn’t the end of his research. On the contrary – the Kinsey Institute has a user-friendly, informative Website that still asks all the questions others don’t dare to ask (even if the number of those who don’t dare is significantly smaller today). So, if you have a question about sex, visit the site – you will probably find an answer there. Read more

The Science of Love

Guys – ever wondered about the science of love? Like why you fall in love with a certain woman, why you’re attracted to another woman and why you settle down with yet another one (or if you’re very lucky with one woman covers all three bases – love, sexual attraction and attachment).

One brave writer set out to discover the science of love – more specifically, the science of his love for his wife – and to find out if it’s as strong and real as he thought it was. He was put in an MRI scanner while thinking about and looking at photos of his wife and – tough competition – Angelina Jolie. The activity in certain areas of his brain supposedly tells him how strong his feelings of love, sexual attraction and romantic attachment really are.

Would you dare (literally) show your emotions like that ? And, more importantly, would you want to show them to the woman you love?

The Chemistry of Love – Falling in Love, Explained

Generally, we’re not so big on over-analysing falling in love. We do analyse relationships (yes, there is a difference), but not falling in love. It is what it is, call that our motto. Falling in love is strange and beautiful and we don’t need to know what chemicals cause it, because that is not very romantic. Nevertheless, when we hear about all the chemicals associated with the process of falling in love, we got curious, then fascinated, then overcame our bad “relationship history” with chemistry and then found out the following wonderful things you never knew about the chemistry of love.

• You might be familiar with the symptoms of falling in love – the heart-racing, sweating, energy rush, sleeplessness, loss of appetite and blushing. Also, the good old butterflies-in-stomach sensation. Science assures us that there are no actual butterflies involved, rather the chemicals dopamine, norepinephrine and phenylethylamine released by the brain. These are triggered by visual and other impulses tied to falling in love that make you focus on the person your are falling in love with to the exclusion of others.
• At the early stages of a relationship, your serotonin levels are similar to those of an obsessive-compulsive, which explains a lot (like, the obsession and the compulsiveness) and doesn’t sound very romantic.
• At a later stage of the relationship, the chemical oxytocin facilitates bonding. It’s the same chemical that strengthens the relationship between mother and child – now that is romantic!
• Oxytocin counteracts the effect of the norepinephrine and phenylethylamine, so passionate love fizzles out (boo!), but the romantic relationship grows (yay!)
• Feelgood chemicals endorphins also do their part, making you feel relaxed and happy in a relationship.

As fascinating as all that romantic chemical talk may be, the chemistry of love doesn’t quite beat the actual feeling of falling in love or being in a loving relationship, so we’ll file that as fascinating facts and go right back to thinking of love as a strange and beautiful thing.