Is there a link between semen and happiness?

Could semen serve as an anti-depressant in some women? A study found that women who never used condoms rated themselves as happier than women who used condoms. But could there be any merit to the research? Tune in to learn more.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff Mom Never told you?
From house Stop works dot Com. Hello, welcome to the podcast.
This is Molly and I'm Kristen. Kristen. One of my

(00:21):
favorite episodes of the past was about menstrual synchrony. Uh.
This idea that women when they're in close contact with
each other, perhaps in a dorm or perhaps even in
a workplace, they all start having their periods at the
same time. Yes. This is also known as the McClintic effect. Right,
So we explored uh, that phenomena which some people think
happens and some people think don't. I think we aired

(00:43):
on the side of it's a myth when we did
our podcast. Um. But one of the interesting offshoots of
the McClintock effect is the study that came out in
two thousand two, which gets picked up I think every
year or so by by the media that there might
be a link between human and happiness. Right. This came
out in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, and the lead

(01:04):
researcher was a guy named Gordon Gallop, a psychology professor
at State University of New York in Albany, and Gallop
starts thinking about the meclinic effect and how it doesn't
translate to cohabitating lesbian couples. They typically don't tend to
sync up their menstruations. Gallop wonders whether or not this

(01:29):
has something to do with different pheromones in their sweat,
because people who got into the meclonic effect, and it
was highly disputed, but people who thought that menstrual synchrony
existed attributed it to some kind of pheromones, some kind
of chemical compound in women's bodies that was linked to ovulation. So,

(01:50):
long story short, Gallop starts doing a lot of digging
and he studies. He stumbles on the study about semen. Well,
I mean, you've got to look at something that cohabitating
lesbians don't have that these other women who are sinking
up do have. And these other women were in heterosexual relationships.

(02:10):
So he says, the missing factor here in the cohabitating
lesbians relationship is sperm. There must be something in sperm
that uh and semen that you know is doing something
here right, And I think that now would be a
good time to differentiate between sperm and semen because not
to be crude. But semen is not just a big

(02:33):
old spoonful of sperm. It is in actuality nineties six
percent water, and only one to of the average human
ejaculate consists of sperm cells. So what else is in it?
While we have lots and lots of compounds including hormones,
neurotransmitters and doorphins and immunosuppressants, it's chock full of good things. Molly,

(03:00):
I know you see you mentioned that it's nice six
percent water, but that other four percent is an infane
chemical cocktail, and that four percent is really what Gallop
and his fellow researchers start to study to see if
there's something about that seminal fluid that can uh tell
us you know something about women. And it turns out
he thinks his theory and he says it's just a theory,

(03:22):
no need to start acting on this yet. Is that
something in semen makes women happier. And this is all
based on Gallops correlation that he found among semen exposure
and reported happiness. And this all goes back to self reporting,
which is one thing that you should keep in mind
with a potential methodological flaw in the study. But Basically,

(03:46):
Gallop recruits two nine three undergrad students female students. The
women answer questions about their sex lives, including the frequency
of sex, how long it's been since they've had sex,
and what type of birth control that they use. And
they also take a test to rate their level of depression.
And they also note whether or not they're using condoms,

(04:09):
essentially whether or not uh ejaculate is getting inside of
them right. And what he finds is that those women
who are having unprotected sex. Now, the major flaw to
me is that he doesn't define what a relationship is
and who these women are having sex with. So some
people will say if this is a long term relationship,
women might feel differently than if they're just having some

(04:29):
one night stands. But what he finds is that the
women who are having unprotected sex are much happier than
the women who use condoms when they have sex and
the women who abstained from sex altogether. And an article
and Scientific American points out that there have been similar
anecdotal findings among gay men who have anal intercourse without

(04:52):
condoms as well. So Gallops wondering what is going on here? Well,
and there are a lot of mood enhancing chemicals in semen,
such as cortisol which increases infection, affection, estrone which elevates mood, prolactin,
and antidepressant oxytocin, which elevates mood and is also released
during childbirth and breastfeeding, another antidepressant called birotropin releasing hormone

(05:16):
melatonin which helps you sleep, and even serotonin, which you
know we all know from even just a cursory knowledge
of antidepressants. So basically, what he thinks is that since
the skin in the vagina is so thin, that these
chemicals are able to seep into the skin and elevate
the mood of women who aren't using condoms. Now, before

(05:36):
we go any further, since we were talking all about
ejaculate inside of vaginal canals, Uh, this is not our
advertisement to start having sex without condoms. No, I would say,
the one thing that would make me really depressed would
be an unexpected baby or sexually transmitted disease exactly. And that,
like I said, that's why I brought up the fact

(05:58):
that he doesn't define what a relationship ship is among
these women. Perhaps these women are having unprotected sex because
they've been monogamous for years, with one partner um you know,
even though they were undergrads. He doesn't make no whether
they're married or not, so it's it's possible that, you know,
the women who aren't having sex are in really different
relationships and the women who aren't. And the study also

(06:19):
does not take into account what type of birth control
women were taking, So if you know someone has an
I U D, someone's got taking an oral contraceptive, it
could have different hormonal effects, right, But he does think
that this might it might help you understand perhaps the
breakup of a relationship in which you weren't using condoms,
because he notes that the women who didn't use condoms,

(06:42):
the longer they went without contact such contact with their partner,
the more depressed they got. So it kind of feeds
into this idea that love, particularly sexual love, might be
a drug because the women who weren't getting that regular
intake of the chemicals via the semen were showing depressive symptoms. Yeah,
essentially they were going into semen with role which sounds crazy,
but it might explain why if you're if you exit

(07:05):
a relationship where you weren't using condoms, you might be
more depressed about the breakup of it, and he posits
that those women are more likely to get into a
rebound relationship quicker than the women who did use condoms
during their relationships. So maybe now we have a point
in favor of using condoms protect your heart and your
health exactly, exactly, um. And the Scientific American article you cided,

(07:27):
christ and, like you said, brings up this idea of
anal sex between gay men and perhaps it might raise
happiness levels a lot more singing to be done on
that and obviously again a huge risk for sexually transparant disease.
But it brings up this really interesting um anthropological ritual
in Papua New Guinea where young boys andingest semen from
the older men in the village to become more masculine.

(07:50):
That's the reason they do it. But perhaps they're thinking
if they study the happiness of these boys, that they
might be happier as young boys ingesting all the semen
than other boy is. I mean, it's the way you
can take this sort of study result. It kind of
boggles the mind, kind of boggles the mind, and also
brings up the question what's a lesbian to do? Yeah, well,

(08:10):
you know, when I was reading all this, I kept
wondering if one day we'll see on the marketplace some
antidepressant that's marketed as like the semen antidepressant that everyone
can take to get the high um. Because you know,
if you didn't know about these studies results and you
heard that there is a semen antidepressant, I think that
you would just gag. But you know, maybe it's a
maybe it's maybe it's in the future. But also there

(08:33):
are plenty of you know, happiness triggers within the act
of sex. In general. We don't have to have semen
involved in our sexual activity in order for us to
get some kind of little dopamine or endorphin boost I
mean the or an orgasm in and of itself is
a powerful painkiller. For instance, thanks to oxytocin um. Beverly Whipple,

(08:57):
who's a noted sex researcher, has found that when women
will masturbate to you orgasm, their pain talents threshold and
pain detection threshold will increase significantly. In other words, it
makes us feel real gnass and there's no one else
in the room. Yeah, well except for in that case,
maybe a researcher, a lab worker, you and your sex

(09:18):
diary that you're going to turn over to the to
the researcher. Yeah. And you know, some of these studies,
like we said, this was a correlation that Gallup found,
and a lot of these studies about the link between
sex and happiness, and these studies that say something like,
you know, sex makes you more happy than a raise
from your job. We don't know if it's just happier
people who are the kinds that tend to have more sex,

(09:40):
or if you know, if it's correlation or causation. But
I will say whether it's correlation or causation. Dartmouth economists
have put a pretty high price on a healthy sex life.
They equated it to the amount of happiness generated by
getting an additional fifty dolls and dollars in income. So

(10:02):
that's a staggering, staggering price on a sex life. That's impressive. Um.
But again I think that the big takeaway as well,
this is all interesting, Um that semen has all this
perhaps medicinal uh antidepressant qualities. It's like we said, non
advertisement to engage in unprotected sex. In fact, if you
are trying to avoid pregnancy. One more thing that is

(10:24):
in semen uh follicle stimulating hormone and lutinizing hormone, and
these are the hormones that spur ovulation in a woman.
And what scientific American posits is that, uh, these female
hormones are in semen because when the male has sex
with the woman, evolutionarily speaking, he needs to make sure
that it's productive in terms of having a child, so

(10:47):
he releases these hormones to increase the chances that she
will have a child and to app the chances that
he will father a child and continue his line. So
unprotected sex not only leads to babies just because the
seam the sperm can get of it, because the semen
is actively encouraging your egg to come meet with the sperm.
And some people have an allergy to semen. That's true,

(11:10):
this does exist, it's pretty rare, but you might actually
develop over time analogy to your partner's semen um. So
just another thing to pay attention to. And scientists have
also found a link between semen and uterine cancer. So

(11:32):
it's a mixed bag right now. It seems like what
gets highlighted in the media every time the story gets
rehashed is oh my gosh, semen, it makes us so happy.
But we do have these smaller studies out here. They're saying,
you know what, it's not. It's not all great, but
this is all a mixed bag of correlations to even
the stuff between sex making you happier, semen causing cancer,

(11:53):
all this stuff and nothing is definitive. As Gordon gallup
the semen makes you happier study author himself said, the
data are merely suggestive, and it also makes for great
uh great party talk. Your next cocktail conversation right here.
There you go. You're welcome in advance, and we're not
responsible if you lose friends as a result of talking

(12:14):
about semen at parties. But it is something interesting to
think about and also interesting to think about all of
the the as Salon calls it, the rich chemical brine
that is semen and again not just sperm, not just sperm.
Is that the T shirt waiting to happen? Do you think?
Not one that I will wear? But uh, who knows,

(12:35):
maybe maybe one day when it becomes an antidepressant ingredient. Anyway,
I should stop talking and perhaps read some listener mail. Kristen,
I have one here from Aaron and it's about an
older podcast on a debutantes and she writes, as a
former deb I was really thankful that you tried to
spell the myth about the deb attitude and persona. My

(12:56):
mother had not been a debt before me. My older
sister was, which was how I came to be invited.
Even though it was not one excited about being a debutante.
I did because the money that my family spent and
that the organized organization raised went to a good cause,
namely the local children's hospital. I know it's been around
a year and a half since the episode air, but
I don't want to put in my two cents about
the modern purpose of the ball. When I was going

(13:17):
through the ball preparation parties during my freshman year of college,
one of the points that was constantly make clear to
us girls was that the ball was a celebration of
our achievements and not a marriage mark. Also this is
this was a celebration of our escorts achievements. So the
ball was not just for the girls families, but also
for the boys. It was because of this that we
had to choose an escort whould graduated high school in
our year or ahead of us. So thank you for

(13:38):
that perspective. Aaron I've got an email here from Josh
and this isn't a response to our episode on cat calling,
and he writes, I am a man and I get
cat called. I walk most places on foot, and I
probably don't get as many cat calls as a pretty
young lady. But I just want to point out that
it happens the other way too. I hear it from
women as much as men. I just got a cat

(13:59):
called today from a couple of young ladies, which, along
with your podcast that I just heard, inspired me to
write this message to you. As for how it makes
me feel, there's a range of motions for men too.
Is it scary about as much as someone honking their horn,
maybe a little bit more. Anytime someone is paying attention
to you as a pedestrian, you instinctively go on guard.
It's also a little bit flattering, and I find it
doesn't matter the appearance or gender of the cat call.

(14:22):
I've never actually cat called anyone myself. I find it
perfectly understandable why men cat call, though, since I've felt
the urge to. When you've seen an attractive person on
the street, sometimes it stirs up emotions, and cat calling
is just a way to express that well. If you
have an email to send our way our addresses mom
Stuff at how stuff works dot com. Or to get
in touch with us even faster, you can head over

(14:44):
to Facebook and Twitter. Follow us there at Mom's Stuff podcast,
and during the week you can read our blog It's
Stuff Mom Never Told You. And if you want to
learn more about the topic of happiness, unrelated to seem
a because there is plenty more out there that can
make you happy like this podcast, I suggest heading over

(15:06):
to a library worth of articles at how stuff works
dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast,
Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as
we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.
The Howstuff Works iPhone app has a ride. Download it

(15:26):
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