Friday, February 09, 2007

Mark McGwire, Chick Magnet?

From "For women, nothing's like the smell of men's sweat" (Reuters/CNN.com):

Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley said women who sniffed a chemical found in male sweat experienced elevated levels of an important hormone, along with higher sexual arousal, faster heart rate and other effects....

The study focused on androstadienone, considered a male chemical signal. Previous research had established that a whiff of it affected women's mood, sexual and physiological arousal and brain activation. Its impact on hormones was less clear.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Get your pheromones and prohormones correct:

Androstenedione: This is a pheromone that is widely documented to have a very specific effect on the brain activity of women. One particular study has shown that it affects attention and social cognition areas of the brain. It is also one of the only pheromones that has been shown to stimulate the VNO, and so has been described as a vomeropherin.

Androstenedione: This is a 19-carbon steroid hormone produced in the adrenal glands and the gonads as an intermediate step in the biochemical pathway that produces the androgen testosterone and the estrogens estrone and estradiol. It is the common precursor of male and female sex hormones. Some androstenedione is also secreted into the plasma, and may be converted in peripheral tissues to testosterone and estrogens. Androstenedione originates either from the conversion of dehydroepiandrosterone or from 17-hydroxyprogesterone. It is further converted to either testosterone or estrone.

Anonymous said...

Ooops... I should get mine correct too:

Androstadienone is the first one I listed above, and is also the one you confused with McGwire's prohormone of choice, Androstenedione.

Steve Sax said...

1 and 2 look the same to me.

Orel said...

Prohormones? As opposed to amateurhormones?