Essentials: The Science of Love, Desire & Attachment
2/12/202640 mincomplete
0:00Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and
0:05actionable science -based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance.
0:11I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of
0:16Medicine. Today, we are going to talk about the psychology and the biology of desire,
0:21love, and attachment. One of the most robust findings in the field of psychology is
0:27this notion of attachment styles, and this was something that was discovered through a beautiful
0:32set of studies that were done by Mary Ainsworth in the 1980s, in which she
0:36developed a laboratory condition called the strange situation task.
0:40The strange situation task involves a parent, typically a mother, in the studies that were
0:45done, but a parent or other caregiver bringing their child, their actual child, into a
0:51laboratory, and there's a room with a stranger, and the mother enters the room with
0:57the child, and there's some toys in the room, and typically the mother and the
1:02stranger will talk. Obviously, the stranger is part of the experiment.
1:05It's not just some random person off the street, and the child is allowed to
1:09move about the room. They can play with toys or not, but then at some
1:13point, the mother leaves, and then at some point later, designated by the experimenter, or
1:18the mother comes back. And what is measured in these studies is both how the
1:25child, the toddler, reacts to the mother leaving, and how the child reacts to the
1:31mother returning at the end of the experiment.
1:33So there are a lot of variations of this, but the basic findings are that
1:38toddlers, children, fall into four different categories of attachment style.
1:45The first style is the so -called secure attachment style.
1:49The secure attachment style is one in which the child will engage with the stranger,
1:56with the experimenter, while the parent is present in the room, but that when the
2:01parent or other caregiver leaves, the child does get visibly upset.
2:06However, when the caregiver, meaning the mother or father, other caregiver returns, the child visibly
2:13expresses happiness that the caregiver has returned.
2:16And the interpretation of this is that the secure child feels confident that the caregiver
2:21is available and will be responsive to their needs and their communications.
2:27These children are also very good at exploring novel environments after the parent is gone
2:32and while the parent is there.
2:34The second category is a so -called anxious avoidant or insecurely attached.
2:39They do not exhibit distress on separation and they generally tend to have some tendency
2:47to approach the caregiver when they return, but there doesn't seem to be a general
2:51expression of joy. The third category is the so -called anxious ambivalent slash resistant insecure
2:57category. The anxious, ambivalent, resistant, insecure toddlers really show distress even before separation from their
3:06mother or other caregiver. And they tend to be very clingy and difficult to comfort
3:11when the caregiver returns. And the third category of attachment style is the so -called
3:17disorganized or disoriented or D for the letter D babies.
3:22It seems like these children just don't really know how to react to a separation.
3:25And they just start to manifest behaviors and emotional tones that aren't observed in other
3:31situations. Now, what's interesting about this from the perspective of desire, love, and attachment is
3:39that the categorizations of children into one of these four different categories as toddlers is
3:46strongly predictive of their attachment style in romantic partnerships later in life, which is to
3:53me both amazing and surprising and not surprising all at the same time.
3:58The good news is that these templates can shift over time.
4:01And one of the more powerful ways to shift those templates over time is purely
4:05by the knowledge that they exist and the understanding that those templates are malleable.
4:11So I mentioned that the neural circuits for child parent or child caregiver attachment are
4:17repurposed for romantic attachment later.
4:20in life, but what are these neural circuits?
4:24What do they do? I mean, it's so attractive, if you will, to think about
4:29a brain area that controls love or a brain area that controls desire or a
4:33brain area that controls attachment, but it simply doesn't work that way.
4:36Instead, there are multiple brain areas that through their coordinated action create a sort of
4:42a song that we call desire or a song that we call love or a
4:45song that we call attachment, not a literal song, but rather different brain areas being
4:50active in different sequences and with different intensities can make us feel as if we
4:55are in the mode that we call desire or in the mode of love or
4:59in the mode of attachment.
5:01But beneath all of that is this element of autonomic arousal.
5:07So the way to think about the autonomic nervous system is it's kind of a
5:09seesaw. We can be alert and calm, or we can be very, very alert.
5:12We can be in a state of panic.
5:14We can be fast asleep, so we can be extremely calm, or we can just
5:17be kind of sleepy, semi -calm, but still also alert.
5:22So think about it like a seesaw.
5:25And that seesaw has a hinge.
5:27And that hinge defines how tight or loose that seesaw is, how readily it can
5:32tilt back and forth. Our autonomic tone is how tight that hinge is.
5:38And there are biological mechanisms to explain this, but here I just want to stay
5:41with the analogy of the seesaw for now.
5:44The interactions between child and caregiver early in life take the child and the caregiver
5:52from one end of the seesaw to the other, from being very alert in a
5:56state of play, for instance, to being nursed and being very soothed until we go
6:01to sleep. And of course, we each have a seesaw, the parent and the child
6:04has a seesaw, and they're interacting.
6:06What do I mean by that?
6:07Well, there are beautiful studies and beautiful, not in the sense that they focused on
6:12a pleasant topic, but beautiful because they were done so beautifully well, that looked at,
6:17for instance, the response of mothers and their physiologies and the response of children and
6:23their physiologies during the bombing of cities during World War II.
6:27So an unpleasant situation, but what was revealed during...
6:31in the course of these studies was that if the mothers were very stressed during
6:37an onslaught of bombing of the city, the children's physiologies tended to be stressed also
6:42and persisted in being stressed long after that stressful episode was done.
6:49They actually followed that these children well out for many decades afterwards.
6:55Conversely, if the parent, and in this case, again, it was mothers that were explored
7:00in these studies, had turned this whole business of going into the bomb shelters into
7:05somewhat of a game, all right, taking it seriously, but essentially telling the children, okay,
7:10it's time to go, but not expressing much stress or distress.
7:13The children also didn't develop much stress or distress or trauma.
7:17Now, there were exceptions to this, of course, but in general, that was the rule
7:20that the autonomic nervous systems of children tend to mimic the autonomic nervous systems of
7:25the primary caregiver. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Eight
7:29Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity.
7:34One of the best ways to ensure you get a great night's sleep is to
7:37make sure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct.
7:40And that's because in order to fall asleep and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature
7:44actually has to drop by about one to three degrees.
7:47And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has
7:51to increase by about one to three degrees.
7:54Eight Sleep automatically regulates the temperature of your bed throughout the night according to your
7:58unique needs. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for nearly five years
8:02now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep.
8:06The latest Eight Sleep model is the Pod 5.
8:09This is what I'm now sleeping on, and I absolutely love it.
8:12It has so many incredible features.
8:14For instance, the Pod 5 has a feature called Autopilot, which is an AI engine
8:18that learns your sleep patterns and then adjusts the temperature of your sleeping environment across
8:22different sleep stages. It'll even elevate your head if you're snoring, and it makes other
8:26shifts to optimize your sleep.
8:27If you'd like to try Eight Sleep, go to eightsleep .com slash Huberman to get
8:32up to $350 off the new Pod 5.
8:35Eight Sleep ships to many countries worldwide, including Mexico and the UAE.
8:39Again, that's eightsleep .com slash Huberman to save up to $300.
8:44So if I were to offer a set of tools around these topics of desire,
8:47love, and attachment, I would say, first of all, you might want to think about
8:50whether or not you fall into the secure, insecure, or other attachment styles.
8:55Second, I think it is vitally important for all of us, but certainly for people
9:01that are in relationships or seeking relationships, to be able to at least have some
9:06recognition of where our autonomic nervous system tends to reside, both in terms of when
9:12we are with somebody and when they leave.
9:14When we are apart for long periods of time, can we calm ourselves?
9:17Can we self -soothe? Or are we very much dependent on the presence of another
9:22in order to feel soothed?
9:23Now, I absolutely want to emphasize that there is nothing wrong.
9:28In fact, there's everything right with feeling great in the presence of somebody else.
9:32That is actually a hallmark of strong and quality attachments.
9:36A key element of healthy interdependence is that yes, our autonomic nervous system is adjusted
9:43by the presence of another, but that also that we can adjust our own autonomic
9:47nervous system even in the absence of that person.
9:50So if the autonomic nervous system is one key component of desire, love, and attachment,
9:55what are the other two?
9:57Not surprisingly, the dopamine system in the brain is associated with desire, love, and attachment,
10:04and mainly with desire, although to some extent love.
10:07Dopamine is a neurochemical sometimes associated with reward, but as some of you have heard
10:12me say before, it is mainly a molecule of motivation, craving, and pursuit.
10:18And that motivation, craving, and pursuit that relates to dopamine is not unique to attachment,
10:23or love, or sex, or mating, et cetera.
10:25It is a universal generic currency in the brain for pursuing something.
10:30I want to just discuss the two neural circuits that use dopamine, that use serotonin
10:37and oxytocin, and that collaborate with the autonomic nervous system to drive what we call
10:42desire, love, and attachment. And the three circuits are autonomic nervous system.
10:49We talked about that one.
10:50Then there's the nervous system components or the neural circuits.
10:54for empathy, for being able to see and respond to and indeed match the emotional
11:01tone or the autonomic tone of another.
11:04And then there's the third category, and this might surprise some of you, it certainly
11:08surprised me, but the data point to the fact that the third neural circuit that's
11:12very important for establishing bonds is one associated with positive delusions.
11:18So given that the neural circuits for empathy are absolutely crucial for falling in love
11:22and maintaining stable attachments, I'd like to talk about those neural circuits and what they
11:27are. Now, often when we hear empathy, we think, oh, empathy is really about listening
11:33to and really understanding what somebody else is feeling, maybe even feeling what they're feeling.
11:39And indeed that's the case, but what do we mean by that, right?
11:43What is it to feel what another feels?
11:45Well, what it means is that their seesaw is driving your seesaw or your seesaw
11:53is somehow driving their seesaw.
11:55That's a form of empathic matching, and there are indeed neural circuits for that.
12:00The neural circuits for empathy, again, there are many, but mainly two structures that you
12:04should know about, the prefrontal cortex, which is how we perceive things outside of us
12:09and make decisions on the basis of those perceptions, how we organize those decisions, and
12:13an area of the brain called the insula, I -N -S -U -L -A.
12:17The insula is a really interesting brain area that allows us to interocept, to pay
12:23attention to what's going on inside our body and to split some of our attention
12:27to exterocept. And the insula is essentially splitting one's attention between how we feel ourselves,
12:36how our body feels, what we're thinking, with the thinking and the bodily sensations of
12:42the other. Okay, so we have the autonomic nervous system, and then we have this
12:46thing that we're calling empathy, which is really about autonomic matching.
12:50And again, the insula and the prefrontal cortex are neural circuits that are crucial for
12:55autonomic matching, because they allow us to say, what's out there, and do I want
13:00to match to it or not, okay?
13:02And then the third category is...
13:05The neural circuit associated with self -delusion.
13:08What do we mean by positive delusion?
13:10Positive delusion is belief that only this person can make me feel this way.
13:16Now, positive delusion is critical.
13:18If you look at the stability of relationships over time, what you find is that
13:24there are some key features of interactions between individuals that predict that a relationship will
13:31last. And those are many, but mainly fall under this category of positive delusions.
13:37I'll return to those and what those exactly look like.
13:39But there are also just a handful of things that predict that a relationship will
13:44fail over time. This is largely the work of the Gottmans.
13:49It's actually a husband and wife team up at the University of Washington in Seattle.
13:53And they've identified what are called the four horsemen of relationships.
13:57Those four behaviors, what they call the four horsemen of the apocalypse, for relationships are
14:04one, criticism, two, defensiveness, three, stonewalling, and four, contempt, with contempt being the most powerful
14:14predictor of breaking up. Criticism, of course, does not mean that there's no place for
14:22criticism in stable relationships. Of course, there is.
14:25It has to do with how frequent and how intensely that criticism is voiced.
14:30Defensiveness, of course, is defensiveness.
14:32We know as the sort of lack of ability to hear another or to adopt
14:38their stance. So lack of empathy, I think, is one way to interpret defensiveness.
14:44Stonewalling, which is actually another form of lack of empathy.
14:48It's a turning off of this neural circuit that's so critical for desire, love, and
14:52attachment. The stonewalling essentially means the emotional response or the request of another is completely
14:58cut off. And then contempt.
15:00And contempt has actually been referred to as the sulfuric acid of relationship.
15:04I didn't say that, but Gottman and colleagues have, that it is such a powerful
15:09predictor of divorce and breakups in the future.
15:12Contempt, of course, by definition, is the feeling that a person, person or thing is
15:17beneath consideration, worthlessness, or deserving scorn.
15:21That runs counter to all of the neural circuits, all three of the neural circuits
15:25that we talked about before.
15:27It certainly is, it is the antithesis of empathy.
15:30It is anything but a positive delusion.
15:32It's really looking at the other individual, either accurately or inaccurately, as somebody that you
15:38kind of despise. And then it is an absolute inversion of the autonomic seesaw matching
15:44that I was talking about before.
15:45It's a dissociating of your seesaw from their seesaw.
15:49They're very excited about something, you're unexcited by it.
15:52And therefore it's not surprising that it is so strongly predictive of breakups.
15:57And in the case of married couples of divorce.
15:59I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Function.
16:04Last year, I became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to
16:08lab testing. Function provides over 100 advanced lab tests that give you a key snapshot
16:13of your entire bodily health.
16:15This snapshot offers you with insights on your heart health, hormone health, immune functioning, nutrient
16:20levels, and much more. Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to
16:25your physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from
16:30top doctors who are expert in the relevant areas.
16:32For example, in one of my first tests with Function, I learned that I had
16:36elevated levels of mercury in my blood.
16:38Function not only helped me detect that, but offered insights into how best to reduce
16:42my mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption.
16:45I'd been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more
16:49leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production
16:54and detoxification. And I should say, by taking a second function test, that approach worked.
16:59Comprehensive blood testing is vitally important.
17:01There's so many things related to your mental and physical health that can only be
17:05detected in a blood test.
17:06The problem is blood testing has always been very expensive and complicated.
17:10In contrast, I've been super impressed by Function's simplicity and at the level of cost.
17:15It is very affordable. As a consequence, I decided to join their scientific advisory board,
17:19and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast.
17:22If you'd like to try Function, you can go to functionhealth .com slash Huberman.
17:27currently has a wait list of over 250 ,000 people, but they're offering early access
17:32to Huberman podcast listeners. Again, that's functionhealth .com slash Huberman to get early access to
17:38function. I want to now talk about an article that came out a little over
17:4210 years ago that talked about the universality of love and the ability to fall
17:49in love. An article was published in the New York Times in 2015 that related
17:54to some psychological studies that were done as well as some clinical work, as well
17:59as some what I would call pop psychology or things that fall outside the domains
18:05of academic science. And the whole basis of this article was 36 questions that lead
18:13to love. And it involved a listing out indeed of 36 questions divided into set
18:20one, set two, and set three that progress from somewhat ordinary questions about life experience
18:26and self -report to more, let's call them deep questions about people's values and things
18:33that are emotionally close to them.
18:35And I'll just give an example of a few of these.
18:36Some of the questions in set number one were, for instance, what would constitute a
18:41perfect day for you? For what in your life do you feel most grateful?
18:44Kind of standard questionnaire stuff.
18:46In set two, what is your most treasured memory?
18:49Was your most terrible memory?
18:50So these are, as you can tell, are drilling a little bit deeper into one's
18:54personal experience and emotional system.
18:56And then set three, questions 25 through 36, are things, you know, what is a
19:05very embarrassing moment in your life?
19:07When did you last cry in front of another person and by yourself?
19:11What is something that's too serious to be joked about?
19:14So it's going deeper into one's emotional system.
19:17Now, the reason this article got so much traction and the reason I'm bringing it
19:21up today is that there was a statement that was made in and around this
19:26article that if two people went on a date or simply sat down and asked
19:33each other these questions, that by the end of that exchange, where one person...
19:38asks 36 questions and the other person answers all 36, and then the other person
19:43asks all 36 and the other person answers all 36, that they would fall in
19:48love, right? Which seems like kind of a ridiculous thing.
19:51And yet it is the case that people who go through this exercise report feeling
19:58as if they know the other person quite well and feeling certain levels of attachment
20:04or even love and desire for the other person that they would not have predicted
20:09had they not gone through that process.
20:11So what's going on in this exchange of questions and answers of a progressively more
20:16emotional and deep level? We know based on recent studies, and I've covered this before
20:22on this podcast, but I'll mention again, that when individuals listen to the same narrative,
20:27their heart rates tend to synchronize or at least follow a very similar pattern, even
20:32if they're not in the same room listening to a given narrative.
20:34So I'm not all that surprised that people find that they fall in love, in
20:41quotes, after answering these questions to one another, because essentially the way these questions are
20:46laid out is they establish a narrative.
20:49They establish a very personal narrative, and the other person is listening very closely.
20:52So I don't want to seem overly reductionist.
20:55I'll never propose that all of our sensation, perception, action, and experience in life boils
21:00down to us just being bags of chemicals and the action of those chemicals or
21:05any aspect of our nervous system.
21:07And yet, in looking across the psychological literature of development of attachment, in the psychological
21:14literature of adult and romantic attachment, and what makes and breaks those attachments, it's very
21:21clear to me, and I think courses through the literature at multiple levels, that autonomic
21:26coordination is a hallmark feature of desire, a hallmark feature of what we call love,
21:34and a hallmark feature of what we call attachment.
21:37You hear a lot out there that in order to form a really strong relationship,
21:43you have to have a good relationship with yourself, or you have to love yourself,
21:48or... You often hear, for instance, that it's exactly when you're not looking for a
21:54relationship that you're going to find one.
21:56You hear this stuff, right?
21:57But none of that is really grounded in any studies.
21:59There's a particular study that I found.
22:02This was published in Frontiers in Psychology, but it's a experimental study that involves neuroimaging.
22:08The title of this study is Manipulation of Self -Expansion Alters Responses to Attractive Alternative
22:15Partners. And I love the design of this study.
22:17What they did in this study is they took couples and they evaluated members of
22:23that relationship for what's called self -expansion.
22:27Now, self -expansion is a metric that involves one's perception of self as seen through
22:33the relationship to the other.
22:35In other words, that one of the reasons why many people enter relationships is that
22:40it makes us feel good about ourselves and more capable.
22:42And I would see that as a healthy interdependence, not necessarily codependence.
22:46In any event, this study looked at whether or not people have high levels of
22:54self -expansion through the actions or statements of their significant other and how that influences
23:01their perception of people outside the relationship, meaning how attractive they perceive people outside the
23:09relationship to be, turns out to be strongly influenced by A, whether or not their
23:15self -expansion is very strongly driven by the other person that they are involved with,
23:22that they're in the romantic relationship with, and whether or not that's being expressed to
23:26them. So here's how the study went.
23:28First of all, they rated or categorized individuals on the basis of the self -expansion
23:34metric. Some people have more of a potential to experience self -expansion through others, right?
23:40Some of us feel great about ourselves and we're kind of topped off at that.
23:44Others don't feel so great about themselves, but they can feel much better in response
23:48to praise, in particular praise or self -expansion type behaviors or statements from people that
23:53we really care about. And still other people are a mixture of the two, the
23:57kind of moderate levels of both.
23:59So they rated them on this scale.
24:00And then they had people experience self -expansion narratives.
24:06They heard their significant other say really terrific things about them and about the relationship
24:10in particular, that the relationship that they have was exciting, novel, and challenging.
24:16So that was one form of self -expansion.
24:18And they went into some detail as to why that was the case in their
24:20particular relationship. Or they heard a narrative from their significant other about strong feelings of
24:29love between the two that had been experienced previously in the relationship.
24:33So in the one case, it sort of directed more towards them.
24:36And in the other case, it's more about the relationship itself.
24:39And then they did brain imaging of one person in the relationship while that person
24:45assessed the attractiveness of people outside the relationship.
24:49And what they found was that people who were primed for this self -expansion had
24:54lower activation of brain areas associated with assessing others' attractiveness than did the people who
25:02experienced a lot of self -expansion.
25:05Now, the takeaway from that, at least the way I read this study, is if
25:10you're with somebody who really benefits from or experiences a lot of self -expansion, unless
25:17you really want them to pay attention to the attractiveness of other people, it stands
25:23to reason that they would benefit from more self -expansion type gestures or statements, okay?
25:29Not so much centered on the relationship.
25:31We have such a great relationship.
25:33There's so much love, it's so great, that too.
25:35But in the context of this study and these findings, that the person is really
25:40terrific, that the relationship that they've created together is really exciting, novel, and challenging, that
25:45there's a narrative around the relationship that really has a lot to do with the
25:49dynamics between the individuals, in particular, that the person who really likes self -expansion is
25:54vital to that dynamic, okay?
25:55So it's not looking down at the relationship as a set of equals.
25:58There is sort of this bias written into this of that this person is really
26:02essential for the relationship. I'm not saying this is something that anyone has to do.
26:05I'm not saying this is right or wrong.
26:06This is just what the data say.
26:08But what's remarkable is that, in the absence of this survival Tutorial, that it happened
26:10even though it didn't ??
26:11In fact, in... Copy. and that there's only a two -story because I had heard
26:11of the fact the advantage like that I did of those statements, people who have,
26:15or that rate high on this scale of self -expansion, rate attractive alternative partners as
26:21more attractive. Now that's interesting to me because it means that their actual perception of
26:28others is changing. They're still seeing all these attractive people.
26:31It's just that if they're feeling filled up, in air quotes, psychologically filled up, emotionally
26:37filled up, autonomically filled, enhanced in the language that we're using today, by the self
26:44-expansion narrative, well then the same set of attractive faces appear less attractive to a
26:51given individual. Now, whether or not this predicts cheating or loyalty, I certainly can't say.
26:57That would be very hard to assess in neuroimaging.
27:00But I find this study, again, the title, Manipulation of Self -Expansion Alters Responses to
27:05Attractive Alternative Partners, to be absolutely fascinating because again, it points to the fact that
27:10the interactions with our significant others shapes our autonomic arousal, shapes our perception of self,
27:18and thereby shapes our perception of other potential partners in the outside world, or shuts
27:25us down to the potential of other people in the outside world.
27:28And so this really does point to the idea that, while it is important to
27:32link our autonomic nervous systems, to establish desire, love, and attachment, that we want to
27:39have a stable internal representation of ourselves, a stable autonomic nervous system to some degree
27:45or another, so that we can be in stable romantic partnership with another individual, if
27:52that's what we're really trying to do.
27:53If you're a regular listener of the Huberman Lab Podcast, you've no doubt heard me
27:57talk about the vitamin mineral probiotic drink, AG1.
28:00And if you've been on the fence about it, now's an awesome time to give
28:03it a try. For the next few weeks, AG1 is giving away a full supplement
28:07package with your first subscription to AG1.
28:10They're giving away a free bottle of vitamin D3K2, a bottle of omega -3 fish
28:15oil capsules, and a sample pack of the new sleep formula, AGZ, which by the
28:19way, is now the only sleep supplement I take.
28:22It's fantastic. Fantastic, my sleep on AGZ is out of this world good.
28:26AGZ is a drink, so it eliminates the need to take a lot of pills.
28:29It tastes great. And like I said, it has me sleeping incredibly well, waking up
28:34more refreshed than ever. I absolutely love it.
28:37Again, this is a limited time offer, so make sure to go to drinkag1 .com
28:41slash Huberman to get started today.
28:44In the Huberman Lab podcast, I discuss both science and science -based tools.
28:48And so I'd be remiss if I didn't actually cover some of the tools that
28:53relate to those deeper biological mechanisms.
28:56Now, the hormones testosterone and estrogen are almost always the first biological chemicals and hormones
29:04that are mentioned and described and explored when thinking about desire and love and attachment
29:12too, for that matter, since love and attachment stem from desire.
29:16The simple stereotyped version of the hormones, testosterone and estrogen, are that testosterone drives libido
29:23or increases it, aka sex drive, and that estrogen somehow blunts it or is not
29:28involved in libido and sex drive.
29:31And that is simply not the case.
29:33Yes, testosterone and some of its other forms, like dihydrotestosterone, are strongly related to libido
29:41and sex drive and the pursuit and ability to mate.
29:44However, the hormone estrogen is also strongly associated with libido and mating behavior.
29:51So much so that for people that either chemically or for some other reason have
29:57very low estrogen, libido can severely suffer.
30:01So it's a coordinated dance of estrogen and testosterone in both males and females that
30:05leads to libido or sex drive.
30:08With that said, there are things that can shift libido in both men and women
30:15in the direction of more desire or more desire to mate, either to seek mates
30:22or to mate with existing partners.
30:25Now, a common misconception is that because dopamine is involved in motivation and drive, that
30:31simply increasing dopamine through any.
30:33number of different mechanisms or tools will increase libido and sex drive.
30:38And that's simply not the case either.
30:41It is true that some level of dopamine or increase in dopamine is required for
30:48increases in libido. However, because of dopamine's relationship to the autonomic nervous system, and because
30:56the autonomic nervous system is so intimately involved, no pun intended, in sexual activity, in
31:03seeking and actual mating behavior, as I described earlier, it's actually the case that if
31:09people drive their dopamine system too high, they will be in states of arousal that
31:16are high enough such that they seek and want sexual activity, but they can't actually
31:22engage the parasympathetic arm of the autonomic nervous system sufficient to become physically aroused.
31:27So this is an important point to make because I think that a lot of
31:31people are under the impression that if they just drive up testosterone, increase dopamine, and
31:37generally get themselves into high states of autonomic arousal, that that's going to increase the
31:41libido. But that's simply not the way the system works.
31:45It's that seesaw and that seesawing back and forth that is the arc of arousal
31:50that we talked about earlier.
31:51Now, there are substances, legal, over -the -counter substances, that fall under the categorization of
31:58supplements that do indeed increase libido and arousal.
32:03I want to be clear, however, that these are by no means required.
32:07Many people have healthy libidos or have libidos that are healthy for their life and
32:12what they need and want.
32:15And as always, in any discussion about supplementation, you absolutely have to check with your
32:20physician. I don't just say that to protect us.
32:21I say that to protect you.
32:23Your health and wellbeing is dependent on you doing certain things and not doing others,
32:26and everybody is different. Nonetheless, there are studies that point to specific substances that are
32:32sold over -the -counter that at least in the United States are legal and that
32:35have been shown to be statistically significant in increasing measures of libido.
32:42There are many such substances.
32:43There are many such substances.
32:44But ... but three that in particular have good peer -reviewed research to support them
32:49are Maka, M -A -C -A, which is actually a root, Tongat Ali, also sometimes
32:58called Long Jack, I didn't name them, forgive me, and Tribulus, or Tribulus it's sometimes
33:04called. I'm going to talk about each of these in sequence, but on the whole,
33:10the studies on Maka are quite convincing that consumption of two to three grams per
33:18day of Maka, which generally is sold as a powder or a capsule, typically consumed
33:25early in the day because it can be somewhat of a stimulant, meaning it can
33:28increase alertness and you wouldn't want it to interfere with sleep by taking it too
33:33late in the day. But in studies that include both men and women of durations
33:38anywhere from eight to 12 weeks of athletes and non -athletes and different variations of
33:46Maka, it turns out there's black Maka, red Maka, yellow Maka, there are a bunch
33:50of different forms of Maka, but that they can increase subjective reports of sexual desire
33:57independent of hormone systems, meaning it does not seem, at least based on the existing
34:04literature, that Maka increases testosterone or changes estrogen, at least not on the timescales that
34:09these studies were done or with the measures that were performed in these studies.
34:13Another substance that has been shown to increase libido across a range of human populations
34:19is so -called Tongat Ali.
34:22This is an herb, there's a Malaysian version and an Indonesian version.
34:26My understanding is that the Indonesian variety of Tongat Ali is the one that is
34:31most potent for its effects on libido.
34:35Previously, I've talked about Tongat Ali taken in 400 milligram per day capsules as a
34:42means to increase the amount of free, meaning unbound testosterone.
34:47So testosterone has a both bound form and an unbound form.
34:51Very briefly, the bound form is bound to albumin in the blood or to...
34:55so -called sex hormone binding globulin.
34:58When it's bound, it can't be biologically active at many cells.
35:03It is important that some of it be bound in order to get a sort
35:06of time release and proper distribution of testosterone through the body, but it is the
35:10unbound free testosterone that can really have its most potent effects.
35:15And there's some evidence that Tonga Ali can increase the amount of unbound, so -called
35:21free testosterone, by lowering sex hormone binding globulin, although it is almost certain that it
35:27has other routes of mechanism as well.
35:30Nonetheless, there are some reports of Tonga Ali increasing libido.
35:35The question always comes up around discussion of supplements.
35:38Do you need to cycle these things?
35:39The only way to determine that is really to do your blood work, monitor liver
35:43enzymes, monitor hormone levels, and so forth.
35:46So I simply can't say whether or not you need to or you don't need
35:50to cycle them. Typically, Tonga Ali and Maka are not cycled in any regular kind
35:56of way that I'm aware of, but again, you really need to check with your
36:00doctor if you're going to initiate taking any of these things, and you certainly should
36:04do your best to monitor your blood work as well as subjective measures and evaluating
36:08whether or not they're working for you, safe for you, and so forth.
36:10The third and final substance slash supplement that I want to touch on as it
36:14relates to libido is called tribulus terrestis.
36:18So that's T -R -I -B -U -L -U -S terrestis, T -E -R -R
36:23-E -S -T -R -I -S.
36:25This is a commonly sold over -the -counter supplement for increasing testosterone for fitness purposes
36:35and so on. Whether or not it actually does that to a meaningful degree isn't
36:41clear, but I'm aware of four peer -reviewed studies that were focused on both males
36:48and females, ranging anywhere from 18 years old all the way up to 65 plus,
36:55a fairly broad age range, where people took anywhere from 750 milligrams per day divided
37:05into three equal doses. So 750 total per day, divided into three equal doses of
37:11tribulus or placebo for 120 days.
37:14This particular study was focused on females.
37:18And according to the Female Sexual Function Index questionnaire, no significant difference between any of
37:24the groups. However, free and bioavailable testosterone increased in the group taking tribulus terrestris.
37:31Total testosterone did not reach statistical significance.
37:34So this is sort of the inverse of what we see with MACA, where there
37:38do seem to be increases in testosterone, which would predict that there would be increase
37:43in libido. In this case, this was post -menopausal women.
37:47There was no increase in libido.
37:49There was an increase in testosterone.
37:50I mention it only because there might be instances in which people want to increase
37:56their testosterone. It does seem that tribulus, at least in that population, is capable of
38:00doing that. Now, there's a separate study that was done, a double -blind study lasting
38:06anywhere from one to six months that had a clear and significant increase in libido.
38:11Now, this was taking six grams.
38:14So that's 6 ,000 milligrams of tribulus root for 60 days.
38:18And it did seem to increase various aspects of sexual function.
38:22I think more studies are certainly needed, but these three substances slash supplements, MACA, Tonga
38:30Ali in particular, Indonesian Tonga Ali and tribulus can indeed create significant increases in sexual
38:38desire. And in some cases, by adjusting the testosterone and estrogen system, in some cases,
38:44not by adjusting the testosterone and estrogen system.
38:47Again, pointing to the complexity of neurochemicals and features that adjust things like libido, AKA
38:54desire. So we covered a lot of material today related to desire, love, and attachment.
38:59And yet I acknowledge that it is not exhaustive of the vast landscape that is
39:05the psychology and biology of desire, love, and attachment.
39:09Nonetheless, I hope that you found the information interesting and hopefully actionable in some cases
39:15toward the relationships of. your past, of present, and potentially for the relationships of your
39:22future. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion about desire, love, and attachment.
39:28And last, but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.