Healthy Benefits Of Kissing

Kissing is a uniquely human trait that’s said to have emerged as a way to pass germs from one person to another, ultimately building immunity. But that’s rather unromantic, isn’t it? While it seems plausible that kissing would have an underlying biological function, there’s also no denying its role in bonding… or overall health.

Kissing causes a chemical reaction in your brain, including a burst of the hormone oxytocin. It’s often referred to as the “love hormone,” because it stirs up feelings of affection and attachment. According to a 2013 study, oxytocin is particularly important in helping men bond with a partner and stay monogamous.

Kissing not only feels good, it’s good for you. It relieves stress and releases epinephrine into your blood, making it pump faster, which may result in a reduction of LDL cholesterol. Kissing may even be a novel way to receive certain hormones, like testosterone:

“’Mucous membranes inside the mouth are permeable to hormones such as testosterone. Through open-mouth kissing, men introduced testosterone into a woman’s mouth,’ which ‘is absorbed through the mucous membranes… and increases arousal and the likelihood that she will engage in reproductive behavior.”

Interestingly, Andréa Demirjian, author of Kissing: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about One of Life’s Sweetest Pleasures, believes “a kiss a day really can keep the doctor away.” And she recently shared eight reasons why with CNN:

1. Reduce Your Blood Pressure

Kissing helps to dilate your blood vessels, which may help lower your blood pressure.

2. Relieve Cramps and Headaches

The blood-vessel-dilation effect described above also helps to relieve pain, particularly from headache or menstrual cramps.

3. Fight Cavities

When you kiss, saliva production increases in your mouth, and this helps to wash away plaque on your teeth that may lead to cavities. That said, cavity-causing bacteria can also be transmitted via a kiss, especially if the person you’re kissing has poor oral habits. It’s even been shown that cavity-causing bacteria can spread from a mother’s kiss to her baby.

4. Release Your Happy Hormones

Kissing prompts your brain to release a happy elixir of feel-good chemicals like serotonin, dopamine, and oxytocin. This isn’t only important for your happiness, it also may also help to strengthen your relationship. As MSN reported:

“’This [oxytocin] is the hormone of love, and the better the oxytocin levels, the more capacity for love,’ explains psychotherapist Arthur Janov, Ph.D., author of ‘The Biology of Love’ and the director of the Primal Center in Santa Monica, Calif. ‘We have found that those who cannot commit in a love relationship are low in oxytocin.’”

Interestingly, kissing activates the same areas in your brain linked to reward and addiction. According to the researchers who revealed this finding:

“Kissing may have evolved as a way to stimulate brain systems associated with sex drive, romantic love, and attachment so that humans are triggered to seek a variety of potential mates, then focus attention on one for mating, and finally be able to tolerate that mate long enough to raise a child as a team.”

Your lips are also densely packed with sensory neurons, which are stimulated by the touch of another’s lips. This prompts the release of sebum, which is thought to play a role in bonding.

5. Burn Calories

It’s not going to replace your workout session… but a vigorous kiss may burn 8-16 calories. Not too shabby for a kiss.

6. Boost Your Self-Esteem

One study found that men who received a passionate kiss before they left for work earned more money. This suggests the kiss (and perhaps the happy home-life it suggests) makes people happier, boosts self-esteem and, ultimately, more productive at work.

7. Tone Your Facial Muscles

A vigorous kiss helps you shape up your neck and jawline by working out a number of facial muscles.

8. Check Out Your Partner’s Compatibility

A kiss can be a powerful measure of your initial attraction to a person, so much so that the majority of men and women surveyed reporting that a first kiss could be a turn-off. Women, in particular, place more importance on kissing as a “mate assessment device” and as a means of “initiating, maintaining, and monitoring the current status of their relationship with a long-term partner.”

Kissing Even Boost Your Immune System and Provide Significant Stress Relief

The average person spends more than 20,000 minutes of their life kissing, and for very good reason. In addition to the benefits above, kissing has been shown to boost your immune system and reduce allergic responses in people with skin or nasal allergies.

Separate research also revealed that people who spent six weeks making kissing a priority with their partners reported significant decreases in their levels of stress. In addition to improvements in stress, the kissing participants also reported greater relationship satisfaction and improvements in total cholesterol.

There may actually be an even more primal reason for why “kissing” developed, however. Because some cultures don’t include kissing in their mating rituals, it’s possible the first kiss was given by a mother to her child rather than being shared between a couple.

Psychologists conjecture that kiss-feeding – exchanging pre-masticated food from one mouth to another — was how babies received the nutrients needed to grow up strong and healthy either in addition to, or after, breastfeeding. This jump starts the digestion process and makes vitamins like B-12 more easily absorbable while also promoting attachment and bonding.

Taking Kissing to the Next Level: Sex Is Healthful, Too

Kissing can be a prelude to sex, which has many of the same health benefits of kissing magnified. Men and women tend to regard kissing in this realm differently, with men being more likely to initiate kissing before sex and women more likely to do so afterward. As reported by Psychology Today:

“Women use the intensity and frequency of kissing to evaluate a man’s suitability for short-term relationships as well as judging the potential of a short-term relationship evolving into a long-term relationship. Men use kissing, especially in short-term relationships, to increase the likelihood of having sex.”

I recently featured an entire article on the 11 health benefits of sex, so you can review that for all of the details. For starters, here are the top five:

1. Improved Immunity

People who have sex frequently (one or two times a week) have significantly higher levels of immunoglobulin A (IgA). Your IgA immune system is your body’s first line of defense. Its job is to fight off invading organisms at their entry points, reducing or even eliminating the need for activation of your body’s immune system. This may explain why people who have sex frequently also take fewer sick days.

2. Heart Health

Men who made love regularly (at least twice a week) were 45 percent less likely to develop heart disease than those who did so once a month or less, according to one study. Sexual activity not only provides many of the same benefits to your heart as exercise, but also keeps levels of estrogen and testosterone in balance, which is important for heart health.

3. Lower Blood Pressure

Sexual activity, and specifically intercourse, is linked to better stress response and lower blood pressure.

4. It’s a Form of Exercise

Sex helps to boost your heart rate, burn calories, and strengthen muscles, just like exercise. In fact, research revealed that sex burns about four calories a minute for men and three for women, making it (at times) a “significant” form of exercise. It can even help you to maintain your flexibility and balance.

5. Pain Relief

Sexual activity releases pain-reducing hormones and has been found to help reduce or block back and leg pain, as well as pain from menstrual cramps, arthritis and headaches. One study even found that sexual activity can lead to partial or complete relief of headache in some migraine and cluster-headache patients.

Whether sex, kissing, or even hugging, these forms of affection have primal, biological roots that impact our bodies, typically in a beneficial way, even in the modern-day. So grab your partner today, give him or her a smooch, and embrace this fact: kissing can provide for a longer, healthier and, most would agree, more enjoyable life.

Illnesses caused by viruses that can be transmitted during kissing include:

• Colds – also known as upper respiratory tract infections. Many different viruses can cause the common cold. Colds are thought to be spread by direct contact with the virus. You could catch the cold from airborne droplets or by direct contact with secretions (fluids and mucous) from the infected person’s nose and throat.
• Glandular fever – also known as the kissing disease. Glandular fever is the common term for a viral infection called infectious mononucleosis, caused by the Epstein-Barr virus. The virus is spread through saliva and infection occurs through contact.
• Herpes infection – viruses that are considered part of the herpes family include Epstein-Barr, varicella-zoster (causes chickenpox) and herpes simplex (causes cold sores). Herpes simplex virus can be spread through direct contact with the virus when kissing. Herpes is most easily spread to others when the blisters are forming or have erupted. The virus can be ‘shed’ (spread to others) from the site of blisters even when they have healed. Chickenpox is easily spread from person to person by direct contact, droplets or airborne spread.
• Hepatitis B – kissing may also transmit this virus, although blood has higher levels of this virus than saliva. Infection can occur when infected blood and saliva come into direct contact with someone else’s bloodstream or mucous membranes. (Mucous membranes line various body cavities including the mouth and nose.) A person is more likely to be infected when kissing if they have open sores in or around the mouth.
• Warts – warts in the mouth can be spread through kissing, especially if there are areas of recent trauma.

Bacteria that can be transmitted during kissing include:

• Meningococcal disease – this is a potentially life-threatening condition which includes meningitis, inflammation of the membranes (meninges) that surround the brain and spinal cord, and septicemia. These bacteria can be spread either through direct contact or via droplets. Studies show that, with respect to kissing, only deep kissing seems to be a risk factor.
• Tooth decay – the bacteria that cause tooth decay aren’t found in the mouths of newborn babies. A baby’s mouth must be colonized with infected saliva, which can be passed by a kiss on the lips.

Keep it in perspective

There is no need to give up kissing for the sake of your health and that of your loved ones. While disease-causing bugs can be transferred during a kiss, most won’t cause disease and the risk of serious disease is very small. More infectious bacteria can be shared through a handshake, or simply handing someone something. Not to mention all the deadly bacteria we taken by just touching our phones, doorknobs and other devices! Kissing is the least infectious of all ways to exchange bacteria.

And Finally Remember That Passionate kisses have health benefits:

• Emotional bonding – kissing your partner is a fun, pleasurable and important part of physical intimacy and helps maintain a sense of togetherness and love.
• Stress reduction – kissing your partner, either tenderly or passionately, releases calming brain chemicals (neurotransmitters) that reduce stress levels and soothe the mind.
• Foreplay – deep kissing your partner can lead to sexual intercourse. Various studies show that sex enhances a person’s physical and mental health. For example, regular sex is protective against stress and depression.
• Metabolic boost – kissing burns kilojoules. The more passionate the kiss, the greater the metabolic boost.
• Healthier mouth – saliva contains substances that fight bacteria, viruses and fungi. Deep kissing increases the flow of saliva, which helps to keep the mouth, teeth and gums healthy.
• Increased immunity – exposure to germs that inhabit your partner’s mouth strengthens your immune system.