A “nesting” hormone might give women’s hearts benefit during brief episodes of warm contact with loved ones, a psychologist reported.
Dubbed the “tend and befriend” hormone, oxytocin has attracted great interest since scientists found a few years ago that women under stress churn out more of it than men do, and oxytocin might prompt them to seek to comfort and nurture others. Testosterone appears to blunt the social bonding effect of oxytocin, which is a calming hormone. It stimulates milk release during breast feeding and is released in men and women during orgasm.
There’s evidence women suffer more stress than men from marital conflicts, “so this perhaps shows the positive side, that they’re buffered more by happy contacts,” says University of Toronto psychiatrist Brian Baker, who studies how marriage affects men’s hearts.
Male heart patients with good marriages stay healthier than do those living with conflict, he says. “There are definite gender differences, but gender doesn’t tell the whole story.”