Daily Mail Reporter Tests Her Own Blood for Happiness

Suzanne Taylor doing research. From the Daily Mail.

Can a blood test determine someone's happiness? I don't know, but that's what Suzanne Taylor of the Daily Mail tried to find out. She let researchers sample her blood and examine its oxytocin levels. Oxytocin--sometimes called the "love hormone"--is released into the blood when someone touches another human being. The chemical helps create feelings of trust, security, and possibly sexual arousal in the brain, with more oxytocin creating more positive feelings.

So what actions release the most oxytocin? That's what Suzanne Taylor wanted to find out, so in a rather unscientific test, she did four different activities on four separate days and had blood tests after each one. She went on a date, spent time with her daughter, went shopping, and spent time with a female friend.

Here are the results, in descending order of the amount of oxytocin from each activity (the theory is that the higher the number, the more actual happiness she felt):

1. Time with daughter:  115 picograms of oxytocin per mL of blood.
2. Time with female friend:  94 picograms/mL.
3. Shopping:  88 picograms/mL.
4. Date:  62 picograms/mL.

So there it is. No real surprises, except maybe that shopping scored higher than actual contact with a human being (the date, even though it apparently went well). Of course these results mean very little, seeing as this is an uncontrolled test with too many variables (maybe the date scored lowest because it was the first day tested, and she wasn't used to the needle yet). Also, everyone's oxytocin levels are probably different, making these results almost meaningless for other people.

This is an interesting course of study, however, so if anyone could do a similar test with a control group and a large sample size, the results would probably be quite helpful to everyone. Of course, you would need to find a lot of test subjects willing to be pricked by needles every day, or at least find a better way to check oxytocin.

iPhone App Tracks Happiness, Finds Out Sex is Number 1!

From cnet.

Today in obvious news:  cnet reports on results from the iPhone app Track Your Happiness. It turns out that people are happiest during sex and moments of intense focus. Both rated 90 out of 100 on the app's happiness scale...BUT there's no indication of when people gave their ratings (i.e.:  if they waited or if they interrupted their activity to fiddle with the app).

This app comes from Harvard researchers Daniel Gilbert and Matthew Killingsworth. You may have heard about it recently because of its implications to mind wandering, but the other results are new. The app features a basic happiness survey like the ones used by many positive psychology researchers. The study gathered around 250,000 happiness responses from 2,200 people.

These iPhone happiness apps are a somewhat-new phenomenon. You can sign up for Track Your Happiness here. If you're in the UK, you can also try Mappiness, which maps the location and time of your happiness ratings. If you have an iPhone (and you don't mind being interrupted throughout the day), give 'em a try!

Comfort Food, Sex Found to Change Brain Chemicals for at Least Seven Days

Google Image results for "comfort food and sex"
were not encouraging, so this is what you get.
From I Just Love Food.

Today in the somewhat obvious news department:  WTOP reports that researchers at the University of Cincinnati have found that both sex and comfort food reduce stress. The study may seem like a waste of time, but the researchers also discovered the neural pathways by which the stress reduction occurs, and that the reduction lasts for a longer period than previously expected. These findings may eventually aid people with sex addiction (if you believe in that sort of thing) or extreme obesity.

You can read the study itself here at PNAS. The researchers found that sucrose triggers most of the stress dampening in the brain. Here's a quote for the technically inclined:

"Moreover, sucrose intake increases mRNA and protein expression in the BLA for numerous genes linked with functional and/or structural plasticity. Lastly, stress dampening by sucrose is persistent, which is consistent with long-term changes in neural activity after synaptic remodeling."

Mm mmm! nothing gets me hot, bothered, and hungry like protein expression in the BLA!