Its Our Microbes And Not Us Who Fall In Love Or Have Sex

"Dear Sweetheart, I am coming home in three days. Don't wash." 

• In honor of Valentine’s Day, JUNGLEJOVI™ ( Wellness, Beauty and Luxury Arm Of SFO ) takes a more in-depth look into the many ways our microbes impact us in a seemingly unlikely area — our love / sex life. Is it more accurate to say a couple have “Good Microbiology” rather than to say a couple has “Good Chemistry”?
• Few things in human behavior are as ubiquitous as kissing. Nearly every human culture throughout history includes kissing loved ones. When you think about it, kissing is a strange behavior that carries a great deal of risk of passing contagions for both parties. New research suggests that the contagious aspect of kissing might be the reason we evolved the behaviouur in the first place.
• Animals that form social groups, like humans, share pathogens and parasites from close contact like kissing. However, we also share the far more prevalent health-promoting microbes as well. Most bacteria we share in a kiss are beneficial, and even help bolster our metabolism and immunity. Some scientists believe that the need to share these benefits may be the origin of social groups in the animal kingdom.
• A kiss also has evolved as a crude form of vaccination against harmful microbes. Humans carry many chronic pathogens that can injure a fetus in the womb. Many scientists believe that one significant benefit to romantic kissing is so that the mother is exposed to the father’s potentially harmful microbes and develops immunity against them before pregnancy.
• Bacteria also play a role in relationship matchmaking. Numerous studies have shown that people can subconsciously sense the others’ immune system genes by scent. One famous Swiss study asked women to rate the attractiveness of a potential partner by smelling their dirty t-shirts. The women did not agree on which smells were the most attractive. Instead, they most often preferred the t-shirt of the man that had the most complimentary immune system that would broaden their offspring’s spectrum of immunity .
• The strange thing is that the immune genes and resulting sweat don’t have much of a smell. Instead, a person’s body odor comes from the specific microbes that consume their sweat, skin cells, and oils. So the women smelling the dirty t-shirts were not smelling the men’s immune system genes directly, but they could sense the small differences that the immune system had on the type of microbes that grew.
• Microliologists at M.I.T., recently made a surprising discovery about how the desire to be connected to others and to have companionship may have another microbial component. During an experiment, they changed the diets of mice to probiotic food. Over the next few weeks, they were surprised to find that the probiotic raised the levels of an important hormone called oxytocin . Often called ‘the love hormone,’ Oxytocin helps us bond with one another. Our bodies release it when we kiss, breast-feed, and even just when people hang out with close friends. It is a hormone that helps us create bonds with partners and our children.
• The mice also seemed a great deal healthier in general and had what researchers called an unusual “glow of health.” The mice grew unusually thick fur, developed more confident behaviour, among other benefits . “They simply looked far healthier than before, it seems that their elevated gut microbes had transformed these animals into rodent sweethearts.” The same health benefits between humans and gut microbiome are  fully proven & research  suggests that the microbes you harbour can make your skin smooth and your hair healthy; they may even put a spring in your step.
• As the science around our microbiota continues to evolve, we begin to see just how profoundly important our bacteria are in our daily lives — even in surprising areas of our lives. It is a startling fact that there are as many microbes in your body as human cells . Bacteria have evolved along with us since the dawn of time, and the more we learn, the more we begin to see that the microbes are a mutual partner in life. Another way to look at it: by making their hosts match with and look well to a possible partner, microbes help to ensure their own continued existence. When it comes to our beneficial bacteria, everyone wins!
• As interest in the microbiome continues to grow, JUNGLEJOVI™ ( wellness, Beauty and Luxury Arm Of SFO ) is developing a range of products around microbiota.

• True love is such a uniquely human emotion. Or is it? If you could see all the genes in your body, you'd be shocked. Only 1 percent of them are human. The other 99 percent belong to bacteria, yeast, viruses, and tiny protozoans. This group of microbes is called your microbiota, and it coats your entire body, inside and out.
• Your gut microbiota, at about three pounds, is among the most crowded spaces on the planet. It is host to a thousand or so different species, munching together on the continuous buffet your gut obligingly provides.
• When it comes to genes, we are vastly outnumbered. Amazingly, these microbes and their genes may affect our love lives, helping us to pick compatible mates like a biological dating app. Depending on the state of your microbiota, that can be a good thing or a bad thing.

Starting with flies

• An inspired 2010 Israeli study took a batch of fruit flies and split them into two groups. They fed one group a diet featuring molasses, the other starch. They did this for two generations. Each group developed a suitable microbiota, perfectly tuned to digest their respective diets.
• Then they mixed the groups together in foursomes—a pair from each group—in a mating chamber. It sounds plush, but a fly-mating chamber is really just a tiny, plastic bowl with a clear top so researchers can count the sex acts. Such is the life of a grad student.
• Despite the total access between all the flies, they preferred to mate with those having the same microbiota. For dozens of generations, the flies kept to their own group, essentially acting as two separate species. How do we know it was due to the microbiota, not just the smell of molasses on the breath? Simple: When the researchers gave the flies antibiotics to kill their microbiota, their preferences vanished.
• According to lead scientists , "symbiotic bacteria can influence fly mating preference by changing the levels of… sex pheromones. The bacteria do not produce the sex pheromones, but regulate [their] production." Pheromones are somewhat mysterious chemicals that can act as sexual attractants. Insects will fly miles based on sniffing a single molecule of the stuff.
• So microbes can alter the flies' production of sex attractants? That puts a serious amount of power into a puny microbe. It shows how important a microbiota can be to mating choices, at least for a fly.

Moving on to humans

• In a follow-up paper, research implies that flies aren't the only animals whose mate choice is manipulated by microbes: "Bacteria contribute to smell in humans and other animals, and smell is an important input in choosing sexual partners." Your bacteria convert skin oils into your own personal blend of fatty acids, which determines how you smell. It's your signature scent.
• Researchers further conclude that antibiotic treatments in infants may affect this scenario, potentially leading to loss of bacterial groups and a different scent. Could early antibiotic use affect your future love life? It's a disturbing speculation, but researchers believe that by carefully repopulating the microbiota after antibiotic use, the condition might be reversed.

Microbes and hormones

• Seen objectively, sex is sometimes a sweaty, messy affair, but somehow we manage to get past that. Thus the global population of 7 billion people. But even here, bacteria may play a role by manipulating our hormones.
• Microbes communicate with each other using hormones, just like animals do. These chemicals may help us to get in the mood for sex. Oxytocin, for instance, is involved with maintaining good health and fast healing, but it also plays a role in social bonding. Oxytocin is the "cuddle hormone," which may help us to ignore the inconvenience of sex and get down to the business of propagation.
• This is also a big win for our microbes because sex helps them to find new human territory. Smooching can make their day: Intimate kissing can transfer 8 million bacteria per second between participants.
• Levels of oxytocin in your body can be enhanced by consuming probiotics, like Lactobacillus reuteri. For lack of a better term, we could call these microbes "love bugs." Don't rush to buy supplements, though—you can boost your own levels of L. reuteri with high-fiber foods (more on this later).

Sniffing out a compatible mate

• Mate selection is also affected by our own immune systems, primed by microbes. The major histocompatibility complex (MHC) consists of immune proteins that give each of us a unique odor-print, on top of our microbial aroma. Your MHC proteins are created by exposure to microbes, representing the condensed version of a lifetime of battling pathogens.
• The theory is that we unconsciously select mates who have completely different MHCs. That means they will complement our own, effectively doubling our resistance to pathogens. When you select a mate with a compatible MHC profile, they will smell good to you—and if you have kids, they will have a head start on a healthy microbiota.

Microbes affect mice, too

• A bad microbiota, like those that cause gut problems, including IBS and IBD, can make you uncomfortable and unsociable. But a good microbiota can make you the life of the party. Mouse studies have shown just how important this effect is.[6] Mice are perfect subjects for microbe studies because you can raise them to be completely free of microbes, so-called germ-free mice.
• Mice are typically gregarious, but germ-free mice are hermits, preferring an empty chamber to the parties going on elsewhere in the nest. Providing these recluses with probiotics cures them of their standoffishness.
• We don't have germ-free humans to experiment on, but we know a bad gut can keep you housebound. A good gut, on the other hand, will improve your odds of getting out and meeting new people.

Slow but handsome

• Here is one last example of how microbes can control your love life.
• A parasite called toxoplasma that lives in cat poop can infect people. It can even grow in your brain, somehow evading the immune system. A Toxoplasma infection can boost levels of testosterone in men, making them taller and more masculine looking. However, Toxoplasma infections cause slower reaction times and may increase the odds of schizophrenia. It is, after all, a brain infection. So it is disturbing to report that women prefer infected to uninfected men.
• This is a sobering example of a microbe that controls our looks, behavior, and mate choice, and not necessarily for the better. Napoleon would agree: Looking good may not be as important as smelling good.

There's a Bunch of Bacteria Having 'Sex' in Your Gut, And It's Wilder Than We Thought

• The human gut is the host of a rampant microscopic orgy. To survive, the microbes in our digestive tract are having 'sex' with each other on a regular basis, all in the name of swapping secrets on how to survive deadly doses of antibiotics.
• A team of researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and University of California Riverside has now learned just how far this bacterial bump-and-grind goes, finding exchanges that go beyond what we knew previously.
• Bacteria, of course, don't have genitals, but technically 'sex' in biology refers to any process that exchanges genetic material.
• By forming a 'temporary union' with another bacterium in our gut, a microbe can therefore transfer its genes to another – it doesn't even have to be the same species.
• All the microbe has to do is stick out a tube, called a pilus, and attach itself to another cell, shooting off a transferable package of DNA called a mobile genetic element when it's ready.
• The discovery of bacterial sex was made over 70 years ago, when scientists realized this horizontal gene transfer was how microbes were sharing resistance genes for certain antibiotics, thereby spreading antibiotic resistance.
• More recently, it's become clear that bacterial sex doesn't just occur when microbes are under attack. It happens all the time, and it's probably part of what keeps our microbiome fit and healthy.
• New research has now identified what genes bacteria are actually sharing when they do this.
• The study was conducted among a phylum of gut microbes, called Bacteroidetes, which comprise up to 80 percent of the human microbiome and are important digesters.
• The big, long molecules from sweet potatoes, beans, whole grains, and vegetables would pass through our bodies entirely without these bacteria. They break those down so we can get energy from them.
• To colonize the human gut and help us break down carbohydrates, however, these microbes must compete for limited resources in the large intestine. Such resources include vitamin B12 and other related compounds, which help fuel the bacteria's metabolism and synthesis of proteins.
• Most microbes in the gut don't have the ability to synthesize these crucial compounds on their own, which means they have to soak up what they can from their environment.
• For this to be effective, it pays to have genes for an efficient vitamin B12 transport system at the ready.
• In both petri dishes and in living mouse models, researchers have now identified B12 transporters that are shared via bacterial sex.
• We're excited about this study because it shows that this process isn't only for antibiotic resistance. The horizontal gene exchange among microbes is likely used for anything that increases their ability to survive, including sharing [genes for the transport of] vitamin B12.
• When two gut microbes were placed on a dish in the lab, researchers noticed the bacterium that couldn't synthesize B12 transport systems connected up with the bacterium that could. Once the sex pilus bridged the gap between the two, the 'receiving' bacterium could unpack its precious cargo.
• After the experiment, researchers examined the genome of the receiving bacterium, which was still alive, and found it had incorporated an extra band of DNA from the donor.
• Among living mice, something similar appears to happen. When researchers administered two forms of Bacteroidetes to a mouse – one that possessed the genes for transferring B12, and another that didn't – they found the genes of the former had 'jumped' to the latter after five to nine days.
• It's as if two humans had sex, and now they both have red hair.
• Interestingly, researchers note that a secondary round of gene transfer, between Bacteroidetes of the same species, occurred slightly faster than the first round, which was between two different species.
• The findings suggest there may be a slight 'species barrier' when it comes to bacterial sex. Although, that barrier is nothing like what we see with mammals, where a species can only reproduce with another of its kind.
• Bacteria, it seems, aren't nearly so picky about their partners, and our stomachs are very grateful for their promiscuity.
• For another, make sure you have a good microbiota. That can help you have great skin, lustrous hair, and an irresistible scent of health.

To tune up your microbiota, follow these simple steps:

• Eat plenty of fiber-filled vegetables, including asparagus, artichokes, broccoli, and leeks. Fiber feeds your beneficial microbes, which then keep away pathogens.
• Eat dark-colored fruits, like cherries and blueberries, that contain anti-oxidants, helping you deal with inflammatory pathogens.
• Try fermented foods containing living microbes, like yogurt and kefir.
• Eat a little fish on occasion; it has anti-inflammatory omega-3 oils.
• Get some exercise; it has a surprisingly good effect on your microbiota.
• Sweat, apparently, is a bonus.

With a healthy microbiota, you will be in the pink of health and have your pick of microbially compatible partners. Treat your love bugs well, and they might help you find "the one" better than any dating app.

Now what?

• How should you deal with this astonishing intrusion of microbes into your most intimate life choices? For one thing, don't drown your signature scent in too much perfume or cologne. Despite the commercials, deodorant is not a sex attractant. Some people, don't bathe that often. If you're adventurous, you could join the no-showering movement that asks us all to get used to a little BO to save water. See what you can get away with. Though we don't recommend that. 

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