this is why i want to talk about this amazing hormone and it's my favorite hormone and it's called oxytocin so oxytocin is a neuropeptide which means it's basically a little smaller than a protein but it is bigger than just a series of amino acids oxytocin has this nickname called the love hormone and that's a terrible terrible name for it because it is not about love it's about pro-social behavior and helping with social bonding now here's what i want to talk about is that many many studies now have shown that females have higher levels of oxytocin and not only do females have higher levels of oxytocin oxytocin actually does something different for a female than it does for a male in males it can actually help influence them to be more aggressive and anti-social but for females it makes them be more pro-social which is fascinating and there's another neuropeptide that we should probably discuss at a later date but i would probably won't go into right now called vasopressin that is kind of somewhat similar in a lot of ways to oxytocin for the male but the point here is imagine this we have the same chemicals coursing through our brains as males and females yet those chemicals can literally cause us to behave differently and that is fascinating and it's something we just we need more data on we need more experimentation but one of the most interesting aspects about oxytocin and one of my just favorite things to talk about is how oxytocin helps to actually bond a mother and her infant and what we see is that oxytocin levels the higher the oxytocin levels that mom has during pregnancy the actual cl she tends to be closer to that child in those initial stages of life on top of that as soon as the baby is born what they find is that oxytocin surges through mom as soon as that skin-to-skin contact happens so all right think but picture like this oxytocin so the baby's gonna be born next we'll go here the baby is going to be born push through the vaginal canal and then they're going to cut that umbilical cord and the and they're going to clean off the baby to an extent again this is a typical hospital birth and then step one is give skin to skin contact with mom and there's a reason because both mom and infant get a rush of oxytocin and that does a couple things because oxytocin is also going to cause the uterus to contract there's a synthetic form of oxytocin called pitocin so for any of you've ever heard of people being induced they get pit is like kind of like the shorthand way of saying it the cool way i guess you could say of saying pitocin it's a synthetic form of oxytocin and it causes the uterus to contract well remember just because a baby's born does not mean that the placenta is out yet so the uterus needs to still contract to help push out the afterbirth so what happens for one as soon as mom holds that baby and starts snuggling the infant skin to skin oxytocin rushes and floods to her uterus causing it to contract to help get rid of the afterbirth and also to start kind of sort of decreasing its size but that's going to take longer at the same time it's going to increase her body temperature and by increasing her body temperature that's actually going to warm up the baby a little bit because that baby's been used to this really snug warm environment inside of mom's uterus but now all of a sudden it's going to be like oh yes so it's going to get warm then it's oxytocin is also going to stimulate milk secretion many mothers can have know exactly what it's called it's called the letdown and you can actually feel oxytocin start to flood into the nipples and the idea there is that the oxytocin right that it's gonna it's gonna help pretty much instinctually have that child start searching for the nipples so it can start breastfeeding which is amazing so then let's say the baby's cleaned the doctors have done everything they need to do the staff as everyone's made sure and now mom just gets to hang out with baby they want the baby to feed very soon and one of the things that can happen and this is not just going to happen right in the very beginning this is going to continue to happen mothers will always talk about the whole breastfeeding aspect of things is one of the most uniting moments they have with their child and that's because we have found that keeping eye contact actually raises oxytocin levels and this is in just in humans so for instance i mean not not just in humans um here's here's something really cool if any of you have a dog and that dog is nearby i want you to do a little experiment right now okay what i want you to do is i want you to get your dog's attention and start making long eye contact with them and i guarantee something very unique is going to happen between both of you the longer you make that eye contact this is something that has been trained into us since dogs were wolves and we domesticated them prolonged eye contact actually increases oxytocin levels in both in humans and in dogs and it makes you more bound to them more pro-social and socially bonded to them it actually it's like you almost love them more which is crazy same thing happens when a mother is breastfeeding when she's breastfeeding she will look into the eyes of her child and they're both going to have oxytocin spikes and those oxytocin spikes are going to help bind them and bond them together because you have to understand that humans we need to take care of our young there's not a there's a lot of creatures on this planet that that is not actually a drive for them and what i mean by that is like take for instance certain sea creatures right like say um squid for example if i'm remembering correctly off the top of my head i believe it's squid squid will just lay their eggs and then just leave they're like sega hope hope things work out you can't do that with a human being you just can't do that and so oxytocin actually forces you the mother to just really become attached to that infant now interestingly again oxytocin is going to do similar things for the male in certain occasions but another hormone called vasopressin is also going to really be acting on him as well so so males are going to get a very similar kick but it's nowhere near as powerful and you have to understand too that oxytocin levels so they they've actually done experiments with different mammals where they've lowered their oxytocin levels and then had them give birth i think it's both been with mice it's been a while since i looked into this but they've done that and what they find is the mice don't really care to nurture their children when they have low levels of oxytocin and then they've done the inverse and they've actually given oxytocin to mice and i think other creatures too that didn't actually have a child and they become far more nurturing to other children this is really really fascinating stuff right so you also have to understand they have looked into the serum levels of uh for females and males and compared them resting oxytocin levels and females have a higher level of oxytocin just flowing through their veins which is interesting because again for females oxytocin has been shown to induce pro-social and very socially bonding behavior and if you think about it again it's not this simple i don't i think it's wrong to sit there and go oxytocin is responsible for why females are the way they are that's a bad way to look at it it's so much more complicated than that but it's a fascinating piece to the puzzle so you have to understand that when it comes to mothers and their children right oxytocin is so important and so vital for them it's such a cool thing but that's only the beginning of the story with oxytocin [Music] you