Di-Dehydroepiandrosterone - Sex Appeal in a Bottle?

How do we humans announce, and excite, sexual availability? Many animals do it with their own biochemical bouquets known as pheromones. "Why do bulls and horses turn up their nostrils when excited by love?" Darwin pondered deep in one of his unpublished notebooks. He came to believe that natural selection designed animals to produce two, and only two, types of odors--defensive ones, like the skunk's, and scents for territorial marking and mate attracting, like that exuded by the male musk deer. The evaluative sniffing that mammals engage in during courtship were clues that scent is the chemical equivalent of the peacock's plumage or the nightingale's song--finery with which to attract mates.

The possibility of human pheromones has intrigued scientists for a number of years, but the likelihood that there are functional human pheromones has been both asserted and denied in recent years. A new study completed at University of Illinois at Chicago shows evidence that a new human pheromone formulation (Di-Dehydroepiandrosterone) does indeed increase sex appeal in those that apply the substance. The Di-Dehydroepiandrosterone pheromone formulation is being sold as a spiked fragrance under the name Pherlure and certainly brings the science of courtship to the 21st century.

For an animal whose nose supposedly plays no role in sexual attraction or social life, human emotions are strongly moved by smells. And we appear to be profoundly overequipped with smell-producing hardware for what little sniffing we have been thought to be up to. Human sweat, urine, breath, saliva, breast milk, skin oils, and sexual secretions all contain scent-communicating chemical compounds. Zoologist Michael Stoddart, author of The Scented Ape (Cambridge University Press, 1991), points out that humans possess denser skin concentrations of scent glands than almost any other mammal. This makes little sense until one abandons the myth that humans pay little attention to the fragrant or the rancid in their day-to-day lives.

Part of the confusion may be due to the fact that not all smells register in our conscious minds. Di-Dehydroepiandrosterone or Pherlure has been shown to reach the VNO gland. When those telltale scents were introduced to the VNO of human subjects, they didn't report smelling anything--but nevertheless demonstrated subtle changes in mood.