How Love Affects Your Health?

The song “All of me loves all of you” by the famous singer John Legend perfectly describes one of the most complex feelings we humans can possibly feel – Love. We are stuck here either trying to find love or figuring out the emotion of love itself. While we are in the lifelong process of figuring out what love actually is, we also experience many health advantages associated with this emotion. 

Love is a strong emotion that can have an adverse effect on you through the experiences you have. From butterflies in your stomach to feeling euphoria, love makes the time you spend with your loved ones magical. Similarly, from not feeling hungry to feeling depressed, your divorce/breakup can hit you hard. The feelings that love lets us experience are endless. Let us look at what actually happens concerning the health aspects of love.

What actually happens?

Your body releases certain hormones when you experience love. Serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin, and endorphins are the hormones mainly associated with feelings of happiness, pleasure, and even lust. The feeling of butterflies in your stomach is a result of these hormones. 

Sometimes, those butterflies become too wiggly and hard to handle. At times, this eventually ends with people experiencing discomfort or even throwing up. This is how too much of anything, be it love either, can be not so good.

The Good Part

Talking about being together can be overwhelming. Spending time with your partner can increase your dopamine (usually called “the pleasure hormone”) production and make you feel calm and composed. Dopamine can improve your mental health too and let you feel all relaxed. It acts as a stress relief and helps you battle depression and anxiety. 

The Not so Good Part

The other side is that dopamine can make you want more of what you are having. Dopamine is the same hormone released when you gamble or have intoxicating substances. So, sometimes the feeling of love can turn into addiction too. At times, people get obsessed with the person they love. This can affect their relationship and disturb their physical and mental health if they do not get what they want.

Think It

Dopamine is also released when you do what you love, like- 

• Eating delicious food
• Having sexual intimacy
• Listening to your favorite music
• Spending time with your loved ones

In fact, dopamine is released just by thinking of doing the activities you like and makes you excited. The release of oxytocin (another hormone associated with love) also boosts relaxed feelings. 

Something New

Another new discovery states that spending time with your loved one can be beneficial in relieving physical pain too. The support and the affection a loved one shows can provide comfort to the brain when it needs to fight pain. If you love someone and are in a committed relationship, your physical health prospers. You tend to have low blood pressure, a healthy heart, and recover faster after an illness occurs. 

Back to Reality

The feeling of nervousness, excessive sweating, fainting, etc., are all results of the stress the body has to endure because of love. Bollywood somewhat shows this (if not have shown a little too much). But you get the point, we hope so. That it’s basically all in the head. The hero who can knock down 10 guys with a single punch feels nervous, perspires, and in some movies even faints when he is smitten by the woman of his dreams. All these thoughts of being smitten might seem romantic, but this is real life, and those feelings can be tough to eventually endure. 

With all this, it does not seem like the age-old poets have over-exaggerated the concept of love. In fact, they hit the cupid’s target more often than not. 

If you ever feel overwhelmed by love and relationships, it is always advisable to seek professional help. The goods can be too good, or the bad can be even worse. Do not let the overwhelming feeling take over you. The psychiatry department at Regency Healthcare is equipped with some of the most skilled doctors for the therapeutic and diagnostic needs of the patients. Regency Health also provides state-of-the-art medical care for sexual health problems for men and women.