WHY LOVE HORMONES BEAT SLEEPING PILLS

SLEEP isn’t the only thing bed is for. So let’s talk about sex — and the role it can play in re-setting the rhythms of your life.

There’s ample research that indicates that physical intimacy is beneficial for sleep on many levels. This is mainly a result of your brain, nervous system, adrenal and pituitary glands releasing a cocktail of feel-good hormones after lovemaking.

As daylight dims and your master clock detects this, it increases the production of chemical messenger melatonin — nature’s sleep aid.

When melatonin levels rise, cortisol — melatonin’s daytime counterpart which promotes alertness, boosts energy, regulates blood pressure and aids digestion — recedes.

Physical intimacy, including hugging, touching and having sex, has an added calming effect on cortisol by releasing oxytocin, the ‘love hormone’. This helps melatonin to do its thing and produce deep sleep.

Oxytocin levels are increased through orgasm.

Another calming hormone, prolactin, is linked to sexual pleasure. Levels of this hormone are higher when we sleep, suggesting that an extra dose before bed does the body good. But there’s a caveat. The amount of prolactin you produce is linked with the quality of your orgasm and sexual satisfaction.

Men produce four times more prolactin when having an orgasm through intercourse rather than through self-pleasure and women also see increased levels when their sexual needs are more satisfactorily met.

Vasopressin is another hormone that is injected into the brain after sex and, along with oxytocin, contributes to your overall feeling of ‘aaaaah’.

Like oxytocin, it aids bonding, sexual motivation, mitigates the response to stress, and lowers cortisol levels to bring on sleep and increase its quality. And when it comes to sleeping together your mother was right — never go to bed angry. Our sleep suffers from the emotional turbulence of conflict. Anger and frustration in the evening stimulates the sympathetic nervous system and stress response, which keeps too much high-alert cortisol in your system when it should be saturated with yawn-inducing melatonin.

Make peace whichever way you must, because when it comes to sleeping, ‘make love not war’ is the motto that really matters.