CAN A POTION MAKE ME SEXIER?

For thousands of years, humans have sought to control love through potions and elixirs. In Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, for example, Oberon, king of the fairies, administers a love potion to his sleeping wife, Queen Titania, which has the effect of making her fall in love with the first being she sees on waking – in this case, an ass-headed man called Bottom. But for the first time, as our knowledge of the neuroscience and physiology of love continues to grow, the possibility of an elixir that actually works is tantalisingly close. Fancy adding a squirt of oxytocin, the so-called love hormone, to your pre-going-out ritual of a few glasses of bubbly and a dance around your bedroom?

Oxytocin is available from a variety of pharmacies and online stores in the form of various products that claim to reduce social anxiety, make orgasms more powerful and potentially be a helpful aid to increase your confidence during the search for a mate.

Does it really work? Well, we know oxytocin lowers our inhibitions to forming new relationships and increases empathy. One study found that couples who’d been together for three months had significantly higher levels of circulating oxytocin than singletons.

And it’s certainly the case that a squirt or two of oxytocin up the nose works well for some, although many of the reviews on Amazon.com attest to its power not to make him fall for you, but to encourage milk let down in breastfeeding mothers (oxytocin plays a crucial role in childbirth).

We also know it can have negative effects too. As one reviewer puts it: “[Oxytocin] just made me tired and emotionally crotchety like an oestrogen-dominant bag of self-pity.”

Oh dear. In fact, it’s becoming clearer with every scientific study that the impact oxytocin has on you is highly individual. For those of us who study the neuroscience of love, this is unsurprising. The brain chemistry that prompts us to form and maintain our relationships is incredibly complex and finely balanced, and we still don’t have a clear picture of which chemicals complement one another and which are antagonistic.

Perhaps stick to a squirt of Chanel No 5 instead (and not up the nose).