A Full Tummy Makes Women Smile
Are you familiar with the saying “the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach”? Because if you are, you might be interested in knowing that it is the same thing for women as well. At least this is what a group of researchers found out after having examined women’s brain response to romance.
Women respond more passionately to romanticism if their tummies are full. Alice Ely, PhD of Drexel University US, declared that researchers discovered a “greater brain activation in response to romantic pictures” after women had eaten. The research was conducted on younger women, who have either had a history of dieting or not.
Dr. Ely also points out that this result is very important since it contradicts the findings of previously investigated matters. Other experiments have suggested that individuals, in general, are interested in the rewarding nature of romance, or even money and drugs, when they feel hungry.
This new experiment provides insight as to how eating makes women more sensible to rewards that surpass food and it also “supports a shared neuro-circuitry for food and sex.”
Dr. Ely believes that women who often diet are more exposed to weight gain than those who do not diet. This is mainly because of the different reward perception. In a more simple matter, a woman who diets a lot and does not lose too much weight will constantly be worried about gaining weight, while their non-dieting counterpart is much safer from this threat.
What is different from previous research is that historical dieters were thought to react in a different way to romance, but it turns out that this was not the case after all. Researchers have discovered that there is no difference between the brain’s reward response for non-dieters and historical dieters.
After having compared the brain’s activity of women with a full stomach, regular dieters or non-dieters, the team found out that all women were more open to romantic images after they had eaten. Moreover, those who would often diet were even more sensitive than the non-dieting counterparts.
The study, which was published in the Appetite journal, describes the entire, in-depth approach and the results that occurred. Dr. Ely seems quite confident on the results and offers the “overlapping brain-based responses to sex, drugs and food” argument to reinforce her team’s findings.
So for you gentlemen reading this right now, remember that the women in your lives will look at you more gently if they have a full tummy.
Photo Credits couplesskills.com
