The very first response most people will have when they hear about the products available from Androtics Direct is, “Haven’t I heard of this before and isn’t this a scam?”
Thanks to plenty of con artists out there, there is a lot of misinformation surrounding pheromones and how they work. Even more confounding is the general lack of scientific testing. It is hard to find solid data on the effectiveness of human pheromones.
For people who are familiar with the concept, the first common argument against pheromones is that the “vomeronasal organ,” an olfactory organ which is intended to detect pheromones, has been proven to be inactive. In response to this, I first point to the McClintock Effect, in which women have been shown to synchronize their menstrual cycles from pheromone exposure.Pheromones, in context The study is flawed and should be taken with a grain of salt, however, there does appear to be something here.
I could only locate one highly scientific study, proving the effect of androstadienone. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16242537&dopt=Citation Here, it was shown that positive mood effects were only undergone when the experimenter was male. This shows the subtlety of pheromones: social context can override the effects. However, in this double-blind study, which is good enough to appear on a government website, it is proven that mood effects do occur with androstadienone exposure.
As it has been proven that androstadienone, a known pheromone, can influence mood, it stands to reason that others can be detected as well.
Since it has been proven that humans are naturally producing pheromones, the real questions are only, “Can we detect these?” and “Do these influence behavior?”
A study performed showed that lesbians respond differently to human pheromones. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/060508_lesbian.html More proof that a brain response occurs when exposed to pheromones, making it seem unlikely that we simply cannot detect them, as some claim. “This lends further support to the idea that the chemicals activate the brain differently from common odors.”
Another short article, First Evidence of a Human Response to Pheromones: Scientific American discusses a Swedish hospital that was able to detect a pheromone response in humans.
Another article appearing on the medical government website, Male-to-female transsexuals show sex-atypical hypo…[Cereb Cortex. 2008] - PubMed Result shows that when smelling androstadienone, male-to-female transsexuals have a different hypothalamic response. Though not highly persuasive in of itself, this does continue to show that (a) different genders interpret pheromones differently and (b) there is a provable effect of pheromones on the brain.
This article, Subliminal smells can guide social preferences. [Psychol Sci. 2007] - PubMed Result shows that when subjects were unable to consciously perceive a smell given to them, they rated faces as more likable than when they smelled the same one and were consciously able to perceive it. More proof that social influence can disrupt pheromone effects. In other words, it does exist, but it is very subtle.
Finally, I’d like to point to this article, which suggests that the aforementioned vomeronasal organ might not even be in charge of interpreting pheromones. Are pheromones detected through the main olfactory…[Mol Neurobiol. 2007] - PubMed Result
So, after all of this, what do I believe? Well, I am fairly confident in the ability of pheromones to affect people, albeit on a deeply subtle level.
If this post has helped anybody at all, please let me know, and I will write more. There is plenty of good information out there, which I am happy to sift through and package into more easily-read posts.
