"Provitamin D is a steroid very similar to cholesterol and testosterone"

Pheromone Science Studies & Abstracts
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Vitamins could boost attraction

By Louisa Cheung

Essential nutrients such as vitamins can act as pheromones to attract the opposite sex - at least in lizards.
That is the conclusion of studies by a Spanish research team, who fed vitamin D supplement to male rock lizards.
Writing in the Royal Society journal Proceedings B, they report that females became excited by secretions from these males.
Whether or not vitamin D could play the same role in humans is not certain, the scientists say.
They suggest that in lizards, the presence of vitamins in male secretions may be a sign of good health, which from an evolutionary standpoint would be a useful signal to females selecting a mate.
“Most of the essential nutrients are also in the secretion,” said Jose Martin from the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Madrid.
“The male lizard puts in the secretion what he has in his body, and this will be a reflection of his health,” he told the BBC News website.
“In other lizard species, we have found a large amount of vitamin E in the secretion and we think that this will have a similar function as vitamin D.”

Chemical communicators
Animals use pheromones as chemical communicators to attract the opposite sex for mating. Many pheromones belong to the steroid family of chemicals, and are odourless to humans.
Vitamin D is important to the immune system of Iberian rock lizards; it also facilitates calcium metabolism.
They are often unable to synthesise enough vitamin D in their skin, and so must obtain it through their diet.

Dr Martin’s team found that males receiving vitamin D supplements secreted more provitamin D, a closely related compound, on their hind limbs. Provitamin D transforms into vitamin D after exposure to the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation.
The secretion from the male’s hind limbs is smeared on the ground as it moves around its home, serving as a scent marking.
The secretion process may have a cost to the lizard in terms of energy, so healthy and well-fed individuals are probably likely to produce more.
Females were more excited by secretions from the supplemented males, which they signalled by increased tongue-flicking; they also spent more time in areas where a healthy vitamin-fed male had been.

Natural attraction
Other essential nutrients are also used in nature for sexual attraction.
Birds and fishes use colours derived from carotenoid chemicals to be more visually attractive.
Whether or not provitamin D or vitamin D plays a role in other species, including humans, is not clear.
But the field contains many avenues for further research.
“We have to know more about the metabolism of these [pheromone] steroids and the effect of the hormones like the testosterones,” said Dr Martin. "Provitamin D is a steroid very similar to cholesterol and testosterone, and they are in the same metabolic route, so they can be converted from one to another. “So these two things could be very similar.”

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http://www.nutraingredients.com/news/ng.asp?n=69314-vitamin-d-attraction-carotenoids

Could lizard love vitamin make humans attractive too?

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By Stephen Daniells

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21/07/2006 - Is that vitamin D oozing from your pores or are you just pleased to see me? Researchers from Spain have reported that increased secretion of a vitamin D metabolite by male lizards could make it easier for them to attract a mate.

But whether a similar mechanism is at work in other species is not yet known, lead researcher José Martin told the BBC website, so it seems that human love-seekers may have to rely on tried and tested techniques for the moment.

The role of micronutrients in male attractiveness has already been proposed by researchers for specific species, most notably carotenoids and other pigments with antioxidant function affecting colour for male fish and birds.
Sexual selection based on nutrient intake is said to be a true reflection of the health and vitality of an individual animal, so-called ‘honest’ signalling, since the organism must divert these precious nutrients away from metabolism.
A stronger colour for the male house finch (Carpodacus mexicanus), for example, is said to indicate the improved health, and therefore attractiveness, since weaker colouring is associated with increased parasitic load and poorer health (Trends in Ecology & Evolution, Vol. 13, pp. 510-514).
And now research from the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Madrid suggests that vitamin D status in lizards may have similar effects in terms of attractiveness to potential mates.
The researchers focussed on vitamin D because it is, like in humans, an essential nutrient for lizards. Not only that but its precursor (cholesta-5,7-dien-3-ol) is also found in femoral gland secretions that are used for communication and scent marking.
Twenty adult male Iberian rock lizards were randomly assigned to one of two groups – the control group (no supplementation) and the vitamin D supplement group. Up to ten doses of a multivitamin solution were given to lizards once every two days. Each dose provided about 7.37 IU (0.18 mg) of vitamin D3.
It was found that the supplemented males had increased cholesta-5,7-dien-3-ol (provitamin D) in their femoral secretions than the control males.
To test if the secretions of both the supplemented and control lizards had an effect on female lizards, the researchers gently squeezed the waxy femoral secretions onto a cotton tip and then observed and measured the tongue-flicking response of the females.
Apparently, in lady lizards, increased tongue-flicking is a good thing, and the supplemented group’s secretions are reported to have been met with some serious tongue-flicking, compared to the control group’s secretions.
In another experiment using secretions with varying concentrations of provitamin D, it was found that the highest number of tongue-flicks were directed at the high concentration provitamin D cotton buds, indicating that the reaction to the chemical stimuli was related to provitamin D concentrations.
The researcher then let the supplemented and non-supplemented males walk around on strips of paper, allowing for the males to scent mark the paper. Females were subsequently found to spend “more time on paper strips scent marked” by the supplemented male lizards than on those marked by the unsupplemented reptiles.
“Our results suggest a ‘scenario’ for chemical signals as honest signals of male quality that looks extremely similar to visual signals based on carotenoids or other pigments with antioxidant function,” said Dr. Martin in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (doi: 10.1098/rspb.2006.3619).
Although, as said previously, it is not known if such results can be extended to humans, but the work has opened up new avenues of research.
“We suggest that the allocation of vitamins and other essential nutrients to either visual (for example, carotenoids) or chemical ornaments might be the common basis of honest sexual displays in many animals,” concluded the researchers. No such studies have been reported in humans, but questions must be raised as to whether subtle nutrient secretions would reach the nostrils of potentially receptive ladies such is the quantity of after-shave worn by some men.

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Interesting post Vision… Whether or not Provitamin D works for humans, I guess we have little doubt that scent is really not going to stop mones working (although intelligently used it may enhance their effect)…

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i feel intuitively that there very specific dietary reasons for extreme pheromone output. i eat healthier than most people i know, and i suspect this affects my output. i know people that have very destructive habits but eat very well, they too have heavy pheromone output. i would definately like to find more articles like this one. thank you visionary7903

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http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1365-2435.2006.01183.x

Functional Ecology
Volume 20 Issue 6 Page 1087 - December 2006
doi:10.1111/j.1365-2435.2006.01183.xVolume 20 Issue 6Links between male quality, male chemical signals, and female mate choice in Iberian Rock LizardsJ. MARTÍN †](javascript:popRef(‘c1’)) and P. LÓPEZ
Summary1. In spite of the fact that chemoreception plays an important part in sexual selection of many vertebrates, there is a lack of general knowledge on the role of specific chemical compounds as sexual signals, and on how the characteristics of chemical signals mediate behaviours such as mate choice.
2. We examined how female Iberian Rock Lizards use the chemical characteristics of femoral gland secretions of males to select potential mates.
3. Tongue-flick assays and choice of scent trials showed that females discriminated by chemosensory cues alone differences in chemical secretions of different males. Females showed stronger chemosensory responses and preferred the scent of males of presumably high quality (i.e. those more symmetric and with a greater immune response).
4. Chemical analyses by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry showed that these preferred males allocated relatively more cholesta-5,7-dien-3-ol and ergosterol to femoral secretions, which suggested that females used these chemicals to choose between males’ scents.
5. Further experiments confirmed that females were able to discriminate cholesta-5,7-dien-3-ol, ergosterol, and changes in their concentrations, from similar steroids (i.e. cholesterol) also found in secretions of males. Moreover, females were more attracted to areas that were experimentally manipulated to increase the proportion of ergosterol in natural scent marks of males.
6. We suggest that femoral secretions with higher proportions of cholesta-5,7-dien-3-ol and ergosterol might be reliable advertisements of quality of a male, which females could use to select mates.

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Quirk,
yea it would be interesting whether nutrient secretions like these could work as pheromones, and it should not matter too much whether these molecules are combined with or without cologne given what we know here.

Lor,
thanks for your thanks! I guess everyone in the know says that healthy eaters and healthier people in general produce better and more pheromones. It may be interesting to see which nutrients those with a ‘sexier’ phero signature are especially high in.

“We suggest that the allocation of vitamins and other essential nutrients to either visual (for example, carotenoids) or chemical ornaments might be the common basis of honest sexual displays in many animals.” Who knows what nutrients may make up human ‘chemical ornaments’? The ‘chemical ornament’ may be Vitamin D secretions in lizards but it may be something else in us humans.

For now, I am going to ask that Michael Harris and Jasmin slip in their numbered series of putatives, cholesta-5,7-dien-3-ol (provitamin D3) and ergosterol (provitamin D2), the compounds that were more abundant in the femoral secretions of the ‘preferred’ male lizards. Humans have these molecules naturally on our skin but could more be better for our purposes?

Visionary