# towards a forum phero faq... **URL:** \ **Category:** Lounge\ **Created:** [July 3, 2007, 6:00pm UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/towards-a-forum-phero-faq/4451 "2007-07-03T18:00:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![PheroQuirk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9e8a1a/32.png) [@PheroQuirk](https://pheromonetalk.com/u/PheroQuirk)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2007, 6:00pm UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/towards-a-forum-phero-faq/4451/1 "2007-07-03T18:00:36Z")
Seems like there have been many new users joining the forum recently which is great and I wonder if it is time to start putting together an informal forum FAQ. With that end in mind, here are some notes I made for a talk I gave to a dating school in London. I borrowed quite heavily from posts here by MHarris and tacitus and also JV Kohl’s masterpiece (The Scent of Eros). I borrowed some quotes and examples but hope there is nothing lifted wholesale 🙂 I lost the final version of the talk so it’s not complete and there may be a couple of inaccuracies. Pheroquirk Thank you for the warm introduction James I am going to talk a bit about the role that chemistry plays in attraction and in social dynamics generally I think the seduction community really shows us that we are living in a very interesting time. I mean men and women have been getting together for thousands of years now, and it’s not like people haven’t stumbled upon these insights in the past but for the first time, people are exploring these things in a systematic way, figuring out what works maybe for certain people in certain situations and they are really adopting a proto-scientific, proto-engineering approach to learning. A lot of the stuff you have been looking at is pretty key – about social dynamics and how you make this stuff work. I would like to address a particular piece of that namely the role of chemistry and the role of scent in human relationships. It’s hard to come up with something that nobody has ever thought of before and I’m going to give you a couple of quotes that illustrate this. One is from the Emperor Napoleon to his mistress Josephine as he is returning from battle. He says. I will be arriving in Paris tomorrow evening. Don’t wash. The second quote is from … I’m not sure if you call it literature, but it’s a book by Danielle Steele called Heartbeat. ‘…she brushed her hair and put on jeans and an old sweater of Steven’s. It was a way of staying close to him. She could wear his clothes if she couldn’t have him” So that gives you an indication that maybe the way we relate to other people is somewhat influenced by smell. Just to explain how all this works, lets take a little step back. If you look at the human brain, you can think of it as having three parts. The first part is the reptile brain. It deals with feeding, fighting and f… ornication. It deals with very primitive aspects of how we are at humans. This is the only brain that there is for a reptile. Obviously we’ve got a lot of other stuff going on. The second part is the neocortex, the rational brain. Now this is the bit that thinks its in charge. It deals with speaking, writing, planning, symbolic reasoning, conceptualization, awareness. A lot of the time we think that this is really what drives us and if we look into our actions we think that this is the reason we do things. If we look at our personality we think that this is the bit that is the main part of us. A third component, which I think you’ll see is often neglected. It’s very easy not to understand how important it is – the emotional brain. Also called the limbic brain. Seat of emotion, attachment and play. Lust, desire and attraction. It doesn’t have language. It deals with images, impulsive, instinctual. How we relate to parents, children and our mates. If you make eye contact with a stranger you can establish friendship, hostility, desire in a very direct way without language playing a role. When you think about kino its not her rational brain that you are appealing to. You are trying to short-circuit all of that and it’s really your emotional brain making a direct connection to her emotional brain. The interesting thing about these three systems is that the emotional brain and the reptilian brain has much more of an influence on our rational brain than vice versa. So emotional arousal – having a strong emotional feeling – tends to dominate and control thinking. It’s very hard if you’re horny or scared to think that away. We know that. Approach anxiety doesn’t serve any function today, but you can’t think it away – that’s not a solution that works. So an interesting thing is that our sense of smell is wired directly to our emotional brain. There is no quicker way to change an emotional state than to smell an odour. Partly there are a bunch of memories that are directly linked, often from childhood. Proust talks about the smell of a Madeleine.recalling instantly his childhood. Different smells will naturally evoke different emotional states. The olfactory system, our sense of smell is one of our most primitive senses – one of the first to evolve. If you think of a little single-celled creature it is kind of sensing the chemical environment around it and that is the same thing as a sense of smell. There is a difference between the senses in how they smell. A woman’s sense of smell is 100x more powerful for certain kinds of smell. A woman can smell mild BO from over three feet away. That’s why we shower and use aftershave, whatever and grooming and smelling good is seen as an important part of getting good at this whole game. What I think is interesting is that there are two kinds of ways that we can smell. A conscious way – smell smoke or lemon. But there is also a secondary system that is able to directly detect certain kinds of smell. Just because you can’t smell anything at a conscious level doesn’t mean there might not be something in the environment that affects the way you feel – your state essentially. So this leads us to the whole topic of [pheromones](https://a314.com/shop/). So the science on this is really pretty early-stage. Some papers have been published, but the field is really at the cutting-edge. You know you are going to learn a lot more about social dynamics from reading alt.seduction.fast or the forums than waiting for it to be published in the Journal of Social Science. That’s kind of where we are with pheromone research too. Stuff is published, but the interesting stuff is going to be twenty years away. Some of the most important papers have only come out ten years ago What is a pheromone? It’s a chemical that transmits a message between bodies. It can be detected by other individuals which may or may not be of the same species. It’s found throughout the animal world. The effects of each pheromone can be really pretty varied. Can range from inducing sexual excitement to avoiding contact with an individual who might be sick. Another example might be altering of the state of the menstrual cycle of women particularly who . if women share a dormitory or maybe even just work together – if they spend a lot of time in each others company their cycles become synchronous. So pity the guy who says the wrong thing at the wrong time. Pheromones are not even about affecting sexual behaviour. They certainly influence bonding, the connection of parents with their offspring. They signal particular attributes about you – your genetics, your health. Some pheromones can deepen the communication between people. Some can directly communicate feelings or emotions. Most of them aren’t actually anything to do with sexual behaviour. Which is not to say they are not of interest to us. There are very social mones that are not sexual, They might help you gain respect, generate an aura of friendliness, seem more approachable or just extremely likeable. I’m not going to go into the details of the science but pheromones directly influence .. the hypothalamus – the part of the brain that controls hormones. So if a woman is ovulating, she will produce a kind of pheromone called copulins – you can figure out how they came up with that name. So a man exposed to these will see a spike in testosterone levels of 150% really pretty quickly. So you can imagine that there are pretty significant potential influences on how people think and feel. Obviously we are animals, but we’re not just animals. So the observed changes in behaviour that you see may be quite subtle. Like you might see a girl just kind of doing this (brushing her hair) and you might think maybe she is just feeling hot. But inside she might be struggling to control herself. It’s just that we are socialized not to act on all our urges. It’s quite common of course for alcohol to weaken inhibitions and as a result if you get involved with some of these products you will tend to see that in a bar or a club you see some pretty crazy things happen – stuff that you wouldn’t believe. All men and women are odorous. They found out that every cell carries information – a fingerprint unique to that individual. Humans can distinguish between individuals by their odours. It’s actually even stronger than that. Humans can tell whether two mice came from the same litter based upon the smell of their urine. This is relevant for us – the purpose is to avoid inbreeding. Obviously for mice, the world is a lot smaller. But for us women tend to be attracted to the smell of guys who have an immune system type that is complementary to their own, that is different from their own unless they are on the pill. The pill simulates pregnancy in some ways so you see this weird phenomenon where a girl might find you attractive when she is on the pill. She comes off it and she might not like you so much anymore. If it gets to that stage, you might find that you have fertility problems, or things go wrong because you are too genetically similar and I know people where this has been the problem. So that’s an interesting thing to bear in mind. If you find a girl that is totally your type – like a nine to you. She won’t necessarily be the same to every other guy. And there is a greater than normal chance that she will find you attractive because it’s likely that your immune systems are not too related, are complementary in some way. Pheromones can answer a bunch of interesting questions Why are men attracted to large-breasted women? Why do sex drives decline in older men and women at the same time as sense of smell declines Increase in popularity of oral sex has coincided with an increase in how fastidious we are – even in France they are much more conscious of .. people shower every day now. One might think that people crave what they used to get – pheromones of their lover just from being around them and so now they go for a more direct application/inhalation of their natural pheromones. If a girls boyfriend is away she’ll sleep on his side of the bed. She’ll wear his shirt. Its because there is an attraction to his smell. So all this is I think interesting, but how can you actually use this knowledge in the field. I think there are two real actionable lessons. One is that maybe showering using soap isn’t necessarily the right thing. We are socialized today so that odours make us uncomfortable – intimate odours especially. Imagine on the tube if you take that in the morning if noone showered. Obviously we are sold soap and deodorants and cologne smells nice. We have the idea that if someone smells it represents lack of cleanliness. I’ll give you a little bit of background that might make you be open to the idea that possibly in the field this might not always be the right thing to do. Some people have experimented to try to maximize the benefit they get from their own pheromones. So what you can do is wash your armpits only using water. Don’t use soap. Use sandalwood in place of deodorant. It’s expensive but it lasts a long time. You can get it from a shop in Bond Street opposite Selfridges. It’s called Arabian Oudh. Make sure it is the real thing and not like fragrance oil. Why sandalwood? It smells nice. Actually resembles a male pheromones. Prevents growth of bad bacteria. BO generated by certain kinds of bacteria and sandalwood prevents their growth. If you take one tiny drop that’s enough to cover both pits. A bunch of people have found some success with this. It may not work for everyone. If you just look at our anatomy you can see that we have several devices for dispersing mobes. If you reach puberty as a guy, you start growing hair here – well whats that about? It’s in order to diffuse the natural mones. One other aspect is that women you might actually like to be with, but are not a good fit in terms of your immune system may not like your natural smell. They may be absolutely repulsed – it may be worse than indifference right – it’s not a strategy that is without a cost. But it will increase attraction with women who are compatible. So long as they are not totally repressed by cultural conditioning. Matter of trial and error. If you have a big work party to go to, that’s not the time to experiment. The time to experiment is when you don’t care. Type – race is a big part of the variation in immune system type (it’s called the major histocompatibility complex MHC) – a big part of that is driven by race but it’s not something that is well understood. We’re not very far along in understanding that. In theory you could say I want to attract this girl, what do I need to do that. We’re not there yet – very early stages of science, let alone practical application. You can raise your natural pheromone levels. P are end products, waste of used testosterone. If you exercise or have sex there will be more testosterone in your sweat – these are then converted by corneyform bacteria into a whole spectrum of different compounds. Anything you can do to raise your testosterone levels will give a boost to your pheromones. Why is it that girls like guys who work out a lot? There might be some conditioning there, but you might think that guys who work out a lot have higher testosterone and that shows in their signatures. Something that does work is to engage in aerobic exercise before going out, work up a sweat, take a shower and then just use sandalwood. Hotter + greater T output + greater pheromonal output. I found that inadvertently looking back there were a remarkable number of times when I did much better than normally would have done? How to raise T level? Zinc supplements. Supplement called ZMA. You take 45 mg daily. Be careful. If it doesn’t make you feel better I wouldnt persist with it. If you supplement one thing and you are deficient in another you might find the net effect isn’t positive. There are some herbs that work. One is called Horny Goat Weed. I thought there must be another name for it, but that is the name for it. There is another herb called Tribulus. Powder better than pills or capsules. Take them for a month, don’t expect immediate effects. Herb called Yohimbe. Not easily available – be careful with it. Everything has side effects, I wouldn’t necessarily advocate it. Various other supplements. DHEA and pregnenolone – don’t worry too much about getting the details down. I’ll get Mr Demarco to put something up on the web site. One other thing is using natural copulins. If you’ve been in a situation where you get women’s juices on your face you may find interesting results. You know you are returning from your lover’s apartment, you are a mess, you haven’t washed and you go out – sometimes it’s amazing you will see a ridiculous amount of interest even though you look like shit. Generally the pheromones that men put out tend to generate hostility. When a men meets another man it’s never that comfortable in the beginning – there is always a bit of rivalry, potential violence somewhere in your head whereas the pheromones that women put out tend to facilitate social communication. That’s worth thinking about - this is one of the reasons why a party with all guys it’s just no fun. Why is it that when girls go the bathroom in a nightclub they instantly make friends. When guys go if you talk to your friends people think you’re gay. Pheromones are released not just through your skin but also through other bodily fluids and I think androsterone is a spacing, territorial pheromone and if you look at the way guys stand at a urinal it kind of makes sense – there is a spacing, territorial effect. Just to give you some background on some aspects of kino and mones. A lot of courtship rituals – I’ll call them courtship rituals, it’s kind of old-fashioned not like the cool new game terminology. If people are dancing fast there is friction between their skin and the air. What that leads to is a powder of pheromone-covered skin particles floating in the air. It’s not very nice to think about, breathing in all these peoples skin particles but that’s what happens. As you dance you get hot and you also sweat so you release more secretions – there are two kinds of glands ecrine glands that produce watery sweat and the apocrine glands that release an oily sweat that helps disperse the mones that you produce naturally. ---
**Author:** ![PheroQuirk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9e8a1a/32.png) [@PheroQuirk](https://pheromonetalk.com/u/PheroQuirk)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2007, 6:07pm UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/towards-a-forum-phero-faq/4451/2 "2007-07-03T18:07:40Z")
some more raw material here **faq** [Pheromone Frequently Asked Questions](http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dg2mpp76_0c6p34d) **mix and putative guide** [Google Docs & Spreadsheets - Mix Guide](http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pQNd0an1GwdasioEPdlh_IA) ---
**Author:** ![Gone\_with\_the\_Wind](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/pheromonetalk.com/gone_with_the_wind/32/2227_2.png) [@Gone\_with\_the\_Wind](https://pheromonetalk.com/u/Gone_with_the_Wind)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2007, 6:55pm UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/towards-a-forum-phero-faq/4451/3 "2007-07-03T18:55:50Z")
Good idea! If you want to create a FAQ I suggest a question list up front with links to the answers. I enjoy the reading but someone less fanatical might get bogged down in masses of text. ---
**Author:** ![PheroQuirk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9e8a1a/32.png) [@PheroQuirk](https://pheromonetalk.com/u/PheroQuirk)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2007, 8:44pm UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/towards-a-forum-phero-faq/4451/4 "2007-07-03T20:44:20Z")
> [@Gone\_with\_the\_Wind](#): > > Good idea! > > If you want to create a FAQ I suggest a question list up front with links to the answers. I enjoy the reading but someone less fanatical might get bogged down in masses of text. Good point… a structure and a start at answering questions is already laid out in the link below my first post. If you’d like to contribute, feel free to send me your email address and i’ll give you edit rights. I don’t currently have time to do the whole thing myself. ---
**Author:** ![Phoenix](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/pheromonetalk.com/phoenix/32/673_2.png) [@Phoenix](https://pheromonetalk.com/u/Phoenix)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2007, 4:41pm UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/towards-a-forum-phero-faq/4451/5 "2007-07-07T16:41:34Z")
Nice summary, I’m interested in this immune system compatibility thing, might explain a lot of things.. Does the woman’s facial features feature into this? Someone with an elvish like face kind of like arwen in Lord of the Rings for example, and other facial types?