Kissing is so important it has its own International Day, the 6th of July! But Valentine’s day is also an official kissing day, right? Being in love or not, you want to know that kissing is the most intimate act between two people, and besides showing affection, it is also good for your body. Yeah, like medicine. In the video above, you will know 12 science and random facts you probably never heard about kissing or smooching. Share the video with your boyfriend, girlfriend, friend or kissing partner. And here are 12 facts about kissing:
1- How much you’ll kiss in a lifetime
Watch the video to know how many minutes an average person spends kissing. Amazing number if you consider you will live more than 80 years.
2 – Which hormones are released in a kiss
When you kiss, your body releases several hormones like serotonin, oxytocin, adrenaline, endorphin and dopamine.
Oxytocin, the “love hormone”, helps you develop feelings of attachment. Endorphins bring waves of euphoria. Dopamine makes you lose your appetite. The most well-known effects of serotonin on the central nervous system include its effects on mood. It gives us a feeling of serenity, inner peace and contentment. And over time, kissing also lowers cortisol, the stress hormone.
In other words, hormones want you in a committed relationship, so they make you first, ecstatically happy and thin, and then, feel attached, safe and secure.
3- Muscles involved in a kiss
We show you in the video how many muscles you use when you kiss. To have an idea you can say goodbye to your Zumba.
4 – Kiss and Calories
Are you curious to know how many calories you burn during a kiss? Click and see, and be sure you can add kissing to your diet.
5 – The more you kiss, the more you live
Kissing can also add years to your life. A study shows that men who kiss their wives goodbye before leaving for work live five years longer than those who don’t. I’ve also heard that men who don’t tell their wives they look fat in those jeans, live longer too.
6 – About closing your eyes
66% close their eyes during a kiss; probably because kissing makes our pupils dilate, or is it because love is blind?
7 – Finding the right match
Biologically speaking (sorry, romance), we tend to prefer people with a particular profile. Kissing helps you work out who’s a good match for you. 5 out of your 12 cranial nerves are engaged when you kiss, trying to gather as much information as possible about the other person. This is why you need to kiss some frogs to find your prince.
8 – Kiss bacteria
Through kissing, you exchange with your partner around 300 types of bacteria that help you fight infections better and protect you from allergies and the flu.
9 – Kiss and the dentist
Kissing is good for your smile. Even anticipating a kiss is good for your teeth because it increases the amount of saliva in your mouth that washes away plaque.
10 – Guinness world records
A Thai couple kissed for 58 hours, 35 minutes and 58 seconds, beating the world record for the longest kiss, which was 33 hours. Their kiss entered the Guinness World Records and won them two diamond rings on Valentine’s Day.
11 – The first kiss
When asked about their memories of important moments in life, the first kiss is, for most people, the most detailed memory they have.
12 – The relation between self-esteem and kissing
And last but not least, a study made with hundreds of people aged from 18 to 63 showed that the more you think of yourself as an attractive person, the pickier you are with whom you choose to kiss. In other words, people with low self-esteem kiss more people than those with healthier self-esteem.
Which made me think of some silly – not to say sad – stories I hear around. For example, a girl who intends to “kiss her way up in life”, in her own words, I swear. Her goal is to kiss one of the most popular boys in town. To achieve that, she’s kissing all his friends before, hoping to get to him, not a very clever move, is it?
Another one was so disgusted when kissing her boyfriend that she had to distract herself every time with an imaginary war of tongues. If she had read this article, she would have known that it was her body telling her to ditch that frog.
There are also those who make lists of people they’ve kissed or people they plan on kissing, like a to-do list. And others who brag about the number of people they kissed at a party; talk about killing the romance and taking the fun out of smooching!
Now that you know the most interesting 12 facts about kissing, you must remember this, a kiss is – NOT – just a kiss.