The Run Test

Among one of my many theories about attraction (The Window, anyone?), I have a theory about how to determine if you are truly attracted to someone (if you are a girl).

It is known as The Run Test. Basically, when you meet a guy and you think he's good, at some point in time you should make him run around the block or do some kind of exercise. This is not just to see him in little clothing so you can check out the hot bod (if applicable). It was mostly to see you could detect a certain *je ne sais quoi* - something that makes a true honey smell nice after exercise.

Well, it seems a research group based at UC Berkeley have proved me right! A publication in J. Neurosci has found that male sweat can alter hormonal levels in women! This is their abstract:

• Rodents use chemosignals to alter endocrine balance in conspecifics. Although responses to human sweat suggest a similar mechanism in humans, no particular component of human sweat capable of altering endocrine balance in conspecifics has yet been isolated and identified. Here, we measured salivary levels of the hormone cortisol in women after smelling pure androstadienone (4,16-androstadien-3-one), a molecule present in the sweat of men that has been suggested as a chemosignal in humans. We found that merely smelling androstadienone maintained significantly higher levels of the hormone cortisol in women. These results suggest that, like rodents, humans can influence the hormonal balance of conspecifics through chemosignals. Critically, this study identified a single component of sweat, androstadienone, as capable of exerting such influence. This result points to a potential role for synthetic human chemosignalsin clinical applications.

Its good to have my theories validated ;)

For geeks who want to find the article and read it, the full reference is:
The Journal of Neuroscience, February 7, 2007, 27(6):1261-1265

This also happened today. Cute.