9 Crazy Ways Kissing Can Improve Your Health and Change Your Life
Kissing can lower your blood pressure and cholesterol
According to Andréa Demirjian, author of Kissing: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about One of Life’s Sweetest Pleasures, “kissing passionately gets your heartbeat revved in a healthy way that helps lower your blood pressure.”
A full make-out session can dilate your blood vessels, increasing blood flow and circulation in the entire body. According to various studies, an intense knee-jerking kiss can reduce high blood pressure, high cholesterol and improve cortisol levels, a hormone that stimulates fat and carbohydrate metabolism. In other words, kissing can help you burn those dreaded calories and get rid of those extra pounds in a more than pleasant way. So, if you want to lose weight, apart from a balanced diet and exercise, throw in some kissing sessions as well. Check out other Natural Ways to Lower Blood Pressure and Keep It Under Control.
You develop your kissing style before you’re born
Are you a sultry kisser? A face sucking snogger? Do you tilt your head to the right or to the left? You might think the answer to these questions is only a matter of practice. Well, let me tell you that it has nothing to do with your kissing experience.
According to German researcher Onur Güntürkün, a psychology professor at the Ruhr-University of Bochum in Germany, a person’s kissing style develops way before they’ve even stepped foot into this world, let alone kiss someone. In an experiment conducted in various locations in the United States, Germany, and Turkey, Güntürkün observed the behavior of more than 100 couples while kissing, concluding that two-thirds of couples tilted their heads to the right while kissing, a move whose origins most likely started in the womb. “During the final weeks of gestation and for the first six months after birth, babies develop one of the earliest examples of ‘behavioral asymmetry’ — turning their heads to the left or the right,” noted Kristen Philipkoski of Wired magazine about the study.
Kissing can relieve stress
Speaking of cortisol, if you’re looking for a natural way to reduce stress levels, you’d better pucker up! According to the American Institute of Stress, more than three-quarters of Americans suffer from stress and show stress-related physical and psychological symptoms. One -third of these people suffer from chronic stress, which can wreak havoc on your overall health, warns Jeannie Assimos, chief of advice at eHarmony.
Researchers have long been trying to find a connection between interpersonal behaviors such as kissing and stress relief. It turns out there is one! In a 2009 study, half of the 52 participants, all married or living with their significant others, were asked to engage in longer and more frequent make-out sessions than usual. The other half did not receive any specific instructions. Six weeks into the experiment, researchers found that people who kissed their partners more showed lower stress levels, lower cholesterol levels and “higher relationship satisfaction”. Do you want even more reasons to kiss your partner?
Kissing can help you find ‘the one’
Kissing is, without a doubt, an essential part of any relationship, but it’s not only a barometer for sexual compatibility. Various experiments and studies, along with statistical analysis of 40,000 people on dating website Chemistry.com, revealed that kissing can serve as an indicator that you’ve found the right partner for a long-term relationship, not just an occasional smooch. According to Rutgers University biological anthropologist Helen Fisher, people feel attracted by others with “particular biological profiles.”
Locking lips with someone may be a very effective method to size up someone’s “profile” because of the ‘biological motherload’ of genetic material involved in the saliva swap. It might sound gross, but the genetic information and hormones contained by saliva can tell you a great deal about someone’s “ideal partner” qualities.
Kissing uses a surprising number of muscles
Not only is kissing quite effective in burning up unwanted calories, but it can also help you reduce wrinkles and smooth lines, tighten muscles in your neck and jaw and stimulate blood circulation to your face, making you look a lot younger than you actually are. This sought-after effect is the result of 30 facial muscles and 112 postural muscles working together during one big, fiery kiss, according to the American Journal of Medicine.
That’s not all! A passionate make-out session can burn around 26 calories per minute but even a simple, pucker kiss can use a few facial muscles and eliminate some fine lines in the process.
Bonus info: Kissing in public could get you in trouble in certain states
Locking lips is fine and dandy but there are places where kissing in public could get you in trouble, and not the good kind. According to some older laws in some ultra-conservative states in the United States, PDA can get you arrested. For instance, in Iowa, men with mustaches are prohibited from kissing women in public. In Hartford, Connecticut, it seems men are not allowed to kiss their wives or girlfriends on Sundays while in Colorado another rule states that you can never kiss a sleeping woman. Good thing Sleeping Beauty was not in Colorado, otherwise, she would have slept for ages!
