When we think about love, we think about red hearts beating, when in fact, a big deal of love is related to the brain. To be in love means that our brain is flooded with chemicals that are able to induce many feelings such as attachment and pleasure. On the other hand, our brain is not the only place where love chemicals react; many reactions affect the body as well such as the fast heartbeats you feel when you see the one you love. If you want to know how love affects your brain and body, here is a list of 5 ways.
1- IT CAN AFFECT YOUR FOCUS
If you’ve ever been in love, you know that it makes you out of focus a lot of times. The intense change in attention and emotions and the decrease cognitive control make you less able to focus or control your focus and attention. For this reason, it is easier to daydream when you are in love and think about all the things that are not present around you at the same moment.
2- IT MAKES YOU MORE EMPATHETIC
Love is said to have the ability to enforce your skill of processing emotions as well as your empathy. When the love you fell in involves the practice of kind and loving acts towards the person you love, the part of your brain related to emotion-processing and empathy is activated. At the same time, the area linked to self-centered thoughts will experience less activity. This helps us get better in touch with our feelings due to the increase in the volume of the gray matter in the area of the brain that is connected with emotion processing.
3- IT CAUSES A HORMONAL RUSH
Love is all about hormones, this is why when you first fall in love you experience a rush of hormones in your brain. The hormones are usually the love hormone (oxytocin), the sex hormones (testosterone and estrogen) and the pleasure hormone (dopamine). Some other components could increase also when you’re in love, such as adrenaline, which explains your fast heartbeats whenever you see the one you love. All of these hormones contribute to making your feelings so intense.
4- IT CAN MAKE YOU ADDICTED
Love is one of the beautiful things that you can be addicted on. Being in love means having lots of obsessive thoughts, cravings and want to spend every minute with the person you love. This is said to be an addiction because based on neuroscience research, love acts like a drug; it activates the same system that cocaine activates in the brain. Love is an obsession when it possesses you and makes you think constantly of the person you are in love with.
5- ACTIVATES YOUR OPIOID SYSTEM
The opioid system is the part of your brain that makes you like things and is activated when you become addicted to something. Just like we mentioned before, love is addictive. It is addictive to an extent where it is able to activate the opioid system!
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