The Kissing Report: From anxiety to infections – the kiss heals everything!

There are the kisses of the movies. Sometimes beautiful, but often not real. And then there are the kisses of real life: those traded on a daily basis with your loved ones. Feverishly or out of habit, out of bed or on the doorstep, at a reunion… Less passionate than those on screen, perhaps. And yet so much more special.

For the morale, of course – in love, the meeting of two pairs of lips always arouses a feeling of emotional well-being. But we are talking in terms of health, too. As proof, we present the recent creation of a scientific speciality: “philematology.” Its purpose? Studying the medicinal properties of that oral embrace.

And according to preliminary findings of researchers, kissing may actually be a powerful remedy for anxiety. It would even be the best natural and completely free antidote against certain diseases. That is just one explanation for our commitment to the French kiss… in spite of the millions of bacteria exchanged.

A stimulator for the senses:

So when did we begin kissing lovingly on the mouth, and why? If the eroticisation of “lip to lip” only dates back to the 18^th century in the West, speculation about its symbolic origin is rife… To some, the kiss is probably a variant of the practice of “premastication”, inherited from the era when mothers chewed the food before passing it into the mouth of the baby.

To others, it is more likely a substitute for sex. “A certain representation of the penetration… giving women the opportunity, through language, to be as penetrating as men,” says psychologist Maryse Vaillant. The latter explanation seems like the act of sucking on a mother’s breast or a bottle. “In the same way that children nourish themselves by sucking, individuals who kiss seek in some way to ingest the world of the other, to devour it. And often, the way we kiss is an unconscious transposition of the relationship we have with the oral dimension, and thus results in the manner of our communication, or the way we eat…” says Dr Sylvain Mimoun, andrologist, gynaecologist and psychosomatician.

Three options, three interpretations, but whichever they argue, all the experts agree on one point – the kiss stimulates the senses and allows us to better understand our bodies.

Responsible for the receptors of skin (sensitivity to touch, movement…) and mucous (allowing taste, appreciate heat…), our lips are, indeed, real sensory amplifiers. Thanks to them, we savour the texture of the skin, the smell, the way we touch each other, the sound of each other’s breathing and the looks in each other’s eyes in the preceding and following moments… And since the kiss has put the language that detects and identifies the matters of touch in the spotlight, we understand why it is, for some, even more intimate than sexual intercourse…

Common discourse of prostitutes on the subject confirms this – “I may rent out my body, but never get intimate with me. It is for this reason that I do not kiss,” they explain. And Maryse Vaillant confirms, “opening your mouth to another is authorising them to come inside you, and being around what is most visceral to your being.” That is why this strange gesture can make us dream, make us greedy… or sometimes, make us discouraged.

A marker of compatibility:

Whatever one may say, a kiss is rarely “just a kiss. In special circumstances, its intention may even be very pragmatic. According to some, it could be a great way to understand the quality and consistency of their partner. According to Wendy Hill, a professor of American psychology extremely active in developing philamatologie, the first kiss, from the moment it happens, foreshadows whether or not a love story begins.

Kissing also particularly provides an opportunity to detect the health of a partner and his hygiene… A study in Chicago in 2002 has shown that most of the women, to whom they submitted men’s t-shirts, preferred the smell of those who were clearly in top form.

Hence the conclusion – like sweat, saliva exchanged during a French kiss provides a wide base of biochemical data, from which we are able to unconsciously learn valuable information. “The kiss is the safest way to say everything in silence,” wrote Guy de Maupassant… and a century later, science has given him due.

A natural anxiolytic:

The lips that passionately meet and the tongues ​​that intertwine involve twenty-nine muscles which are always good to work once in a while to delay facial sagging. But more importantly, it also reduces our levels of cortisol, that terrible stress hormone that circulates in our blood. According to the American specialist Lafayette College, kissing produces substantial effects on hormone production, which boosts the release of phenylethylamine (or PEA), the natural amphetamine of love and happiness also found in chocolate, and whose effects are comparable to certain drugs or the effects of extreme sports.

And on top of that, dopamine, known for its euphoric effects. This especially fosters increased levels of oxytocin, a substance produced by the hypothalamus known to play a role in relationships of trust. “Oxytocin calms anxiety and stress, causes relaxation, recovery and assimilation… By promoting relaxation, it proves to be a powerful anxiolytic that stimulates the immune system, slows the heart and puts the body in a position of appeasement,” says Lucy Vincent, PhD in neuroscience and author of How do we fall in love?. This amazing elixir of confidence therefore protects us from some problems like metabolic or cardiovascular disorders…

A weapon against cytomegalovirus:

The discovery of the virtues of kissing against the risks associated with cytomegalovirus (CMV) only dates back to last February. It was the idea of two British researchers to ponder over this topic, intrigued by these two questions – why do 90% of human cultures kiss on the mouth, knowing full well that this type of kiss exposes the individual to the other’s diseases?

Would we gain any significant benefit from it? Today, their answer is clear – yes, the mouth-to-mouth has its use in the transmission of CMV, a virus causes infections which often passes unnoticed, but whose pathogenicity may be severe in patients who are pregnant or whose immune systems are weak.

What is its role? “The deep kiss allows the woman to control the moment she is infected with CMV more clearly than a man, and so protect its future offspring against the threat of infection during pregnancy,” say experts. In short, smooching before childbearing limits the risk of harm to the health of the baby. “Provided, however, that the woman avoids contamination from other men in the meantime,” they point out. But this, we must admit, is another whole debate…

Continue reading our report on “The kiss heals all”:

Why the French kiss?

What do your lips say about you?

Stéphanie Torre