Semen makes you happy

That's the remarkable conclusion of a study comparing women whose partners wear condoms with those whose partners don't. The study, which is bound to provoke controversy, showed that the women who were directly exposed to semen were less depressed. The researchers think this is because mood-altering hormones in semen are absorbed through the vagina. They say they have ruled out other explanations. "I want to make it clear that we are not advocating that people abstain from using condoms," says Gordon Gallup, the psychologist at the State University of New York who led the team. "Clearly an unwanted pregnancy or a sexually transmitted disease would more than offset any advantageous psychological effects of semen." The team found that depressive symptoms and suicide attempts were more common among women who used condoms regularly compared with those who didn't. The results will appear in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior. The results aren't a complete surprise because semen does contain several mood-altering hormones, including testosterone, oestrogen, follicle-stimulating hormone, luteinising hormone, prolactin and several different prostaglandins. Some of these have been detected in a woman's blood within hours of exposure to semen. The question many people will ask is whether oral sex could have the same mood-enhancing effects. "Since the steroids in birth control pills survive the digestion process, I would assume that the same holds true for at least some of the chemicals in semen," Gallup says.