Pumpkin Pie increases Male Sex Drive

Dr. Alan Hirsch, Director of Chicago's Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Center, says the key to a man's heart, and other parts, is pumpkin pie. Out of the 40 odors tested in Hirsch's study, a mixture of lavender and pumpkin pie got the biggest rise out of men ages 18 to 64. That particular fragrance was found to increase penile blood flow by an average of 40%. "Maybe the odors acted to reduce anxiety. By reducing anxiety, it acted to remove inhibitions," said Hirsch.

Comments

Re:They didn't test the smell of fresh clean pussy

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes they have.

http://www.vulva-original.com/gb/#/home/

Re:Focus misdirected on Pumpkin Pie

[ElectricTurtle]

Lavender contains high levels of phytoestrogens, so high that a bath product that overconcentrated their lavender extracts was causing peripheral precocious puberty in children and was acting like topical HRT to males. For some reason I can't paste the link into this box (it's a chrome/slashdot problem), but if you search for lavender precocious on google the second result details the occurrence. In any case, this endocrinological aspect may be the key to interpreting the results.

Re:Hey honey...

[shawb]

Oh yeah, I forgot that there is irony in part of the mechanism behind how insulin shock leads to drowsiness. Insulin triggers uptake of a large number of amino acids into muscle tissue. One of the few amino acids whose uptake does not increase is... tryptophan. This leads to a higher ration of plasma tryptophan levels, so it is then preferentially transferred across the blood/brain barrier. This then allows higher than normal production of serotonin and melatonin, which then depresses the sympathetic nervous system leading to drowsiness. So, it is tryptophan that triggers the drowsiness, but not necessarily dietary intake.

Eating turkey or other high tryptophan foods within a moderate sized meal will not, however lead to drowsiness. The other amino acids contained in the food ensure that the relative ratio of tryptophan doesn't increase enough to cause drowsiness. Eating turkey by itself can cause enough of a spike to lead to drowsiness.

Of course the whole thing is probably even more complicated than that, and I'm sure you'll find that there is a perfect storm of factors involved that lead to thanksgiving post-prandial somnolence. Working hard all day to get things just right, travel, kids running around, rapidly declining sunlight levels, stress of upcoming shopping madness, eating by candlelight, a warm fire and heat turned up a little bit for guests would all add on to any dietary induced slumber. And then there's watching the Lions get beat yet again.