It is a well established fact that scents are an important means of communication in the animal world. In fact, sexual scents are used in agriculture to attract and eliminate the pests that are lured. The role sexual scents play in the behavior of higher animals such as apes is also well-documented.
Human evolution separated from other apes about four million years ago. Since that time, many variations of humans have come and gone. But even so, we share an enormous amount of our genetic code, more than 97%, with other primates. Though we are a reasoning animal, we nevertheless carry with us a long biological heritage. Often, that heritage manifests in desires and urges that do not conform with what our reasoning says we should feel.
Because we are reasoning creatures capable of postponing short-term gratification in order to seek higher goals, the effects of sex scents on our behavior is not as simple to see as in the case of a sow assuming mating position when exposed to the scent of a rutting boar. We are bound not only by complex social mores and standards, but also by our own perceptions of what we should or shouldn’t feel and how we should or shouldn’t act. This is how humans have survived because otherwise we would long ago have beaten everyone who cut us off in traffic into a bloody pulp.
Human beings are most assuredly affected by sexual scents. These scents are hormonal markers that are responsible, for example, for the synchronization of periods among women living closely together. They are most likely responsible for young girls menstruating sooner when a biologically unrelated adult male is in the house. And a large number of experiments and studies show them to have an affect on human attitudes toward members of the opposite sex.
Double-blind speed dating experiments performed by ABC news using sets of male and female identical twins demonstrated that the odds of someone wanting a real date were nearly doubled when the object of the question had been using bio-identical sexual scents (1).
The effectiveness of these scents is sometimes disputed because, for example, their use won’t work to seduce someone who is married and therefore has strong reasons to both override and deny the existence of socially condemned desires. And this is an important point.
Like hypnosis, you can’t use sexual scents to completely change someone’s personal value system. The presence of these scents is picked up and processed in a subconscious way, and how the person chooses to act upon the impulses they create or accentuate is driven by that person’s beliefs and values. Sexual scents are not a date-rape drug and they aren’t beer-goggles. Instead, they tilt the scales more in your favor than they would otherwise be.
Some of the sex scents we use duplicate the mixture of short chain fatty acids produced in the vagina during a woman’s ovulation. The constituency and proportions of these “copulins” produced in the vagina differs with a woman’s cycle, and the emitted odor – even if not explicitly recognized by the male – becomes most attractive to men during ovulation.
Astrid Jutte did an excellent study on the effect of these scents on men. Her study, reported in Naturwissenschaftliche Rundschau, involved 106 men who were divided into four groups and asked to inhale synthetic sex scents. The first were given a mixture duplicating that released during ovulation, the second another which occurs during menstruation. The third inhaled a fatty acid produced at a different stage of the menstrual cycle and the fourth group were given simple steam. The testosterone levels in the last group sank to half their original values, in the second and third groups there was virtually no change. In the first group – the group exposed to sex scents corresponding to ovulation testosterone levels rose by 50 percent.
Other studies have shown that when women take contraceptives that prevent ovulation, they do not make this important mix of sex scents and thereby literally become less attractive to men. (2)
The bottom line is that even though men have the capacity to reason and therefore cannot be turned into instant sex slaves with a mere scent, the sex scents from your Posh Femme will make many men find you more enticing.
About the Scents we Use
In the absence of more specific regulatory guidance, the current accepted standard in the electronic cigarette industry is that additives should be FDA-approved, with the exception of those, such as the flavors used in microwave popcorn, known to cause problems when inhaled.
Ovulating women are perceived to be more attractive to men during that time. The scents we use to duplicate the scents of an ovulating woman are short chain fatty acids in proper proportions to be indistinguishable. These ingredients are all, without exception, also approved by the FDA for use in foods as flavors and additives. Though we are the only manufacturer that uses these flavors in proper proportions to create the bio-identical scent of an ovulating woman, as these flavors are extremely common they are also used, individually and in different combinations, by other manufacturers of electronic cigarette liquids.
We also use other scents. These scents are often called “pheromones.” These are inert metabolic byproducts of sexual hormones within the human body and in normal persons the ones we use are produced in the liver and adrenal glands. They are excreted from the body in sweat, urine and the lungs. The concentration of these produced naturally in the human body is hundreds of times greater than could be derived by using our Freshness Liquid. Pheromones, because they are not seen by the FDA as having any function, are not regulated. As a result, they are included in candles, breath mints, sexual lubricants, colognes, body washes and more. Even in cases where their use clearly leads to their inhalation or consumption such as candles and breath mints, there have been no reports of adverse effects.
You already make your own pheromones. The advantage of using pheromones in an electronic cigarette is that the scents are not masked by bacterial breakdown on your skin or lost in urine. Therefore even though the quantity used in an electronic cigarette is quite small, the ability to deliver them when and where you like makes them more useful and more concentrated in the air around you.
(1) ABC News 20/20 Investigation, Dec. 9, 2005, Are Pheromones a Secret Weapon for Dating?
(2) Seppo Kuukasjärvi, C. J. Peter Eriksson, Esa Koskela, Tapio Mappes, Kari Nissinen, and Markus J. Rantala: Attractiveness of women’s body odors over the menstrual cycle: the role of oral contraceptives and receiver sex Behavioral Ecology (2004) 15(4): 579-584 doi:10.1093/beheco/arh050
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