Latin America

The homing hormone

Maria Isabel Garcia

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The homing hormone
[Science Solitaire] 'I like it when I find stories of our inner biology that parallel our emotional lives'

“Wait ’til your father gets home” was a cartoon series that I enjoyed watching when I was a kid because it echoed my perception of my father’s powers. I just felt that no matter how rotten the day went, when he came home, my dad was going to turn it around so that tomorrow would be better. 

All of us 3 siblings are in mid-life now and there were so many things that my Dad did not quite solve, like his own marriage to mom. But I now know that he did what he could given what he knew and had. For many years when I would visit him (he has been living abroad for over 3 decades now), he would pick me up at the airport and after a few miles driving, he would reliably turn to me and say “I really screwed up, didn’t I?”; and I would always say, “Oh yeah Dad, gloriously!”. And then we would have a really good laugh and enjoy the close relationship we have had since I was born.

I am visiting him again and this time, I could add a twist to our usual initial conversation and tell him that scientists found that the level of the “love” and “trust” hormone oxytocin shoots up for fathers who come home after a day of hunting. He would probably find this fact in the bottom of his wish list of personal discoveries. But I predict that he would listen kindly, just like he always did, to my endless questions when I was a child.

The Tsimane’ huntsmen of the Bolivian plains were the fathers whose oxytocin were measured and monitored every time they came home from their hunt. The duration of the hunt is also about 8 hours – same as the modern equivalent of hunting in 9-5 jobs. The study found that oxytocin really was found in very high levels of these men who came home to their families. This was in contrast to the level of testosterone (“competition” hormone) and cortisol (“stress” hormone), which were both relatively abundant when they were doing hunting activities.

Oxytocin is the hormone that we release when we are with people we find we can trust and are attached to. The scientists found that nature releases testosterone to equip the hunters with enough desire to find and acquire meat sources. But in a sort of counterpoint, nature also then floods them with oxytocin to enable the sharing of the resulting bounty and eventually, the warm-hearted homecoming to family and community.

I am very interested as to how the inner biologies of modern fathers work along these lines. For example, those fathers who are OFWs. How do their bodies echo sends-offs to distant work places and their warm homecomings?

I like it when I find stories of our inner biology that parallel our emotional lives. And the oxytocin story seems to show up in other aspects of our emotional and social lives as well.

In another article by neuroscientist Paul J. Zak , he explains how oxytocin, preceeded by the action of another hormone nicknamed ACTH, has been found to be high enough in people who care enough to actually contribute to causes once a narrative is powerful enough to catch their attention. They key here seems to be that we have to pay attention to something before we can feel empathy.

To come home to our better selves, nature seems to have equipped us with enough “inner juices” in the form of hormones like oxytocin.  May we nurture them to build better homes and perhaps, even a better planet.  – Rappler.com

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