Ah, semen. We know it can make babies, but does it have other medicinal properties?

Researchers from SUNY Albany say that women who have frequent exposure to semen are happier than those who don’t – and that the sperm is the anti-depressant at the root of it all.

Published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, the study included a survey of around 300 “college-aged” women. Using the Beck Depression Inventory to monitor the women’s levels of happiness, the team of psychologists found that the women who had oral sex and intercourse without a condom were happier than those who practiced safe sex.

The women who weren’t having sex and the women who used condoms had similar depression levels.

Advertisement The psychologists believe the anti-depressant qualities could come from minute amounts of hormones in the sperm, including oxytocin, known as ‘the love drug’, serotonin, which promotes feelings of happiness, and cortisol, a stress alleviator.   

Head of the research team, Gordon Gallup, previously suggested that morning sickness can be eased through exposure to semen, through either oral sex or intercourse.

Gallup believes that morning sickness is a woman’s body reacting badly to the foreign DNA – that of the baby's father – in her body. He suggests that getting more exposure to the male’s DNA, via his sperm, could improve the nausea. His theory has yet to be proved in an scientific setting.  

Gallup previously discovered that women who fall pregnant with unfamiliar semen – for example, from a sperm donor – are more likely to develop pre-eclampsia than those who are impregnated with familiar semen.

We're not sure where to start with all the reason that women having unprotected sex might be happier. They're probably more likely to be in a committed relationship and perhaps trying for a baby, for starters. And I'm pretty sure that most women with morning sickness would rather stick to dry toast than start the morning with a semen latte.

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