Or do birds of a feather flock together?

How biologically similar are you and your significant other? Would you expect this to influence romantic chemistry?

New research suggests that you’re most likely to be attracted to someone whose immune system is different from your own. From physorg.com:

“As the proportion of the couple’s shared genotypes increased, womens’ sexual responsivity to their partners decreased, their number of extra-pair sexual partners increased and their attraction to men other than their primary partners increased, particularly during the fertile phase of their cycles,” says Christine Garver-Apgar, author of the study

Interestingly, there’s an additional body of research that suggests humans can subconsciously smell this immune system difference. (Human Vomeronasal Organ Function: A Critical Review of Best and Worst Cases.Chem. Senses 26: 433-445, 2001)

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In an earlier post, I mentioned how a large amount of new research shows that chronic stress plays a major role in destroying the memory engine (hippocampus) of your brain.

Additionally, I’ve also pointed out how many studies now implicate stress as playing a major role in:

• Diabetes
• Atherosclerosis (which leads to heart attacks and strokes)
• Cancer

Now new studies suggest it actually causes premature aging of your immune system. From a recent article in Forbes:

Research suggests that stress can shorten the chunks of DNA at the tips of chromosomes in cells, making it harder for them to work properly, according to the Elissa Epel, a psychologist at the University of California at San Francisco. The bits of DNA “are like the plastic caps on the ends of our shoelaces. They prevent the ends from fraying,” she said.

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Is there any reason to think that a strong immune system is correlated with a powerful brain?

Here’s an interesting article from physorg.com that describes a recent study about brain plasticity and how one of its key molecules turns out to be a very important component of the immune system. The lead author, Josh Syken comments:

Our discovery underscores further the fascinating and common molecular parallels between the nervous system and the immune system…

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