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The Love Hormone’s Dark Side

With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, love is in the air. Or is it oxytocin? Research suggests that the so-called “love hormone” isn’t all roses and heart-shaped chocolates.
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Oxytocin is marketed as an all-purpose “love drug” year-round. Online, sellers shill a product called “liquid trust” that purports to contain oxytocin and promises to create an “environment within which you are more attractive to people you previously had no luck with.” In San Antonio, Texas, at least one doctor prescribes dissolvable oxytocin strips for husbands and wives going through rough patches, according to a Feb. 10 news report by local news station KENS5. Even cultural and political commentators have touted oxytocin’s effects, arguing that the hormone makes no-strings-attached sex impossible, especially for women.

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