Sexual Attraction Is Shaped by Gut Bacteria, Infectious Diseases, and Parasites | Kathleen McAuliffe

Sexual Attraction Is Shaped by Gut Bacteria, Infectious Diseases, and Parasites
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Behind our sexual impulses — who we feel attracted to and why — complex biological interactions help determine our feelings, our obsessions, our repulsions... Our general attraction to people with clear complexions, for example, results from an instinctual aversion to bacteria (which cause pimples and pockmarks). Science journalist Kathleen McAuliffe explains how many of the mating habits we take for granted are influenced by infectious diseases, parasites in our gut, and our bodily scent (which is actually determined by our immune system).

KATHLEEN MCAULIFFE :

Kathleen McAuliffe’s articles, many featured on covers, have appeared in over a dozen national magazines, including Discover, The New York Times (both the Sunday Magazine and newspaper), US News & World Report, Smithsonian, Atlantic Monthly, More Magazine, Glamour, and Reader's Digest. In addition to being a feature writer, McAuliffe was a health columnist for More Magazine from 1999-2006. A decade earlier, she founded a quarterly newsletter put out by the American Foundation for AIDS Research, which she edited for the first year of its publication.  From 1985 to 1988, she was a senior editor at US News & World Report, focusing on the coverage of health and science. In the six years previous to this position, she was an editor at Omni Magazine, where she assigned and prepared science articles for publication. During that period, she also co-authored Life for Sale, one of the first popular books about the genetic engineering revolution
Her article, "Are We Evolving?", was featured in The Best American Science Writing 2010, edited by Jerome Groopman. The year before, she was awarded an Alicia Patterson Journalism Fellowship to study and report on human evolution. In 2000, she received an award from the National Coalition of Women With Heart Disease in recognition of excellence in journalism. Twelve years earlier, she was honored with the Institute of Food Technology award for outstanding writing on food science and nutrition. McAuliffe was also awarded a science writing fellowship in 1996 from the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole.

In 2011, McAuliffe was interviewed on the National Public Radio program All Things Considered, which devoted a segment to her article, "The Incredible Shrinking Brain." McAuliffe participated as a panelist on an hour-long PBS seminar, Our Genes/Our Choices, which aired across the US in the winter of 2003. She did script development and on-camera interviews for Omni: The New Frontier, a nationally syndicated TV series that began airing in October 1981. She has also appeared on other TV and radio programs. McAuliffe was educated at Trinity College Dublin, in Ireland, obtaining a M.A. in natural science after graduating with first-class honors. Her final year thesis on electro-encephalography (EEG) recordings of the human brain was presented at the Eastern Psychology Association Conference in 1977. McAuliffe and her husband – a research physicist at the University of Miami – are the parents of two teenagers and reside in Miami, Fl.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIPT:

Kathleen McAuliffe:  There's a few ways in which infectious disease may impact who we find sexually attractive. So for example, in cultures where infectious disease is highly prevalent people tend to place more emphasis on beauty. So skin free of any kind of pockmarks, and also more symmetrical features. Because what happens is that if you have an infectious disease when you're young it can derail development and that's part of the reason why people's features may be a little bit more asymmetric if they're more vulnerable to infectious disease. There's also evidence that we're more attractive to people whose odors signify that they have very different immune systems from ourselves. And the way it works is this that believe it or not odor correlates with how your immune system functions. And we all vary individually in how susceptible we are to different kinds of infection and basically the research suggests that we're most attracted to people who are most different from us in terms of how their immune system functions.

So if we mate and have children our children are going to have very varied genes and as a result if say a terrible infection is spreading around you might lose one child but you're not going to lose all your children because they're going to have very varied immune systems in...

[tobiashagstrom]

Fecal transplantation is when you literally help someone by giving a shit.

[warrenjohnson]

This is a hypothesis. It's important to state that.

[mrzack]

gut biome health is very important. I stopped having acne and pimples when I stopped eating sugary foods, and fruits, and drinks. I also dont wash my face with soap, just warm water.

[asdfcal]

you can tell how much she was looking forward to saying "crapsules"

One of the weirdest videos I've ever watched. Still interesting and quite thoughtful to be honest.

[computo]

BigThink channel, are you hearing me?? Please make more accurate and less click-baity titles. They take away from the speaker's main point.

[simonzehetner]

just a tip on upping your game "big think":
if a research is mentioned, make sure its quoted in the description at least.
Otherwise its more of a big statement, if one cannot track the root of the notion down.

Other than that its a truly great channel.

[matusjansta]

well the talk of fecal implants sure did impact my appetite.

[RaulMartinez-fisj]

Now that I know about fecal transplants and 'crapsules' I really wish I didn't and that it would go away.

[haiderabbas]

Very informative video and this lady reminds me a little bit of Amy Farrah Fowler

[cgsrtkzsytriul]

A strong hypothesis for the reason why sexual reproduction exists at all is because of disease. Experiments and models have shown asexual reproduction to be far better at evolving, which is the classical reason for sexual reproduction. Instead, the theory goes that because multicellular organisms are very easy to infect with disease, sexual reproduction keeps them different enough that a disease doesn't wipe out the entire species.

[Dudemar]

then why do the vast majority of people choose spouses that look much like them?

[AJ-uhpv]

Crapsule?! Yeah, I want some of that.

[rebeccaerb]

Very interesting! Thanks for the info..
I was kinda wondering how the universe and innerverse expands...
It has to be sexually in some kind of way... But intelligence has to be vaster than i can imagine. And more ingenius than we can fathom...

[jhdvries]

Eating other peoples poo would most definitly influence my appetite

[humanyoda]

It sounded like mistaking correlation for a causal effect. Where do people like that study???

[ffcrazy]

Enteritis caused C. Diff. can cause a significant loss of appetite. Curing the infection could bring a sudden increase of apettite which especially combined with other endocrinological or simply movement disorders (especially a long hospital stay) could easilly explain the sudden weight gain. I would also be very cautious on defining it as the cause since the reason she got the feces from the daughter is the similarity of the bacteria they share which would speak against such a big difference in comparison to the species of bacteria which she had before the Enteritis.

[Incognit]

3:07
I was eating while watching this video. Big mistake.

[psychedelicdreamer]

What about the capsules with "good bacteria" you can buy everywhere nowadays? They make them so they withstand the stomach acid and get released in the colon. Why isn't she saying anything about that?

[tjsuprme]

fecal transplant😑...swear that word is burnt in my head now..thanks big think👌