Love Makes All Things New

Italian researchers (fittingly enough -- that's amore!) recently found high levels of a molecule called nerve growth factor in the blood of people newly in love (as compared to both loners and the longer-coupled). Articles on this phenomenon both in the media and in the blogosphere stopped at the announcement of a possible "love molecule," apparently incurious about what nerve growth factor really is and what else it does.

Well, look at this:

NGF and its family members called neurotrophins not only control the development of the nervous system in the embryo but also the maintenance of nervous tissue and neural transmission in the adult.

NGF plays a role in many nervous system problems such as neural degeneration in aging, Alzheimer's disease and neural regeneration in spinal cord injuries and other damage to neural tissue. It also may factor into mood and other psychological disorders.

This is the most fascinating part of the whole story! The implications, while purely speculative, are both practical and metaphysical. Are we making a surge of new brain connections and even new nerve cells when we're newly in love? What other life circumstances, if any, stimulate the release of high levels of NGF? When widowed old people fall in love in retirement communities, does it afford some protection against Alzheimer's?

I've long thought that only three events really change the world: birth, love, and death. Love seemed the most elusive and immaterial of the three -- till now. Apparently, the sense that falling in love renews and remakes us -- one of its most desirable qualities -- is more than merely poetic, after all.

(Hat tip: Lot 49, a cool weird-news site that I discovered by being intrigued by one of my own Google ads.)

Comments

[michael reynolds]

It's a natural, physiological process. Since our loved ones have a tendency to grind our last nerves, we must generate new nerve growth.

[amba]

Hee hee.

[karen]

Michael- that's the coolest and truest thing I've eeeeeever heard you say... kudos!

I'm thinking this is an addictive molecule and the 7 yr itch gets whittled down to 2.