Sniffing out a Mate: Signals in Our Sweat
Copyright ©1998 ABC News and Starwave Corporation
Excerpted from ABCNEWS.com from THE PULSE program, hosted by Nancy Snyderman, MD on ABC News Saturday Night by Bill Ritter.
Review the 2002 independent study on Athena Pheromone 10:13tm for Women, published in Physiology and Behavior click here
Review the 1998 study on Athena Pheromone 10Xtm for Men, published in Archives of Sexual Behavior click here
March 28, 1998, 10PM EST
Signals in Our Sweat
Scientists are learning something else about how we select our mates. There may be other chemical signals we send each other that we can't smell--signals that carry a wide range of biological messages. They're called pheromones.
In animals and insects this "chemical command" is irresistible. *** But what about humans? Can we be controlled by these subconscious chemical commands?
Biologist Winnifred Cutler (click for bio) thinks so. In fact, Cutler sells products she claims contain pheromones. And she says her customers report dramatic results (click here for customer testimonials).
"I've one guy who said to me, 'Five times a year maybe we had sex. Since I've been using the pheromone straight, it's five times a week!"
Cutler is not alone. There are now several products on the market *** that claim they contain sex pheromones. What exactly is in these products?
"I don't know what other people are selling," Cutler says. "I know our pheromone formula is a closely guarded trade secret."
But other products aren't so secretive. And some really do contain a chemical that is a sex pheromone--a sex pheromone for pigs, that is.
************
Winnifred Cutler...has no doubt her product works. And she's even published her own study which she says proves her claims. ***
But Can it Pass the Twins test?
We at ABCNEWS couldn't resist conducting a little unscientific test ourselves.
Our subjects, two sets of twins from a place called Twins Restaurant in New York. We had one twin in each pair wear Winnifred Cutler's supposed pheromone product--the other got just plain witch hazel. But nobody knew what they received.
After three weeks, we took our twins to a popular New York bar. Our ground rules: We had them secretly trade places throughout the evening, so no one would know they were twins. And they couldn't make the first move.
The results astonished us.
The guys came out about even. Each had about a handful of women start talking to them. But the women were a different story. Shari, who got the witch hazel, had a slow start but ended up being approached by 11 guys. Stasea, who wore the Cutler product, was chatted up by 30 guys--nearly three times the number who approached Shari, her identical twin.
"People, like, didn't even want to talk to me, and my sister got all the attention," Shari says. "It was incredible, truly."
[End of ABC News excerpt]
*Note--The guys' results are not surprising, given the ground rules, since many fewer women than men will approach a stranger of the opposite sex in a social setting. In the telecast, Stasea who wore 10:13 said of the men who reacted to her: "They didn't just talk, they were ENTHRALLED with me!" And when Dr. Snyderman asked "about the situation in the bar", Bill Ritter said, "We cannot deny what we saw happen in the bar."
COMMENT FROM ATHENA INSTITUTE: Both Athena Pheromone 10:13tm for women and Athena Pheromone 10Xtm for men are cosmetics that can increase your attractiveness to the opposite sex. Neither product is an “aphrodisiac.”