Voodoo love?

Romantic love might make your nerves grow, provided you do not give it longer than one year. Wikipedia reports on romantic love and NGF, the ■→Nerve Growth Factor:
Recent studies found that the concentration of the nerve growth factor (NGF) in the blood plasma is significantly higher in individuals that have been in a romantic relationship with another person for less than 12 months.

The news came with ■→Psychoneuroendocrinology, a journal to join neurology, endocrinology, and psychology, that is, the neuron, the gland, and well, inevitably a sort of symbolic ego. For a symbolic exercise, I’ll be reading from now on as if I were 15 years old, and I grow up by a proportion of human chronological age, by the end of the post. The journal says,
In view of the complexity of a sentiment like love, it would not be surprising that a diversity of biochemical mechanisms could be involved in the mood changes of the initial stage of a romance.

The summary shows the NGF for (a) people to have just fallen in love, 227 pg/ml; (b) those in a long-lasting relationship, 123 pg/ml; and (c) for singles, 149 pg/ml.

If NGF is good and it comes with love, long-lasting, fond, and mutual affinity is the worst circumstance for NGF or love, or both.

NGF can indirectly stimulate the expression of adrenocorticotrophic hormone (ACTH), by increasing vasopressin secretion, adds Wikipedia to the picture.

For long and scientific words as adrenocorticotrophic, we can copy them and paste into Merriam-Webster online. The dictionary says that adreno•cortico•tropic is something that acts on or stimulates the adrenal cortex.
■→Merriam-Webster online, Adrenocorticotropic

Let us now simply look up what a part does. An adrenal gland produces the hormone epinephrine,
■→Merriam-Webster definition for kids.

Epinephrine is a ■→stress hormone; it acts in the body’s fight-or-flight response, as when someone is in a dangerous, frightening, or highly competitive situation, ■→explains Merriam-Webster.

The dictionary ■→does not have “romantic love” as a phrase. We can browse online for epinephrine: it comes up a suspect in “voodoo deaths”. Another name for it is adrenaline.

The “psychogenic” or “psychosomatic” deaths were noted regardless of culture or geography, in camps, concentration and prisoner-of-war. Adrenal hyperactivity has been named for a factor. Such hyperactivity may come with lesions.
■→British Journal of Urology: The pathology of adrenal hyperactivity
■→Wikipedia: Voodoo death

It looks quite obvious that excess epinephrine kills. For vasopressin, it is actually a homeostatic; it can work in remembering, as well as forgetting. It is part in keeping bodily levels for sodium (as from kitchen salt; Vander et al., Human Neurophysiology, 1985).

The LVP (lysine vasopressin) and placebo groups showed an enhancement; we yet cannot claim a memory enhancing effect of LVP, because placebo treatment enhanced memory performance to the same extent, say researchers.
■→NCBI: Effects of vasopressin and oxytocin on human memory

They had saline for the placebo, and human graded as well as action potentials may become encouraged with a pinch of salt. But why grow nerves for love?
A nerve is an enclosed, cable-like bundle of axons (nerve fibers, the long and slender projections of neurons) in the peripheral nervous system.
In the central nervous system, neurons are sometimes called nerve cells, though this term is potentially misleading, since many neurons do not form nerves, ■→says Wikipedia absolutely correctly.

Before we get embarrassed about some possible implications a dictionary for kids might not have, let us think about human muscles and moving about. The symbolic ego people (a phrase perhaps easier than a ■→conglomerate as psychoneuroendocrinologist) took blood samples from men and women whose lifestyles varied on muscular activity.

Those freshly in love were the most outgoing, and settled within more or less 12 months. Those in long-term relationships shared everyday duties, and spent more time relaxing together. Those living single did not have a partner or spouse to partake in the household.

Blood samples or love potions are not likely to become standard, but I may become more mature now for linguistic endeavors. Wikipedia ■→says,
Cortisol works with adrenaline (epinephrine) to create ■→memories of short-term emotional events; this is the proposed mechanism for storage of ■→flash bulb memories, and may originate as a means to remember what to avoid in the future.^[34] However, long-term exposure to cortisol damages cells in the ■→hippocampus;^[35] this damage results in impaired learning.

Events are better avoided in the body, cf. ■→cardiovascular, able to affect the brain as well. For language memories, we absolutely could not want a cortisol mechanism to tell us to avoid the content. Finally, the hypothalamus or pituitary are not the only other brain locales to name for responsiveness to cortisol levels (■→WebMD).

Fortunately there is physical exercise, for love of good nerves. For good and everyday living experience, there is no telling me stress might do well in context with language, and as follows, love.

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