Our Interview Project highlights the accomplishments and inquiries of unique health care professionals, scientists, researchers, educators, and creative thinkers. An emphasis is placed on applications of the discoveries and ideas to people’s daily life.
Oxytocin:
World’s expert talks about this calming hormone
An Interview with Kerstin Uväs-Moberg, M.D., Ph. D
If you suffer from stress, high blood pressure, elevated cortisol in the blood, or other stress-related symptoms, you will be interested in oxytocin—a hormone which Dr. Kerstin Uväs-Moberg calls the calm and connection hormone.
How can you bring greater calm and connection into your life and the life of your children?
Kerstin Uväs-Moberg, M.D., Ph. D, author of The Oxytocin Factor, is a recognized world authority on oxytocin. Her research took place at the famed Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala, where she is Professor of Physiology. Influential in obstetrics, psychology, pediatrics, child development, physical therapy and other fields, Dr. Uväs-Moberg has authored over four hundred scientific papers and lectures widely in Europe and the USA.
1. In your book, you state, “There are many scientific conferences on the topics of stress and pain, but very few conferences deal with calm, rest, and wellbeing.” What does oxytocin have to do with calm, rest, and wellbeing?
Dr. Uväs-Moberg: Oxytocin, which was first noticed during birth labor and in nursing
mothers in 1906, acts as both a hormone and a neuropeptide. It triggers a complex series of reactions that enhance your body’s relaxation and calmness. This is important in two ways. The first (1) is the immediate health benefit of lowering stress-related symptoms and the second (2) is that repeated dosages of oxytocin seem to convert the immediate benefit into a long-lasting effect. In our studies, animals who received as little as one dose per day for 5 days needed little additional oxytocin to stay calm for up to 3 weeks. This suggests that oxytocin can offer stressed human beings a way to open up new pathways, to help them relax and restore calm immediately and across long term situations. I stress oxytocin’s ability to grow or develop people’s relaxation and restoration capacity.
2. What is the relationship between oxytocin and adrenaline or other fight/fight responses?
