Love, Trust, and a Hormone
December 6, 2008 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
Lately hormones have been on my mind a lot. “It’s those hormones,” someone seems to say at least once a day in reference to Charlie. Not only has he grown some six inches this year (that’s what Jim and I have been estimating). Physically, he is really growing up: For the past few weeks, it’s become very apparent that his voice is changing (though I still hear, mixed in with new, lower tone, the familiar light voice that is Charlie’s). At times his moods seem to change in a split second or less. I’ve been remembering back to my own adolescence and to how waves of feelings seemed to arise in me with no warning, and how these weren’t always expressed in the best of ways, as I didn’t know how to express what I was experiencing—–and if that’s what Charlie is feeling, it’s compounded by his minimal language, and especially language to describe feelings; to communicate.
It’s the hormone—or rather, a hormone—that some are pointing to as providing a way to enhance and even improve social ability in autistic persons. The hormone oxytocin is referred to both as the “trust” hormone, as it plays a role in bonding between parents and babies and between adults. It’s also called the “love” hormone, and seems to play a role in social and repetitive behaviors. The November 29th Australian reports on oxytocin as a treatment of potential promise:
….research, funded by the federal Government’s National Health and Medical Research Council to the tune of $180,000 over two years, is testing the ability of a naturally-occurring human hormone, oxytocin, to improve the ability of people with autism to recognise and react to emotions and to interact socially.
Currently, there are no effective treatments that directly tackle the complex and still mysterious disorder, although various drugs (such as antidepressants) and behavioural therapies are available to ameliorate its symptoms.
40 males aged 12-20 with an autistic disorder are being recruited; they will be given a nasal spray to use at home (This mother tried the nasal spray for her 21-year-old son with Asperger’s, with these not expected results.)
Stewart Einfeld, co-director of Centre for Autism Research, Education and Service (CARES), is quoted as saying:
“It’s one thing to say that the capacity to understand emotions is improved in an experimental setting…….It’s another thing to say that as a consequence, they are functioning better and are able to get better jobs or are living more independently. You can’t be predicting too many long-term benefits until you have done the work.”
If I may say so, regardless of whether or not “it’s those hormones,” love and trust—-love for Charlie, the love among him and Jim and me, and the trust (and faith) that we have in him and hope he has in us: These have had plenty of benefits (and more) for Charlie, and for us.
h/t to Kathy!
wow…that is interesting!! Thanks for sharing. We are in the throes of hormones with Matty too. We never know if it is “fragile x” or “hormones”
Interesting. Patrick’s communication issues have absolutely nothing to do with not recognizing and reacting to emtions though.
It will be interesting to see new advances in this area.
I am glad we are not the only ones dealing with moods changing quickly. I have to remind myself that all kids her ages are going through similar mood swings. It can be hard for me to tell the difference sometimes.
The notions some have about oxytocin and autism frighten me rather a lot. I have had enough trouble trying to figure out who I can trust without someone trying to chemically coerce me into trusting people.
What comes to mind for me, is Ralph Savarese’s arguments in _Reasonable People_ against the reduction of psychological phenomena as complex as emotions — never mind *trust* and *love*! — directly to comparatively simple biological mechanisms. There are undoubtedly many layers of “software” running on the “hardware”, and it is almost certainly the myriad of units of state, and state-changes, in those layers of “software”, that inform high-level phenomena such as trust and love. And those state-changes come not just from hormonal input, but from sensory input, memory, and internal computation.
And there’s more than one way to express trust, love, ad other emotions…..
Isn’t eleven,that is Charlie’s age isn’t it,a bit young for all of this?It almost sounds like the type of changes you should be seeing at fourteen or fifteen.
I never experienced most of puberty,and I was never sure why.My testosterone levels have always been in the low 3’s.I started to have fine,slow growing facial hair,at age seventeen, but no other sign of puberty.I was always told my testosterone levels had to be much lower to have hypogonadism,and thus receive hormone treatment.
I always thought it might be due to irreversible damage to the pituitary,from having meningitis as a baby,but if I do indeed,have mitochochondrial disease,a real possibility,it is probably due to inefficient metabolism of testosterone.