How Can We Measure Human Oxytocin Levels?

Smart way to measure the human oxytocin levels

Oxytocin is known in a number of ways as the hype hormone or simply a love and trust chemical. It might seem awkward but this thought process resulted in a number of studies which has tried to find the relationship between the oxytocin and feeling of trust. This particular research paper has been published as a meta-analysis by a group of Norwegian researchers who discovered that level of oxytocin present in blood doesn’t actually result in clearly measuring the same present in the brain. In short the presence of the said hormone in the blood has no relation with its levels in the central nervous system in the normal conditions so measuring it from the blood is quite contradictory.

Research brings some remarkable results

This group of researchers were led by Mathias Valstad who helped in combining the results of 7 different studies wherein the hormone present in the blood was compared against the hormone present in the central nervous system. Central oxytocin is usually measured in the cerebrospinal fluid which is taken from the spinal tap and during the course of their research it was made clear that the there is no evidence which shows a correlation between the said hormone present in the blood and the brain.
They also came to the conclusion that blood works a definite tool for simply assessing the impact of any kind of treatment on oxytocin but it isn’t helpful in studying the hormone in its best state. Usually the treatment utilized for increasing the hormone level included intrasanal oxytocin and blood plasma.

Researchers prove that mood swings aren’t related to plasma oxytocin

Over the time it has been seen a wide amount of research has been attempting to link that particular hormone concentration in the blood with the psychiatric disorder and physiological phenotypes. This has resulted in cementing the unwanted assumption that the effects of the hormone tends to rise or increase in relation to it amount in the blood. The present data collected by the researcher disputes these assumptions and asks for making different experiments for measuring the amount of hormone from the brain to the blood for better benefit of the human kind.

Earlier studies are quite disruptive in their assumptions

The current finding of the Norwegian researcher’s team has shed light on a number of false assumptions and results being crafted by the researchers in the past which helped in bringing a biased opinion for oxytocin. There are a number of studies which offers literally worse assumption like the psychological wellbeing is directly related to the urinary oxytocin. This can be interrelated example as the hormone tends to enter the urine from the blood itself. But this hormone is a proxy of the blood or plasma oxytocin and in no way it shows any relation with hormone present in the brain. It should be noted that this particular doesn’t question all the hormone related studies conducted over the years rather it tries to offer an answer whether the hormone is related to the trust or psychological traits in humans.