Hack Your Hormones
Biohack Through Valentine's Trickier Moments
St. Valentine really buggered February. Every year, we’re just about recovering from the emotional cluster bomb that’s Christmas when, suddenly, St. Valentine looms over us like a nightmare shadow figure. FFS!
Valentine’s Day pours vinegar on the ulcer. It doesn’t matter that, it’s just a day, it’s the gravy train that railroads into our bedrooms without an invite. Meanwhile, your partner’s up for the Barry White shebang but your libido’s comatose and you’re just not up for it.
All in all, it can be shit. But, with WillPowders, there’s no need to hide longing, loneliness or low libido. Lick your wounds, if you wish, but, if you’re curious about how to biohack pleasant (dare we say, perky?) feelings, we’ve got you. Stick or twist, it’s up to you this Valentine’s.
Situationship One: All You Feel is Sheer Indifference
A friend tells us the story of realising her marriage was kaput when she couldn’t find a valentine’s card that meant little enough. Indifference is exposed on Feb 14. The feeling’s linked to lack of motivation, which could be lack of dopamine. We’re passive at keeping the show on the road. When we flatline for a ‘loved’ one, we hide it or bolt. But, hiding indifference takes energy. Ditto splitting up.
Stick: Stop in the Name of Love! You’re keeping safe.
Our brain’s protocol is protection, ‘not to spiral out of control and experience excessive stress or anxiety’. Today doesn’t have to be the day to rock the boat. It’s a time for ‘cold compassion’ to help work out what’s right for you in this situationship.
Twist: This Ain’t a Love Song, it’s a biohack for dopamine.
If dopamine’s low, we’re unmotivated. Hack dopamine to restart the Love Train, or ship out. Dopamine helps you plan and prioritise, kicking indifference in the ass. Walk in daylight, play some music and up your protein. Take some L-theanine. Break out of the numbness and get your own oxytocin going, even if the other half is still out there in limbo land while you’re sorting your future. Davinia recommends a sauna, Love Island and a bucket of kombucha enjoyed on your own!
Situationship Two: Coursing in Take Me Now hormones? No suitably warm body in sight?
Valentine’s probably isn’t your feast day. Valentine’s actually patron saint of courtly love, a different ball game to Eros! It involved knights, married noblewomen and no P in the V! Everyone patted themselves on the back for avoiding exchanges of bodily fluid. No wonder it took a saint to monitor that masochistic mess. Getting ravished by a hot rod of choice (flesh or otherwise), has Valentine spinning in his grave.
Stick: You’re a Firework with your blue touch paper intact!
Nothing wrong with being an unlit molotov cocktail ready for when opportunity knocks (hopefully, in the form of willing flesh). If you don’t want to scratch that itch, history proves you aren’t alone. Bridgerton has done wonders for yearning. With any luck, you’ll experience a sleep orgasm to take the job out of your hands, so to speak! Apparently, try sleeping on your front …
Twist: We’re Bringing Sexy Back!
Get the erotica on. There are porn sites run by women with triple checks on consent, fair pay and actual pleasure (thank Valentine, no more theatrical orgasms in greasy garages). Orgasms release dopamine, oxytocin and endorphins. Your only risk, a slight chafe!
Situationship Three: I’m being needy! Nope, just a normal human!
Beating yourself up thinking you lack the backbone to go it alone on Valentine’s Day? Stop! Monogamous mammals are hardwired for connection. It’s not a needy personality or tragic flaw, just hardwired biology. Phew! Neurons signal a need to connect throughout our lives, so there’s no ‘growing out of it’. We’re not snakes who hatch then slither off to fend for ourselves. The ex-partner might be, but let’s not go there today!
Stick: I Can Buy Myself Flowers
It’s thin pickings out there. There’s no special Valentine dopamine, it’s just dopamine, even on 14/2. While Linda down the road might have had her dopamine teased to life by a bunch of thorny red roses from the local petrol station, let’s remember, the water in the vase always goes funky and it’s never your amoré pouring it away while gagging.
Twist: Get By With a Little Help From Friends
Brains reward us for having a lover, triggering the part of our brain that would light up if we took cocaine - the nucleus accumbens (NAc). But, brains reward other connection, too, so fuck the lovers (so to speak), we can get rewarded elsewhere. Form a wolf pack. The dopamine’s no different just because it wasn’t a lover who tickled your NAc. Let other important humans light you up like the Las Vegas Strip. Or light a scented candle. Smell stimulates dopamine and dopamine is dopamine is dopamine.
Situationship Four: When the Libido’s 6 Feet Under
Dead libido is the opposite of social expectations. Films don’t help, with characters getting in the mood from a lingering look. In the real world, without the full complement of sex hormones, it might be the ‘only thing you want in you is a cup of tea and a biscuit’. Feeling like you’re the only one missing the ‘fanny flutters’ is miserable.
Stick: Just Leave Me Alone
Done with the palaver? Let peace and clean sheets be with you. Double check you’re feeling confident and energetic in other areas of life, though. Low testosterone depletes confidence and energy.
Twist: Get Your Motor Running
Not feeling perky? Take a Testosterone Precursor and keep levels ticking over in general with shilajit. Be testosterone’s friend, shun endocrine disruptors like plastic food containers, opt for glass and stainless steel and switch to natural cleaning products. Ask the doc- is testosterone the reason for my low libido?
Situationship Five: Disappointment - Still Haven’t Found What You’re Looking For?
Daydreams better than the real thing? A letterbox devoid of a golden envelope on Valentine’s Day is another year of feeling invisible. Or, if you’re looking for love online, nothing beats that moment before you meet your date in the flesh. But, El Chappo/Chappesso turns out to be years older, several teeth lighter and has no game. Or, within Coupledom, someone else didn’t do the housework, there’s no money for a restaurant and there’s a puking cat at 3 a.m. Yup - it’s the day fantasy and reality clash. Disappointment is heartbreak. Body mapping reveals sadness stirs the heart and throat.
Stick: Alone Again (Naturally)
There are secondary gains in a ‘suffering’ emotion. They keep us safe, remember. When we expect disappointment, we’re readying for pain. We avoid the fear of change: what if that lover turns out to be a keeper? What would we do then? We’d have to adapt to worse, the unfamiliar!
Twist: Reach Out and Touch Someone You Love (You!)
Relax a constricted throat: massage gently under your chin with your thumbs, just near your neck. Your throat will relax. For your heart, place your palms together, as though you’re about to pray. The heart feels less constricted this way. Namaste!
Heartbreak Six: Love’s Labour’s Lost
No-one survives John Hannah’s reading of Stop All the Clocks in Four Weddings with their heart intact. Lost love is devastating. Nothing’s more final than that last goodbye. We’ve all lost. We’ll all lose. We’ll be lost to others. There’s no stick or twist here - just inevitability. Our unique human quality means we walk with this knowledge - it’s both our strength and fragility. In loss, love is both enduring and to be endured.
Situationship Seven: Do they, don’t they, do I?
Angst. It’s a card appearing in your life with a question mark promising a secret admirer which can be alluring or alarming. It’s sending a piece of your heart in a text and then reading ‘Delivered’, or worse, ‘Read’ for the next three months. It’s having to put on that Agent Provocateur gift of underwear over the apron tummy which fills you with the nervous giggles or plain dread. Worse still, is the ex happier now? Yup, no better day to invite the Grand Duchess of Worryville for tea than this day.
Stick: There’s frisson in anxiety
Those stress hormones are designed to get you going and doing! But, don’t forget, we do a nice formulation to get you going and doing, minus Valentine’s bollocks, in our Brain Powder, so check in - do you rev yourself up on unnecessary anxiety when you could be queen of cool and productivity in other ways? Double check you aren’t confusing love with drama - toxic and torrid gives you hypervigilance and a racing heart, but it ain’t love.
Twist: Don’t Worry, Be Happy bollocks doesn’t work …
… let’s get you something that does. Have a glycine day! Recent research suggests glycine, which is in bovine collagen, soothes anxiety. In fact, let’s make it glycine month! Pass the scoop and let’s use the big end!
Happy Fucking Valentine’s Day, WillPowderers!
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