• Question: why does love make your heart beat faster

    Asked by irontitanium to Anna, Elaine, Fiona, Kevin, Darren on 17 Jun 2014.
    • Photo: Kevin O'Dell

      Kevin O'Dell answered on 17 Jun 2014:

      I am led to believe that love is quite exciting. Anything exciting (in a good or bad way) does lots of strange and bizarre things to your body, and to help you achieve this your heart pumps lots of adrenaline and its biochemical pals all over the place. Its these chemicals that help you do some amazing things. By beating faster your heart helps you prepare what whatever happens next. Good or bad.

    • Photo: Anna Bramwell-Dicks

      Anna Bramwell-Dicks answered on 19 Jun 2014:

      I love Kevin’s answer to this!

      Just to expand a little though, the excitement when you see someone you love results in the hormone adrenaline being released into your blood stream. This rush of adrenaline into your blood causes your heart to beat faster.

    • Photo: Elaine Cloutman-Green

      Elaine Cloutman-Green answered on 19 Jun 2014:

      Ah, what would people be without love? We are excited by love. Indeed, it could be considered to be an emotional excitement. The body reacts to this by releasing various stress hormones such as cortisol, adrenaline and epinephrine and these make the heart beat faster. In modern society, we are unlikely to need these hormones as soon as we see an attractive member of the opposite sex but it was not always the custom to take a potential partner to a movie and a pizza. Our mammalian ancestors were more direct in their courtship and the stress response is a legacy of those times.

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