Oxytocin

[BrianMDelaney]

 

(Moving this from the GDF11 thread.)

 

Hi Brian!

 

I'm more interested in an "Off-Topic" post [that] discussed the "feel good" homone Oxytocin.  A Berkeley study hinted that, at lease in the strain of rodent tested, supplementing oxytocin to youthful levels in aged rodents restored their age reduced muscles to near youthful levels.

 

Josh Mitteldorf has a nice post about oxytocin as a mediator of the beneficial effects of social contact. (He claims we "heard it first" from him, but I think the idea has been around for a while -- but he lays it out clearly, so worth reading.)

 

Are the over-the-counter preparations claiming to be oxytocin not really oxytocin? I thought it was prescription only in almost all countries.

 

- Brian

 

[Michael R]

Are you saying you've actually seen or are aware of OTC oxytocin?

[BrianMDelaney]

No. I've seen OTC "oxytocin" -- question of course being whether (scare-)quotation marks are needed.

 

For ex.:

 

OxyLuv Oxytocin Nasal Spray, which, based on a couple believable reviews, likely contains no more than zero oxytocin.

 

A few other putative oxytocin products don't seem so clearly fake, but I've seen nothing that convinced me any of them was real.

 

Anyone else seen anything believably real in the US? If -- from what I gather, rather: give that -- oxytocin is prescription-only in the US, it's hard to see how it could be available in any public way on the Internet in the US, or for US customers, without flagrantly violating the law.

 

- Brian