Sex on the Brain
by Brian Alexander
Sex on the Brain
This week’s Sex on the Brain lesson is about how our bodies can betray us. I don’t mean in that sad, breakdown way that leaves middle-aged people standing around holding gin and tonics and complaining about bad backs the way they used to complain about real estate prices. I mean it in the weird, losing-at-poker way that prevents us from keeping our feelings to ourselves.
Though I’ve been writing a sex column for some time now, I still learn new things all the time and now I have learned that yawning during the build-up to sex isn’t rare and it doesn’t mean you’re finding the action about as engrossing as a chess match between two fifth graders. It means you are getting excited. I learned this because I asked an expert on yawning. Yes, you read that right, an expert on yawning.
He’s a psychologist and he believes that we yawn as part of a transition from one state to another state. So we yawn at night when we’re settling down to sleep, but we also yawn in the morning when we are waking up. We also yawn when we are moving from a calm state to an excited state, and vice versa.
It turns out that when scientists test sexy stuff on mice — lucky mice — they look to see if the mice start stretching and yawning.
This little tidbit of nature could prove valuable the next time you find yourself yawning in your lover’s face just as he or she is performing their favorite foreplay move.
The other giveaway is the “sex flush.” A reader asked about the so-called “rosy glow” that good sex seems to leave on women’s faces. Is it a myth? she asked. Or could you say that sex is actually good for the skin?
Well, there’s good news and bad news. The rosy glow is real (good news) but it’s the same thing as the glow you see after you’ve had a good workout. So you can’t really say that only sex gives you the glow.
But there is such a thing as the sex flush, which is more common among women than men. The sex flush, a sometimes intense flushing of the skin from the chest to the hips, and sometimes as far north as the neck, is proof positive that you are really, really, excited. So if you are one of those women who tries to act blasé so men don’t get too full of themselves, be aware that you could wear those goofy sunglasses and those baseball caps poker players wear on TV to hide their “tells” but the sex flush will still give you away every time.
For more on this important topic, visit Brian Alexander’s Sexploration column on MSNBC.com. Alexander is also the author of America Unzipped. 
Tags: brian alexander, Sex on the Brain
This week’s Sex on the Brain lesson is about how our bodies can betray us. I don’t mean in that sad, breakdown way that leaves middle-aged people standing around holding gin and tonics and complaining about bad backs the way they used to complain about real estate prices. I mean it in the weird, losing-at-poker way that prevents us from keeping our feelings to ourselves.
Though I’ve been writing a sex column for some time now, I still learn new things all the time and now I have learned that yawning during the build-up to sex isn’t rare and it doesn’t mean you’re finding the action about as engrossing as a chess match between two fifth graders. It means you are getting excited. I learned this because I asked an expert on yawning. Yes, you read that right, an expert on yawning.
He’s a psychologist and he believes that we yawn as part of a transition from one state to another state. So we yawn at night when we’re settling down to sleep, but we also yawn in the morning when we are waking up. We also yawn when we are moving from a calm state to an excited state, and vice versa.
It turns out that when scientists test sexy stuff on mice — lucky mice — they look to see if the mice start stretching and yawning.
This little tidbit of nature could prove valuable the next time you find yourself yawning in your lover’s face just as he or she is performing their favorite foreplay move.
The other giveaway is the “sex flush.” A reader asked about the so-called “rosy glow” that good sex seems to leave on women’s faces. Is it a myth? she asked. Or could you say that sex is actually good for the skin?
Well, there’s good news and bad news. The rosy glow is real (good news) but it’s the same thing as the glow you see after you’ve had a good workout. So you can’t really say that only sex gives you the glow.
But there is such a thing as the sex flush, which is more common among women than men. The sex flush, a sometimes intense flushing of the skin from the chest to the hips, and sometimes as far north as the neck, is proof positive that you are really, really, excited. So if you are one of those women who tries to act blasé so men don’t get too full of themselves, be aware that you could wear those goofy sunglasses and those baseball caps poker players wear on TV to hide their “tells” but the sex flush will still give you away every time.
For more on this important topic, visit Brian Alexander’s Sexploration column on MSNBC.com. Alexander is also the author of America Unzipped. 
Tags: brian alexander, Sex on the Brain
