Check It Out

Love Cycles: The Science of Intimacy
Winnifred B. Cutler
New Book Area: Call Number HQ 21 C86 1991

Books in the New Book Area may be checked out for four weeks with your SWC photo ID card.

The co-discoverer of human pheromones (sexual scents) is back to tell us “…why our love lives wax and wane with biological regularity.” She claims that “…if we understand our hormonal cycles, we can take control of these rhythms [by going with the flow] to enhance sensuality, charge our immune system, inhibit the aging process, ward off PMS, increase the probability of a successful pregnancy, and encourage joie de vivre.”

In this work Cutler presents data from many questionnaires and studies and then gives her conclusions. One review states that, “Extensive annotations, charts, graphs and diagrams provide a solid scientific grounding rare in popular science books.” However, another reviewer calls this a pseudoscientific work. (Many of the authors’ questionnaires had fewer than 100 subjects.)

Ms. Cutler’s theories include the following:

Women who have regular, weekly sex have higher estrogen levels and menstrual cycles closer to the most fertile time-length than those who have sporadic sex. This means they are not only more fertile but also have greater protection against the physical and mental problems associated with low estrogen. If regular, weekly sex isn’t possible it is best to be celibate as that creates a more fertile reproductive system than sporadic sex. However, having sex when women are menstruating isn’t necessary and may be dangerous to a woman’s health.

Women who wait to have intercourse more than seven years after they start menstruating are not as fertile as those who start within the seven year time period.

Both men and women have daily and monthly natural rhythms in their bodies and these are affected by cosmic bodies. “…the moon cycle and the menstruation cycle of fertile women are closely correlated.”