Scientists have proven that drinking water is just as pleasant for the brain as sex and delicious food
There is an old Odessa joke that talks about a sign at the entrance to the synagogue. It read: "To enter here bareheaded is as sinful as committing adultery." From below, someone wrote by hand: "I checked - the difference is huge." Probably, this anecdote has never been heard by the authors of a study comparing the pleasure of drinking water and sex.
The study was conducted by scientists from the University of California at San Francisco and Howard Hughes Medical Institute in the USA. They found that when a person drinks water, the brain releases dopamine as actively as during sex. And this release of this neurotransmitter occurs when eating delicious food.
The experiments were conducted on mice, but the experimenters assure that things are exactly the same in humans. To determine the reaction of the mouse brain to water, rodents were given full access to drinking water. Mice could drink plenty for only 5 minutes. At this time and later, when the animals got drunk, scientists examined impulses in the ventral region of the brain.
It turned out that the level of dopamine began to grow rapidly, immediately after the start of drinking water. The effect persisted after 10 minutes, when the water was simply absorbed by the body. Next time, a little salt was added to the water for the mice. In this case, the "pleasure hormone" was not released so intensively. This was associated with the dehydrating effect of such a drink.
For sure, the results of the experiment will seem controversial to many, and the comparison with mice will be offensive. But there's nothing you can do about it, because scientific facts are a stubborn thing. Are the astronauts saved, and now, to relieve sexual tension in orbit, you just need to drink some water?