Kissing is a universal language amongst humans. It is one of the easiest non verbal ways to show your affection towards someone that you love, it can be family, friends, or a romantic partner. Most people have kissed many people throughout their life, and if you have kissed a lot of people you might think you know everything about it. These next 15 slides will show you some surprising facts about kissing that you most likely don't already know.
Did you know that a single kiss uses 146 muscles at one time?! These are 112 postural muscles and 34 facial muscles. A study was done in Britain that showed under an MRI scanner that that the most involved muscle in kissing is the orbicularis oris, the muscle that surrounds the mouth.
Everyone knows which is their dominant hand, but most people did not know that you actually have a dominant kissing side as well and just like with dominant hands the most dominant side for kissing is the right side. Researchers in Ireland discovered that 80% of people naturally kiss with their head to the right.
Every word has an origin that it derives from, and in English most of our influences are from German and Latin languages. The word kiss seems to have the most influence from German origin, the word kiss traces back to the German word kussijanan, which is shortened to kuss, and means to kiss!
This might sound crazy, but it is actually possible to reach orgasm by just kissing. Although it is rare to happen many women have reported that this is possible. Even though this isn't possible for everyone, almost all women report that the reach orgasm faster when kissing is also involved with genital stimulation.
When you kiss someone the interaction sparks a reaction in your brain and hormones are released into your system. Almost any type of kiss sparks this reaction, even a light peck on the cheek! It has been theorized that these unexpected hormone spikes can actually be detrimental to your health in the long term, but this is not proven yet.
Just like almost anything else, kissing is a balance of science and art. You study, learn, and practice kissing! Which sounds pretty fun if you ask us. If you are really getting into the study of the science of kissing there is actually a name for that, and it is philematology.
Here's a bonus fact that isn't necessarily tied to kissing; Having a heavier flow of saliva in your mouth helps protect your teeth from decay. Here's how that is related to kissing; when you kiss you have an increased flow of saliva in your mouth, which means that kissing is actually likely to help protect your teeth.
As much as most people greatly enjoy kissing, there is such thing as being afraid of kissing. Not even a regular level of afraid, but actually a phobia of kissing! This unusual phobia is called Philematophobia. For people with philematophobia it can be much more difficult to develop normal intimate relationships.
As previously stated some people theorize that kissing could lower your lifespan, but others think that it can lengthen it! And this argument has a scientific study behind it. This study showed that men who get a peck on the cheek before work from their wife on average lived 5 years longer.
Many kisses are brief, just a second long peck on the cheek, but many can be minutes long make out sessions as well. Even with the longest of kisses it might be hard to see how this time adds up over a lifetime, but it really does! Experts have discovered that the average person over their lifetime will spend 20160 minutes kissing, that's two whole weeks!
As you learned earlier, most people lean their head to the right when kissing, but why is that? A German researcher observed over 100 couples to study this. When considering the origin of this trend most scientists assume it is because in the womb we develop with our head more turning to the right.
At the end of most letters with a loved one you will see the letters 'XOXO' next to their signature to mean kisses, 'X', and hugs, 'O'. But where did this come from? It turns out that the X originated in the middle ages when most people couldn't read so signed a document with an X, and then kissed the paper.
King Henry VI of England once banned kissing to try to prevent the spread of diseases, which might work, but there is no way that people were actually going to stop kissing. Despite King Henry's failure to stop kissing the kissing ban was tried again in 16th century Naples, where the penalty for public kissing was death.
Now that kissing is not banned, people have even managed to make a competition out of it. There is a couple who has purposefully set the world record for the longest kiss. Ekkachai and Laksana Tiranarat of Thailand kissed for 58 hours, 35 minutes, and 58 seconds.. With no breaks of any kind.
Remember earlier how we said that kissing can be an actual science? It is known as philematology, and you can have a profession in this field! People who are studies kissing as a career is known as an Osculologist. I don't know about you, but that sounds like a pretty good job to me!
