Love can blossom into a most reveling experience that can provide bliss, warmth, comfort, serenity, and well-being. Love can make us feel satiated to the point where food is of no interest. Love can make us feel awake and energized, more than any amount of exercise or coffee could ever provide. Love can make us feel sexy, passionate, desired and full of confidence. It is an all-encompassing feeling and a natural high. On the contrary, love can also be devastatingly painful both mentally and physically, with feelings of worthlessness, anger, deepened sadness, and dulling solemnity. Because our bodies are made up of many chemicals and linked to our brain, feelings can cause both positive and negative physical symptoms.

The kinds of love that can bring on such extreme emotions are the "falling in love" and "being in love" phases of romantic relationships. The most common and more stable love is the "feeling of love" without being in love, which usually extends towards our relatives, friends and pets. It usually creates a veil of warmth and comfort that we know is always there.

Love, in general, is proven in numerous studies to improve our health. There have been studies of the heart health linked to love, where those who felt the most loved and supported had substantially less blockages in their arteries than others. A study of more than 700 senior adults showed that the effects of aging were influenced by how much love and support they gave. The more they gave, the more they benefited.

Researchers gave 278 healthy volunteers of all ages a common cold virus and assessed them on the number and types of relationships with close family members and spouses or partners. Participants who had more positive and healthy relationships had less cold symptoms or none at all versus those who had less positive and healthy relationships. The general idea of these studies was to prove that when you feel loved, nurtured, cared for, supported, and intimate, you are much more likely to be happier and healthier with a lower risk of getting sick and a greater chance of living longer.

Researchers have also discovered that when we feel love or any positive emotion such as compassion, care, or gratitude, the heart sends messages to the brain and secretes hormones that positively affect our health. Rollin McCraty, director of research at the Institute of HeartMath, believes that the heart actually monitors the blood stream for hormones and translates the hormonal information into neurological information, which moves up into the higher brain centers, like the cortex. He says that when we feel love and appreciation, the heart has a rhythmic, coherent, beating pattern that facilitates cortical function. These coherent heart rhythms cause an "inner synchronization" of the systems in our body, which then affect how we think, function, and fight off disease.

It is proven that our bodies produce cortisol, a stress hormone used in the fight or flight response, when we are angry or stressed for any amount of time, which in time suppresses the immune system and leaves us more susceptible to colds and the flu. DHEA, an anti-aging hormone found in our bodies, is another chemical that can be measured. These two chemicals are considered to be, when measured, very good indicators of stress and aging. High cortisol levels and low DHEA is rapid aging. Love is proven to decrease cortisol levels and bring these hormones into balance.

Another natural chemical in our bodies we produce when in love are endorphins, a natural endogenous morphine-like chemical that we produce in our brain, sex organs, digestive system, immune system and heart. Endorphins are known not only to create a positive, pleasurable feeling, but also to stimulate the immune system cells, which fight cancer.

Dr. Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers University who specializes in love, says that falling in love causes the natural chemical stimulants, norpenephrine and dopamine, to increase, causing giddiness, elation, euphoria, sleeplessness, and loss of appetite and are also proven to improve immune response. She believes there are three different systems in the brain.

1.   Lust - associated primarily with the chemical testosterone in men and women

2.   Romantic love, obsessive love, and infatuation – associated with high levels of dopamine and norpenephrin and low levels of seratonin

3.   Attachment and long-term love – associated with vasopressin and oxytocin that create a sense of calm, peace and security

The latter can have longer-term health effects because the love is consistent and the attachment is longer term.

"Being in love", "falling in love", and "feeling love" all produce different natural chemicals in our bodies that increase immune response and help us become stronger and healthier, both physically and mentally. The key word in these phrases is "love". It is a free and natural feeling that we can all use everyday to help us lead healthier, happier lives by giving love and receiving love.