With the advent of Valentine's, Amira El-Nakeeb visited the laboratory of love Abdel-Hady Mesbah, immunology consultant and fellow of the American Academy of Immunology, defies one of humanity's deepest set beliefs: the seat of love is the heart, he insists, not the brain. The former, he maintains, is but a blood pump. Feelings have rather more to do with intricate chemical exchanges in the latter. Ah well, perhaps the whole thing is mythical anyway. "Love," says Samir Fayez, 26, "is the missing piece of the puzzle of life. Get hurt by love and you'll find no cure for your wound by love. That said, when I fall in love," he confides, "it gives me such a lift that I become obsessive." But even such heart-melting confidences will not shake Mesbah. Brain chemistry, he is adamant, even if it is influenced in its turn by physical and biological factors." A pretty strong reaction must take place, though, judging by Nashwa, a 24-year-old fitness centre receptionist: she can neither eat, smile, nor think of a single thing on the face of the earth, until she is reassured of the well-being of her beloved. Yasmine, 23, has a less puritan if equally extreme response: "I blush as soon as I see him, my heart pounds, my limbs get cold." Sigh! Yet Mesbah will readily reduce the whole process to a complex interaction of chemicals like, forgive my Dutch, dopamine and norepinepherine. The one decisive body-produced compound, he says, is oxytocin -- otherwise known, not surprisingly, as the love hormone. It not only plays a role in the clustre of emotions associated with love, but it also enhances one partner's sexual appetite for another -- specific -- partner. But such thinking fails to take account of another (physical) account of the phenomenon: changes in the length of electro-magnetic waves emanating from the bodies of those who are subject to it. This is thought to account for the healing effect of beholding the beloved, the sense that everything else has paled in comparison. Dolly, a 44-year-old housewife, keeps grinning for no reason; Ahmed Faragalla, a fitness coach the same age, gives in to spasmodic laughter. "I feel so energetic," he says. The symptoms, according to the ever sober Mesbah, are the result of the release of hormones like, oh God, phenyl ethyl amines (PEAs) and the more familiar adrenaline -- which responds to transfers of the relevant sense information through the nervous system. The joy of love, alas, is but PEAs -- a body-produced member of the amphetamine family, a distant relative of Ecstasy. But, a rollercoaster, does love last? Does it, like its aforementioned relative, wear miserably off by the end of the evening? Nashwa is terrified: "I'm always thinking whether the feeling will go on." And who but Mesbah to undermine the sweet illusion of together forever: "Romantic love is usually short-lived. As it does with all amphetamines, the body builds up tolerance to PEAs. As in the case of the drug, indeed, the mood drops; the body requires a greater amount of the stimulant to maintain a plateau. "It's a state of mind for which I'm always grateful," says Yasmine. Thankfully even Mesbah has a tip to help preserve the feeling: couples must periodically resuscitate their feelings for each other. That said, the withdrawal symptoms of the star-crossed are rather more difficult to deal with. "I feel as if something is clutching my stomach," says Nashwa. "The tears just keep coming. It seems like the entire world is trembling." An abrupt drop in PEA levels? Sure. "It's important to look for love all around us," adds Mesbah, rather more lamely this time, "and not just in the arena of romance. The same chemicals are released in response to feelings of love for a friend or parent or child, forms of love that tend to give more than they take." But brain chemistry and that withered blood pump notwithstanding, the nose, science also tells us, plays a crucial role through perception of scentless pheromones -- which, Cupid-like, spread through the air, making or breaking desires as they go...
