As if we needed a reason to kiss more, but research shows that kissing truly is good for us in so many ways.

Not only is kissing an essential ingredient for a long lasting relationship, it signals to the brain to produce oxytocin.

Now oxytocin is the hormone that makes us feel good.

It’s also known as the ‘bonding hormone’ or the ‘love hormone’.

That’s why doulas and midwives who guide women to have orgasmic births, suggest women kiss their way through the contractions in the lead up to giving birth.

When you’re feeling down, oxytocin is a lovely hormone to have pumping through your body.

Studies have also shown a decrease in cortisol – the hormone related to stress – after people kissed.

French kissing is great for drinking in your partner’s elixir and activating all the yummy pleasure centres that release oxytocin.

And because you’re generating more saliva when you kiss, this can help combat oral plaque, while an exchange of germs actually boosts the immune system.

Saliva also contains the sex hormone testosterone, which triggers libido, so the more time you spend kissing, the more primed you’ll be for sex.

And according to the Taoists the lips and the tongue are one of the main channels for exchanging energy.

Our tongue is also our external organ of the heart.

So kissing with your tongue is a really yummy heart activator.

But there’s more!

Kissing burns calories.

Depending on which report you read, you’re getting rid of between 2 and 6 calories per minute.

Not quite a jog on the treadmill, but an hour’s worth of smooching may burn off half a glass of wine!

We use up to 30 muscles while kissing and it helps keeps your cheeks tight too.

Kissing also happens to be an advertisement of who we are and what we have to offer!

Anthropologist Helen Fisher actually describes kissing as a ‘mate assessment tool’.

When we kiss we actually exchange a host of information about our health and hormonal status.

We unconsciously pick up on all sorts of information that cannot be seen by the naked eye.

So while you may have seen kissing as a social pleasantry, the appropriate ending to a date and a means of connecting with a lover, the collision of lips and tongues that we often take for granted is beneficial in so many ways.

So my advice for the week is: Kiss and kiss often!

Sixpence None The Richer said it perfectly: ‘Kiss me!’

If you’d like to learn more about sexual healing, enroll in our 2-month Sexual Self course where you’ll be taken on a journey into your intimate self!