TUESDAY IS Valentine's Day and here's to you lots of kissy, kiss, kisses.
A whole lot of that will be taking place as lovers announce their feelings for each other.
What's in a kiss
anyway? The Oxford Pocket dictionary states that it is a touch with the lips especially as a sign of love, affection, greeting, reverence.
The Romans made kissing into an everyday activity as they kissed each other hello, kissed the rings and robes of their leaders and statues of their gods. But anthropolgists are of the view that kissing is an old art with the first erotic one taking place about 1500 B.C in India.
According to Dr. Marianne Scarlett, kissing creates euphoric feelings as it signals the brain to produce the hormone, oxytocin. Inside the mouth and the edges of the lips, a chemical is produced which creates the desire for one kiss after the other.
The French kiss and the soul kiss are popular as they involve the lips and the tongue... There are other types of kissing which lead to French or sucking kiss (and) includes nip kissing. There is the Eskimo kiss which includes touching the tips of each partner's noses and then rubbing back and forth. Also in the kiss line are the neck kissing, teaser kiss, baby kiss, toe and finger kiss and the butterfly kissing which is rapidly brushing one's eyelids against a partner to produce a light, ticklish sensation.
"A kiss makes or breaks the love-making experience." says Madeline Green, final year Social Sciences student UWI, Mona. "It's hard to describe it, as it's one of those moments when one is totally engulfed by passion, excitement and a feeling of being swept smoothly but swiftly into another planet unknown," she adds.
MELTING THE HEART
Kissing, can melt a heart, and pull one's own soul through the lips. A kiss can send you on an emotional roller-coaster ride. It's a spine-tingling thriller that goes straight to the panting heart.
Writer Ingrid Bergam says, "a kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous." While another writer Christian Nestell Bovee believes, "it is the passion that is in a kiss that gives to it sweetness; it is the affection in a kiss that sanctifies it."
Dr. Casbert Morrison, dental surgeon, has some advice for us in this season of kissing. "Teeth should be brushed after eating and before dating," he says. People, he said, should maintain good oral hygiene by brushing and visiting their dentist regularly.
Should people kissing concern themselves with HIV/AIDS? He said it is only a person with a mouth full of chancre (painless ulcers) which in the process of kissing get bruised to the point of bleeding, who is likely to
contract AIDS from an infected partner.
And oral sex? Well, kissing the genitals is also risky, as any bruise which becomes aggravated and bleeds can be a source of HIV getting into the blood.
A kiss on the forehead, hand or cheek in which there is no erotic involvement is quite harmless.
Paul Messam
