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You kiss, I kiss, we all kiss and the truth is there is nothing as romantic as two lovers sharing a kiss but should we really be worried about kissing? According to a study, as many as 80 million bacteria are transferred during a ten-second kiss, so should we stop kissing?
According to Remco Kort and his team from the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research sharing those germs from kissing means both partners are equipped to ward off the infections they might introduce to each other later on.
Humans carry trillions of bacteria in the body, which together make up a ‘microbiota’ – a complex mix of bugs which play a crucial role in digesting food and warding off infections and they think kissing helps form a shared microbiota, a similar mix of bacteria living in the body.
Remco Kort had the following to say about his research:
“Intimate kissing involving full tongue contact and saliva exchange appears to be a courtship behaviour unique to humans and is common in over 90 per cent of known cultures.
“Interestingly, the current explanations for the function of intimate kissing in humans include an important role for the microbiota present in the oral cavity, although to our knowledge, the exact effects of intimate kissing on the oral microbiota have never been studied.
“We wanted to find out the extent to which partners share their oral microbiota, and it turns out, the more a couple kiss, the more similar they are.”
The researchers also found that couples who share nine intimate kisses a day had a very similar microbiota, meaning they would be better prepared to deal with similar infections and digest similar food.
The study is published in the journal Microbiome.
So how many times do you kiss your partner daily? Always make sure you kiss them 9 times daily.
Phil