Kissing is awesome in the beginning of a relationship. Then it loses its luster. Then you just stop kissing at all. Then you go and kiss someone else and go “wow! that was awesome! I need to dump that other person immediately!” Then you kiss their ass goodbye.
Anyway, kissing is one of the most popular forms of affection and it’s also pretty damn gross. Esquire compiled a list of the most interesting facts about kissing.
Here are just a few of the noteworthy facts.
Couples that are really good at making out together tend to have healthier relationships, according to Sheril Kirshenbaum’s The Science of Kissing. So if you can’t make out without having an argument, well … that should tell you something.
Kissing releases endorphins and oxytocin. Making out is going to get you feeling happy and positive and less stressed.
Your lips are actually more sensitive than your junk. It’s part of the reason we love kissing so much. Our lips are super-sensitive according to Krista A. Bloom. You have a ton of nerve endings in your lips: approximately 10,000. The clitoris only has 8,000.
Good to know but here’s where it gets vile…
The longest kiss on record lasted 58 hours, 35 minutes, and 58 seconds. Think about that world record the next time you see some gross PDA.
You can get mono and herpes through kissing. They’re two of the few diseases you can transmit through kissing, but they’re not exclusive to kissing. Mono can get transmitted through coughing and sneezing. Herpes can be transmitted through oral, anal, and genital sex.
And finally…
You exchange 80 million different microbes every time you kiss. A study published in the Microbiome Journal found that you exchange 80 million microbes whenever you kiss someone new. That’s more than the 77,000 different microbes you’ll find in a public bathroom. Couples, however, have more microbes in common, since consistent kissing means they eventually meet a happy microbe medium.
That’s right. We’re all kissing toilets.
[via Esquire]