Beautiful women can endanger men’s health. This is an unusual study by Spanish researchers at the University of Valencia.
Study authors say that men who spend five minutes with an attractive woman out of their reach increase the level of cortisol in their blood.
They explain that, in some cases, the rate of this stress-related hormone is so high when a man is simply in the company of a beautiful woman that it is like the man just jumped out of a plane or had a heart attack.
Cortisol has no negative effects in low doses. On the contrary, it increases alertness and a sense of well-being. In high doses, however, it aggravates diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and even impotence.
The Spaniards studied the behaviour of 84 students and found that beautiful women could be harmful to some men.
Each student had to solve a Sudoku puzzle. They were in the presence of a man and an unknown woman in the same room. When the woman left, the stress level decreased, but when the students were alone with the woman, the stress level increased considerably.