What is Love?

I write this for you who are in "Neutral Condition", that is, you are not just falling in love or just broke up. But, if you are in love or just broke up, and wondering about this, it's ok too. But maybe your response is slightly different than what I intended to with this writing.

First of all, how can I came up with that idea, what was I thinking so that I want to talk about love?

Well, I saw people lose their minds when they are in love. When they just fall in love, they will acting crazy, broke rules, able to do an in-steroid action fueled by love, and so on.  And when they just broke up, they too will do crazy things, but on the opposite of the first one, and for the worst case, they kill themselves or other people.

What I mean by that is, is this "Love thing" change human? Give them more power to do all those crazy things?

Ok, the love we talk about now is the love between man and woman that drives them to live together. For another love term like the love of parents to their kid or love human to another human, love human to the environment, and so on, I will talk about it in another article.

Love, biologically
So how this man-woman love works?
I will try to see this love phenomenon from a biological perspective. About what happening in our bone and flesh, when we are in love.

Human is a creature that lives on this planet, a sentient being just like Elephant, ants, slug, fungus, blue whale, coconut tree, Flowers, and so on. Every sentient being needs to replicate and multiply, in order to keep their existence on this planet.

Now, how is the mechanism of this sentient replication and multiplication?

Well, for humans, sex obviously.

Sex is a mechanism to create a new replica of humans and also multiply human. Sex is a mechanism to make male sperm can fertilize the female egg cell, which triggers a 9 months new human creation process.

But this human replication is a tiring process. Sex activity consumes a lot of energy. On the other side, the female is suffering during pregnancy and delivering the new human, the baby.

In a "neutral" condition, no human will want to do this replication activity. What I mean by "neutral" is, humans, get nothing in return.

But in reality, humans willing to do sex, they like sex. Since sex activity can make humans feel happy.

So in order to make humans willing to do replication, through sex, pregnancy, and delivery, the human will get "reward" on doing this. The reward is a certain "biological recipe" that makes humans feel happy and content.

So what is this "biological recipe" consist of? What is the recipe?

The recipe is quite extensive, and since I'm not a biologist, I'm not going to discuss it thoroughly using scientific terms and facts. I'd rather discuss the concept, the way of think. And of course, you are free to CMIIW.

The human hormone affecting love

If you want to read love biologically that contain scientific terms and facts, you can read it at reputable universities websites like the University of Minnesota, Harvard, and so on. There is even a book specifically write about it, the title is "The Biology of Love", by DR. Arthur Janov.

Ok, let's go back to what we talk earlier, the replication. In order to replicate and multiply, a human must do sex. Sex is preceded by what we call "love". Love is the state where males and females are attracted to each other. This attraction force comes from the assessment of each other, and hormone condition within their body. When the assessment result is stated that they are accepting each other, then they are formally lovers.

What causing love?
It's all began with a selection. Whether we realize it or not, on this replication business, we do a selection. We will select the best female/male as a partner to create the best replica.

But what are the criteria we use to choose which female/male is the best?

On this, we are still using the same old selection mechanism that passed through generations from our ancestors that live with beasts in the dangerous environment. In choosing a partner a female will choose the strongest male, and the male will choose the healthy and most fertile female.

But life in this 21st century is far from the beast and mighty jungle. We live in a safe and comfortable environment. Do we still need this Strong Male and healthy fertile Woman?

21st Century Life

The answer is yes we do, even though there is a shift in partner selection criteria nowaday. But if we think about it a bit further, it still applies the same concept.

Long ago in the Beasts era, the male has to be strong to be able to hunt the prey for food and provide shelter for the family. Now, in the 21st century, a male must be wealth to be able to do just the same-, provide food and comfortable shelter for the family.

And for the female, the criteria are more or less the same. Female with a good sign of health and fertility is preferred. This sign of health and fertility is often associated with a beauty, a good looking and good shape of a female.

Both of these signs, Wealth for male and Beauty for female, is unconsciously set by us as a criterion of "good quality for breeding" parter for replication and multiplication.

So when a man meets a woman, this selection mechanism will be fired up. They will appraise each other, whether he/she is a "good quality for breeding" or not. If she/he is, then they will accept each other.

When they are accepting each other, then they can continue to do a "replication".

Unfortunately human tend to hack this mechanism. Instead of doing sex for replication, they are doing it for fun and not intended to create a replica and multiply.

Wait, maybe you think that I'm going to promote free sex. Please don't think like that. Please read this until the end, I will show you that I'm not doing that.

Ok, let's back to the thing called love. Love appears in the "male and female attracted to each other" process. Although the biological condition is pretty much the same with all humans, like the hormone overflow, oxytocin, dopamine, Estrogen level, Testosterone level, you name it. But what makes it different is how each human translates this "love biological recipe" into real action.

This real action translation of love's biological recipe is what we found on what is doing by those who are in love. I won't write it in here, please use your imagination to imagine the sweetest love story (or the most bitter one).

Society Influence
Human is living with another human in a very large group called society. This Society is influencing lovers in many ways. One of the most strong influences of society is that society creates some sets of rules and values to be followed by all of its members. These rules and values are created to keep an order of society so that every member can live their life peacefully.

One of the rules is the rule for "human replication and multiplication". The rule is called marriage. Society applies this marriage law in order to rule the human replication process so that it does not end up a mess.

Just Married

Applying this rule is a must because human need a long time to develop their bodies from newborn babies to adults that ready to feed his/herself. Unlike a horse, that they able to walk just a minutes after their birth, and then feed their self with grass, human baby needs help during their growth from a baby into adult age.

This what marriage is intended to. To keep adult humans protect and grow their replica until they are stable and able to live by themselves.

Can you imagine what will happens if Human is like other "irresponsible" animal? A man meets a woman, have sex, the man leave and then have sex with another woman. The woman got pregnant, deliver baby, then leave the baby to grow by themselves? Scary isn't it.

This irresponsible replication is bad for society. Kids that abandoned by their parents usually grow up with bad attitude, and even tend to be a criminal. On the other hand, the abandoned child will become a burden to other family members (the child's grandparents, uncle, relatives, etc).

If teenagers having sex, and then get pregnant, and then both the boy and the girl are forced to marry in order to take responsibility, these teenagers are not ready to form a family. The boy will find that it is hard to get a job so that he can't feed his new family. The girl is not ready yet to nurture a baby, so the baby is in a continuous condition of miss treatment and it will affect his/her growth. And then you can continue the rest of the story, which usually has a bad ending.

Unready Family

That is why humans create marriage law. To grow and protect their replica.

Whew, that was a long read eh?
Thanks for reading this far, I really appreciate it.

Ok, after reading this, I hope you guys, my beloved reader, understand 2 things:

1. Love is not the whole world. In fact, Love is a bodily mechanism, just like hungry or sleepy. So when you experiencing trouble in a love relationship, please act normally. It's not the end of the world. It's just like when you are starving because you had no breakfast this morning. Don't kill your self. Just go find some meal and eat it. The same with this love thing. When you broke up with your lover, just go find someone else. Love is about perception and acceptance. Your perception about someone and from that perception comes up an acceptance.
   
   
2. Please be aware of how you do "love". Every action comes with consequences. As in replication and multiplying, you have to take responsibility to grow your new replica. Don't be a loser that runs from it. So make sure that when you have sex, you are ready with all the consequences. Follow rule and value, don't do sex until you got married. So you guys will have healthy sex that good for your physical and psychological health. Besides, with responsible marriage, you are taking part in creating a good society. Since irresponsible replication causing bad, a long term bad situation for family and society.

That's all for me. Thank you again.

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Credits to the owner of the pictures, from top to bottom:

• AndisBilderwerkstatt
• Rajendra prabhune
• Olgaozik
• Whatnisa
• tpsnews.ca

Daun Salam

Siapa sih yang tidak tahu daun Salam? Daun satu ini sangat mudah ditemukan di pasar dan sering digunakan sebagai bumbu penyebab rasa dalam masakan. Meskipun terasa pahit bila dimakan secara langsung, manfaat daun Salam tidak perlu diragukan lagi kalau untuk menambah kesedapan pada berbagai masakan. Selain kegunaannya sebagai bumbu masakan, ternyata daun Salam juga mempunyai manfaat di bidang kesehatan.

Daun satu ini memiliki kandungan senyawa kimia yang bisa dijadikan sebagai obat herbal berbagai jenis penyakit. Penasaran kan apa saja sih manfaat daun Salam?

Berikut adalah 6 khasiat atau manfaat daun Salam yang baik untuk kesehatan tubuh kamu.

1. Mengobati batu Ginjal
Pada tahun 2014 silam, peneliti asal Iran ingin membuktikan khasiat daun Salam terhadap pengobatan penyakit batu Ginjal. Penelitian ini menggunakan probandus yang diberikan beberapa obat tanaman herbal, termasuk salah satunya daun Salam. Kemudian dilihat pengaruhnya terhadap proses penyembuhan batu Ginjal. Ternyata penelitian tersebut menunjukkan hasil positif, di mana daun Salam mampu menguraikan kristal yang mengendap di Ginjal.

2. Mengobati Darah Tinggi dan Kolesterol
Dilansir dari The Indonesian Journal of Health Science di tahun 2018, terdapat hasil dari pengukuran efektivitas daun Salam dalam penurunan kadar Kolesterol dan tekanan Darah Tinggi, yang ternyata memberikan hasil positif. Kandungan daun Salam terdapat flavonoid, saponin dan niasin dapat menurunkan trigliserida serum.

Flavonoid yang berfungsi sebagai antioksidan mampu mencegah oksidasi sel tubuh. Oksidasi yang semakin tinggi menyebabkan semakin tinggi tingkat prevalensi pada penyakit degeneratif. Dengan demikian kandungan flavonoid yang terdapat pada daun Salam, dapat mencegah terjadinya hipertensi dan mampu menurunkan kadar Kolesterol.

3. Baik untuk penderita Diabetes
Penelitian ilmiah yang dilakukan pada tahun 2009 lalu membuktikan bahwa pasien yang mengalami Diabetes ketika mengonsumsi obat dengan kandungan 1-3 gram ekstrak daun Salam, memiliki kadar gula darah yang terkontrol dengan baik.

Tidak hanya itu, pasien yang diteliti tersebut juga memiliki kadar Kolesterol yang lebih baik jika dibandingkan dengan pasien yang tidak mengonsumsi ekstrak daun Salam. Daun Salam memiliki kandungan zat polifenol yang berfungsi sebagai antioksidan dipercaya peneliti dapat menurunkan jumlah gula darah pada penderita Diabetes. Manfaat zat ini juga mampu meningkatkan kadar Kolesterol baik dalam darah sehingga mencegah penyakit jantung yang biasa menyerang pasien Diabetes.

4. Menjaga kesehatan Jantung
Seperti yang kita ketahui bahwa manfaat daun Salam memiliki banyak sekali kandungan flavonoid. Senyawa-senyawa tersebut antara lain salisilat, fitonutrien dan asam caffeic. Keberadaan zat-zat tersebut membuat daun Salam memiliki manfaat mampu membantu dalam mencegah stroke dan meningkatkan kesehatan jantung.

5. Mengobati Asam Urat
Menurut hasil riset, banyak mengkonsumsi rebusan daun Salam ternyata bisa menyembuhkan penyakit Asam Urat. Zat kimia yang terkandung di daun Salam berupa flavonoid, tritepen, tannin, polifenol dan alkaloid bisa memperbanyak produksi urin sehingga kadar Asam Urat dalam darah bisa menurun.

Flavonoid merupakan zat pada tumbuhan hijau dengan sifat deuretik, dengan rantai karbon sebanyak 15. Zat tersebut menjadikannya antioksidan yang bisa menghambat enzim xatin oksidase yang tidak lain adalah penyebab pembentukan Asam Urat.

6. Menghancurkan lemak di tubuh
Daun Salam memiliki sejumlah kandungan gizi yang dibutuhkan oleh tubuh. Daun Salam bisa sebagai pengganti makanan berkalori tinggi yang pastinya sehat dan tidak membuat tubuh gemuk.

Serat yang begitu banyak pada daun Salam ternyata dapat membersihkan usus dari tumpukan lemak makanan. Selain itu, daun Salam diyakini bisa melancarkan saluran pencernaan dan mencegah sembelit pada perut karena kandungan senyawa tanin.

Tanin berfungsi sebagai antioksidan dan hipokolesterolemia bekerja dengan cara bereaksi dengan protein mukosa dan sel epitel. Pencernaan yang bersih akan terhindar dari zat berbahaya dari makanan sehingga kondisi usus selalu dalam keadaan sehat. ***

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Credit Image: David J. Stang