It is no secret that hugs feel good but do you know why do we enjoy them so much and are you sure that we all enjoy them equally? Recent scientific studies have confirmed how hugs have both physiological and psychological benefits even though there are countries with cultural fear of hugging. I hope you enjoy hugs regularly and notice how they impact your health and well-being.
Do not worry if hugging does not come naturally to you. We are a diverse species and what one person finds normal may be completely insane to another. There are those who enjoy hugging everyone and have no problem opening their arms to strangers while on the other hand, we have those that fringe when someone touches them. Most of us are somewhere in the middle and have unwritten rules on who and when can hug us. That is fine. All that matters is that you are comfortable with yourself and your surroundings. Step out of your comfort zone now and then but when you want it, not when others want you too.
I will talk about how hugs are beneficial for our emotional and psychological health but let's start with something you did not expect, their benefit for our physical health. Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University surveyed 404 healthy adults about the number of hugs they received over a two-week period, and then quarantined them and intentionally exposed them to the common cold virus. Results were amazing.
Researchers tested if hugs act as a form of social support, protecting stressed people from getting sick and their findings were published in Psychological Science. In this small study, those who got frequent hugs were less likely than others to catch a cold and if they did, they had less severe illness symptoms. The reason behind this are lowered stress levels and we all know how our bodies have a stronger immune system when they are not under stress. The lead researcher concluded how the protective effect of hugs may be attributed to the physical contact and a behavioral indicator of support.
This, of course, does not mean that every hug helps so do not go around hugging people and expecting miracles. This is one of the ways that you can boost (at least temporarily) your immune system and help yourself feel better. When you are happy and satisfied, you are more likely to get better sooner but you already knew that, didn't you? You can read the research paper about this study here:
Let us stay on the physical benefits of hugging a bit longer. We have come along way from therapeutic touch being considered witchcraft. Today we know that our neurons fire up whenever we are in contact with other living creatures which is something that stayed with us ever since we left the wombs of our mothers. Babies especially need hugs and that therapeutic benefit (luckily for us) did not go away.
No matter how often some of us try to explain and emphasize the effects stress has on our bodies, some people never learn. It really all comes down to stress. Your cardiovascular activity is the one most affected by it. There was an interesting study in which only 10 minutes of holding hands followed by a 20-second hug showed greater reductions in blood pressure levels and heart rate. You can check that research here:
The research confirms what I have been telling you all along, happy means healthy. One of the ways you can always help yourself is to lower your stress levels. It helps with your pain too. All you have to do is find ways that make you calm and relaxed, hugging is one of those ways. Your brain chemistry is not the same and overall hormone levels are different which helps your immune system not only work better but respond better to medicine too.
And here we are with its Majesty the Brain again. You didn't think I was going to skip telling you what exactly happens with your brain chemistry, did you? The afferent c-tactile neurons are responsible for all those benefits that I have mentioned before. They are found only in hairy skin and quite different than usual nerves that convey information about touch, pain, and pressure. CT afferents respond only to light and slow stroking.
Yup, that's right, only 0.22 milliNewtons of force is enough to elicit high impulse rates because CTs have thin-diameter axons lacking an insulating sheath of fatty myelin which makes their conduction velocity slow. A signal is conveyed along the axon at about 0.8–1.2 m/sec. When someone strokes your skin, CT impulse reaches the peak rates of 100 impulses per second but after about four seconds, they adapt to stimulation and firing decreases or stops. The great thing is they have a direct route into the brain where they trigger the release of endorphins. You can read about endorphins in my post about them here:
Endorphins are neuropeptides, small molecules that produce an opiate-like analgesic effect and are chemically closely related to opiate drugs like morphine
The pathway CTs go on is an ‘afferent limb’ of the sympathetic nervous system. This means that the information it carries has a close relationship with regulatory and homeostatic processing. When someone strokes you gently, blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) signal increases in your posterior insular cortex. A positron emission tomography (PET) was used and showed how light stroking of the torso triggers a massive endorphin response in the human brain. Since feelings of psychological pain are processed in the same brain regions as our feelings of physical pain (anterior cingulate cortex and the periaqueductal gray), endorphins triggered by hugs help us deal with pain. You can read about the research with positron emission tomography here:
If you were wondering why people crave hugs and can get addicted to them, it is also because of endorphins. They activate regions of the brain associated with reward (orbitofrontal cortex) which makes us want to repeat that pleasant experience.
Modern social conventions too often push people not to touch others who are not directly related to them. This leaves us touch-deprived and we miss out on so many benefits from hugging. Science proves how regular hugs can have especially positive effects on both your brain and body so think about adding a hug or two into your daily routine. Family therapist Virginia Satir once said how we need 4 hugs a day to survive, 8 hugs a day for maintenance and 12 for growth but if you ask me, we need even more than that. You can never have too many hugs. Just be sure both people are wanting and enjoying them :)
I have to admit, I am a hug person. I really enjoy hugging BUT not with everyone. It takes me a while to allow someone to come closer than an arm's length so you will not see me hugging strangers. A handshake will do in those situations but once I get to know you, if you allow me, you will get hugged a lot. I do not enjoy crowds especially in small spaces and do not like to be touched by people I do not know so crowded elevators and concerts are nightmares to me. There is a mechanism in the brain’s frontal lobe that switches touch from pleasurable to unpleasant if the wrong person does it and it works extra fast in my case. How about you? How often do you hug? Let me know in the comments below and until then, if you are interested in learning more about this subject, check out these REFERENCES:
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