The gentle touch of another during times of anxiety, sadness, or grief can soothe both body and mind.
Researchers have recently confirmed that nonsexual touch, such as hugging and massage, has “critical importance” in promoting physical and mental health.
Many people live with chronic pain from arthritis, injuries, and conditions such as fibromyalgia. Anxiety and depression are also prevalent maladies, affecting approximately 19.1 percent and 8.3 percent of the U.S. populace, respectively. A new study published in Nature Human Behavior (NHB) found that being touched offers substantial relief from these health challenges without the side effects of medications.
The study also explored factors—such as frequency, duration, and characteristics of the toucher—that may optimize the benefits of touch. Some of the findings were surprising and counterintuitive.
“A key question of our study is to leverage the hundreds of individual studies out there to identify what type of touch works best,” co-author and neuroscientist Christian Keysers said in a Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience (NIN) statement.
“What if you don’t have a friend or partner close by to hug you? Would touch from a stranger or even a machine also help? And how often? The study clearly shows that touch can indeed be optimized, but the most important factors are not necessarily those we suspect.”
What and Whom Can Touch Heal?
The NHB study comprised a meta-analysis of 137 research papers and a systemic review of an additional 75, involving 12,966 individuals. Overall, it found that touch provided a medium beneficial effect best suited for decreasing depression, anxiety, and pain in adults and children, as well as promoting weight gain in newborns.
Various types of touch showed similar benefits, including massage, gentle stroking, and kangaroo care (skin-to-skin contact between baby and parent) of infants. While touch offered advantages in healthy people, those with physical or mental health conditions benefited the most.
Does the Toucher Make a Difference?
With the intent of optimizing the benefits, the NHB study explored whether characteristics of the toucher can affect the results. They also investigated the effects of touch from objects, as people living alone lack human touch.
Unsurprisingly, the review found that touch from an object or robot was less effective in producing mental health benefits than touch from a human. In contrast, human touch did not prove superior to nonhuman touch in providing physical health benefits.
What about touch from a familiar person versus touch from a stranger? The study found this factor made no difference—which may seem counterintuitive given our association of touch with emotional support. The exception was newborns, who received more benefits from parental touch than from that of medical staff.
“This finding could be impactful,” first author Julian Packheiser said in the NIN statement. “Death rates due to premature births are high in some countries, and the knowledge that a baby benefits more from the touch of their own parent offers another easily implementable form of support for the baby’s health.”
Does Frequency and Duration of Touch Make a Difference?
Increased frequency of touch produced better outcomes, while increased duration did not, the NHB study notes. Some evidence suggested an association between prolonged touch and increases in the stress hormone cortisol and blood pressure. Additionally, unlike another study published in Acta Paediatrica that linked weight gain in preterm infants with longer touch duration, the NHB study found no support for this.
These findings indicate that the higher the frequency of touch, the greater the effect, suggesting that several quick hugs per day may be more beneficial than a 20-minute massage.
Highlights From Other Research on the Benefits of Touch
The NBH study found that touch reduced anxiety, which is surely an effect that offers advantages in diverse aspects of life.
A new study published in Psychology of Sport and Exercise illustrates one such aspect, as it found that reduced anxiety resulting from touch may enhance sports performance. Athletes who received a friendly pat on the back before attempting a free throw in a basketball game had a higher likelihood of making the shot. However, the effect appeared only after a failed first shot. The authors concluded that touch may reduce performance damage from stress.
An earlier study published in Psychological Science found that in addition to having stress-buffering effects, touch (and other support), may have a beneficial effect on the immune system. Participants receiving more hugs after being exposed to a virus had better protection from infection and symptoms than those who received fewer hugs. Even among individuals with more interpersonal conflict, which researchers believe weakens immunity, huggers became ill less frequently.
The anxiety-reducing benefit of massage may help people cope with an array of health conditions, according to an additional study published in HHS Public Access. It found that massage can reduce stress during labor and the cancer treatment of bone marrow aspirations, as well as in postoperative recovery following heart surgery. Since anxiety is not uncommon during many medical interventions and chronic diseases, the implications for the relaxing effects of massage are broad.
Experts Weigh In on the Power of Touch
The medical community may not fully understand the factors underlying the power of touch, but various theories involve intricate connections among neurological, hormonal, and psychological factors.
“The neural mechanisms through which touch can improve mental and physical wellbeing are complex,” Mr. Keysers told The Epoch Times in an email. “We know that we have special sensors in the skin that detect gentle touch and send these signals to regions in the brain central to our emotional states. In addition, we suspect that gentle touch activates three important neural messengers: oxytocin, dopamine, and the opioid system, such as endorphins.”
Mr. Keysers explained how each of these messengers produces positive emotions. Oxytocin decreases stress and fosters trust, attachment, and social bonding. Dopamine contributes to feelings of pleasure, which may encourage seeking out social interactions, thereby possibly relieving loneliness. Endorphins play a critical role in pain modulation and mood regulation, both of which contribute to feelings of comfort and relaxation.
Touch also influences the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. The sympathetic nervous system (SNS) produces the fight-or-flight response to perceived danger, while the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) promotes calmness and relaxation.
“The SNS releases adrenaline when a person feels anxiety in anticipation of threats, such as failure, rejection, or abuse,” Jeanette Raymond, licensed clinical psychologist and psychotherapist, told The Epoch Times in an email. “However, hugging, back rubbing, and stroking in non-sexual ways sends messages to the SNS to tone down the stress hormones. Such touching also activates the vagus nerve, which is part of the PNS, thus fostering a sense of safety.”
According to Ms. Raymond, this may underlie how a hug or embrace can provide a sense of protection from threat when feeling helpless. Just as a baby stops crying when held, adults also feel a lowering of distress in an embrace.
The factors undergirding how touch can reduce pain are multifaceted, according to board-certified internist Dr. Jacob Teitelbaum.
“For local pain, early work on the biophysics of touch suggests that it improves blood flow to the area,” he told The Epoch Times in an email. “Deeper touch in the form of massage can be powerfully effective for releasing tight muscle bands called trigger points. These are responsible for likely more than half of the pain experienced by people in the U.S.”
Dr. Teitelbaum added that neuroimaging suggests an overlapping in areas of the brain involved in the suffering of physical pain and social ostracism. This may account, in part, for how slow, soothing touch can not only alleviate pain but also reduce anxiety and depression by creating a sense of social inclusion.
While the three experts discussed different factors, they all described the value of touch in the strongest terms. Mr. Keysers characterized it as “amazing,” Dr. Teitelbaum called it “incredibly healing,” and Ms. Raymond said that it promotes benefits “without which we cannot exist.”
More research is necessary to clarify just how touch renders its benefits. In the meantime, it is clear that touch is powerful, indeed. It is also free of charge and available to all.
