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Hug someone you love every day to stay healthy and strong

Hugs – the best medicine?

Instead of an apple – or maybe in addition to – could a hug-a-day keep the doctor away?

Most of us understand the notion of therapeutic touch. Massage therapies exemplify that concept. But can simple hand holding or hugging be just as effective and if so why?

In recent new study researchers tested whether hugs act as a form of social support, protecting stressed people from getting sick.

Writing in an upcoming edition of the journal Psychological Science, they found that greater social support and more frequent hugs did indeed protect people from the increased susceptibility to infection associated with being stressed and resulted in less severe illness symptoms.

The researchers chose to study hugging as an example of social support because hugs are typically a marker of having a more intimate and close relationship with another person.

“We know that people experiencing ongoing conflicts with others are less able to fight off cold viruses. We also know that people who report having social support are partly protected from the effects of stress on psychological states, such as depression and anxiety,” said lead researcher Sheldon Cohen.

Hugs are a show of support

The researchers set out to discover whether those who feel more supported are indeed better able to fight of infection and what part if any hugging played in that feeling of being supported and maintaining strong immunity.

The researchers interviewed 404 healthy adults to get an idea of how supported they felt, how full of conflict their personal relationships were and how often they received hugs.  Then, the participants were intentionally exposed to a common cold virus and monitored in quarantine to assess infection and signs of illness.

The results showed that perceived social support reduced the risk of infection associated with experiencing conflicts. Hugs were responsible for one-third of the protective effect of social support.

Among infected participants, greater perceived social support and more frequent hugs both resulted in less severe illness symptoms whether or not they experienced conflicts.

A protective effect from hugging is not as far fetched as it seems. Humans are social animals hard-wired for touch, and there’s plenty of evidence to show that touch whether through hugs or massage, can be therapeutic.

Lowering stress and anxiety

Supportive touch lowers output of cortisol, a stress hormone. When cortisol dips, there’s a surge of two “feel good” brain chemicals, serotonin and dopamine. In other words touch stimulates some of the same feel good hormones as chocolate.

Human touch is important, but in  a pinch any soothing object will do. In one study of fears, scientists found that especially for people with low self esteem and worries about mortality, hugging and touching a soothing object like a teddy bear significantly reduce those worries and fears.

Good for the heart

Many of the therapeutic mechanics of touch are also known The sense of pressure on your skin, for instance, when someone hugs you or squeezes your hand activates pressure receptors called Pacinian corpuscles. These send signals to the vagus nerve, an area of the brain that is responsible for (among many things) lowering blood pressure.

In one study of 100 couples some were told to hold hands while viewing a pleasant 10-minute video, then asked to hug for 20 seconds, others rested quietly without their partners.

Asked to then revisit something that had recently made them angry – something that would normally drive up heart rate and blood pressure. It all sounds rather clinical but the researchers found that:

• Blood pressure soared in those who had no contact. Their systolic (upper) reading jumped 24 points, more than double the rise for huggers, and their diastolic (lower) also rose significantly higher.
• Heart rate increased 10 beats a minute for those without contact compared with five beats a minute for huggers.

Loving contact before a tough day at work could, say the researchers carry over and protect you if you’ve got a tough day ahead.

Women’s heart health may particularly benefit more from hugs.

A 2005 study showed hugs increased women’s levels of oxytocin, a “bonding” hormone, and reduced blood pressure – which also cuts the risk of heart disease.

But beware of strangers

There is one caveat to the benefits of hugs. Researchers in Vienna have found that hugs from strangers don’t have the same therapeutic effect and may even have the opposite effect.

When we receive unwanted hugs from strangers or even people we know, the hormone is not released, says neurophysiologist Jürgen Sandkühler, Head of the Centre for Brain Research at the Medical University of Vienna.

The positive effect only occurs if the people trust each other, and are mutually receptive to a hug. If not, he says, we secrete the stress hormone cortisol.”

The upshot? Don’t give up that apple a day, or any of your other health giving habits. Instead consider adding  the benefits of giving and receiving supportive touch to your repertoire.

Amongst those you love, hug, squeeze and hold hands frequently. It’s better than pills and and it could just provide extra protection against infection and stress.