A hug, a handshake, a therapeutic massage. A newborn lying on his mother’s bare chest.
Physical contact can improve well-being and reduce pain, depression and anxiety, shows an analysis of research published in the journal Nature Human Behavior.
Researchers in Germany and the Netherlands reviewed years of research on touch, cuddling, hugging and massage. They also combined data from 137 studies, which included almost 13,000 adults, children and babies. Each study compared individuals who had been physically touched in some way during the course of an experiment—or who had touched an object like a stuffed animal—with similar individuals who had not.
One study showed that daily 20-minute gentle massages for six weeks in older people with dementia decreased aggression and reduced levels of a stress marker in the blood. Another found that massages improved the mood of breast cancer patients. And one even showed that healthy young adults who stroked a robotic seal pup were happier and felt less pain when faced with a mild heat stimulus than those who read an article about an astronomer.
The positive effects were particularly notable in premature babies, who “improve enormously” with skin-to-skin contact, said Frédéric Michon, a researcher at the Netherlands Institute of Neuroscience and one of the study’s authors.
The analysis revealed some interesting patterns. Among adults, sick people showed greater mental health benefits from being touched than healthy people. Women seem to benefit more from being touched than men, which may be a cultural effect, Michon said. Frequency also mattered.
Several studies looked at what happened during the Covid pandemic, when people were isolated and had less physical contact with others. “They found correlations during Covid times between the deprivation of physical contact and health aspects such as depression and anxiety,” Michon said.
Studies of people in South America tended to show greater health benefits from being touched than studies of people in North America or Europe. Michon said culture may somewhat play a role.
“I think the mechanism behind this is biological,” said Rebecca Boehme, a neuroscientist at Linkoping University in Sweden, who reviewed the study for the journal. “I think that is programmed and it will be the same for everyone.”
#Physical #contact #caresses #hugs #massages #therapeutic #effects #health #benefits #study