Are Hugs the New Steps?
As if there weren’t enough to worry about, what with climate change and pandemics and modern politics, the U.S. Surgeon General announced recently that America is experiencing an epidemic of loneliness. To give you a sense of how serious the problem is, the report explains that the health risks of social disconnection are similar to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
Yeah. It’s not great.
But here’s what is great: Science may have an answer. It’s a simple solution that is free, feels good, and is good for you, too. It’s hugs.
Bear hugs. Group hugs. Side hugs. Even bro hugs. Any situation in which two or more people consent to encircle their arms each around the other has incredible benefits for physical as well as mental health.
As a huge hugger myself, I was delighted to learn this, and eager to dive into the science. I spoke to Kory Floyd, PhD, professor of communication and psychology at the University of Arizona, and Anna Lena Düren, PhD, a researcher and psychologist in Bonn, Germany. What I learned blew my mind (and opened my arms even wider).
1. Hugs lower your blood pressure
You know that moment when you’re super tense and you get a welcome hug, and you can actually feel the tension melting away? That’s because it is, says Floyd. He explains that plenty of research has found hugging lowers your blood pressure, heart rate, and stress hormones, including cortisol. One study found that getting a 20-second hug just before the stress-inducing task of public speaking lowered heart rate as well as systolic and diastolic blood pressure. Another study discovered that women who were frequently hugged tended to have higher levels of oxytocin (known as “the cuddle hormone”) and lower blood pressure.
Floyd theorizes that these physical benefits have deep evolutionary roots: “They evolved in the human species from maternal caregiving, from when a mother embracing a newborn had very functional benefits: to keep the newborn warm and safe from the elements, protected.” Centuries later, that protective effect is still present, only now instead of shielding us from blizzards and saber-tooth tigers, hugs shield us from stress and loneliness.
2. Hugs boost immunity
No, really.
A group of scientists from Carnegie Mellon proved this when they recruited 400 adults, measured how many daily hugs they received for two weeks, and then exposed them to a respiratory virus. They found that the more hugs the participants had had, the lower their risk of infection. Among participants who did develop a cold, more frequent hugs were associated with less severe illness.
The thinking? Floyd, whose own work found that hugging lowers inflammation in the body, confesses that researchers aren’t exactly sure—but again, it likely has to do with stress reduction. “When we’re not bearing a high stress load in our bodies, our immune system is better able to do its job,” he explains.
3. Giving a hug is good for you, too
We don’t need science to tell us that being wrapped in a hug lifts us up when we’re down. But you might not guess that the benefit of physical touch applies to the giver as well as the receiver. Researchers proved this by zapping 20 people with electrical shocks while their romantic partners held their arms affectionately (side note: weirdest experiment ever). It wasn’t the zapped group that the scientists were interested in, but the support-giving partners, whose brain activity they monitored with functional MRI scans. They found that giving physical affection to partners in need increased activity in the ventral striatum and septal area, parts of the brain related to reward. Just one more reason to offer a hug the next time you see someone getting zapped (or, you know, looking anxious or down in the dumps).
4. Your hugs might not be long enough
What makes an ideal embrace? Düren and her team set out to uncover this via an experiment in which subjects were hugged for different durations (one, five, and 10 seconds) and with different arm configurations, and asked to rate their mood before and after. They found that arm configuration didn’t impact the experience, but duration did. An average hug, Düren says, lasts about three seconds, so they weren’t surprised to discover that one-second hugs ranked lowest.
What was surprising, though, was that subjects enjoyed the 10-seconds hugs. “We anticipated that a 10-second hug with a stranger in a lab might qualify as weird and less pleasant” than a shorter one, says Düren. (To give you a sense of just how long that is, I’ll pause as you count to 10 slowly. Done? Finally? It was an eternity, wasn’t it? An ice age.) And yet, that eternity of closeness with a stranger was rated as pleasurable. Bottom line: Before you conclude that you’re satisfied with your run-of-the-mill three-second hug, you might consider trying a 10-second one—with a consenting partner, of course.
That last point is critical. “Consent is often not obtained when hugging someone,” says Düren. “I think it is important to look for nonverbal cues about whether another person is uncomfortable.” Floyd concurs. “A lot of people have had the experience of hugging someone and they let go but the other person does not,” he explains. “That starts to feel like entrapment, which kicks in a stress response almost immediately.” He shares this simple formula: “When you are hugging someone and you no longer want to be, that’s the exact moment it stops benefiting you.”
5. Hugging yourself (or a pet) counts
It’s all very well and good to establish that hugs are fantastic for our health, but what if you don’t have easy and consistent access to them? What then?
Floyd says you just need to be a more strategic and proactive about putting yourself in situations where physical touch of all kinds, not just hugs, is more likely to happen. Joining in a contact sports team might do the trick, or, if your budget can cover it, getting a massage or mani-pedi. “If you have friends who are okay with some touch, it can be helpful to make a habit of greeting and saying goodbye by sharing a hug,” Duren suggests.
And of course, there’s always pets—an indispensable source of snuggling—and self-hugs, too. Like other forms of self-touch, including bilateral tapping, hugging yourself has stress-relieving benefits, says Floyd: “At some level, your brain doesn’t distinguish touch you are giving yourself and touch you’re giving someone else.”
You Might Also Like
