Whether it’s a hug from a friend or the caress of a weighted blanket, the sensation of touch appears to bring benefits to the body and mind, researchers say.
The sense of touch is the first to develop in babies and is crucial in enabling us to experience the environment around us as well as to communicate. Indeed, the loss of touch from others during the Covid pandemic hit very hard.
However, while numerous studies have suggested touch is beneficial to our health, few have attempted to condense the vast field of research.
Now experts have done just that and revealed a simple message: touch helps.
Dr. Helena Hartmann, a co-author of the research of University Hospital Essensaid, “More consensual touch events throughout our day can help alleviate or possibly buffer against mental and physical complaints.”
Published in the journal Nature Human BehaviorThe research included 212 previously published studies and included a statistical analysis of 85 studies involving adults and 52 involving newborns.
Among the results, the team found that touch was just as beneficial for mental health as physical health – a finding that held true for adults and newborns – although touch had a greater impact in some areas than others.
“Our work illustrates that touch interventions are best suited for reducing pain, depression and anxiety in adults and children as well as increasing weight gain in newborns,” the researchers write.
The analysis revealed that people received similar benefits in terms of their physical health when touched by other people than by objects – such as social robots or weighted blankets.
Hartmann said it was a surprise. “This means that we need to undertake more research into the potential of weighted blankets or social robots to improve people’s well-being, especially during contact-limiting situations such as the recent Covid-19 pandemic,” she said.
The positive impact on mental health was greater for human touch than object touch – possibly, the team said, because it involved skin-to-skin contact.
Among other results, the team found that touch was beneficial for both healthy and unwell people, although the impact was greater among the latter for mental health benefits.
The type of touch and its duration were not important, although greater frequency was associated with greater benefits in adults.
Furthermore, touching the head was associated with greater health benefits than touching other parts of the body.
The team cautioned that some of the findings could be false positives, while it was not clear whether they would hold across different cultures.
Dr Mariana von Mohr, of Royal Holloway, University of London, who was not involved in the work, said if future robots could more accurately replicate the texture and warmth of human skin, they could be able to provide comparable mental health benefits to human touch. to offer.
“[These properties are] important because our skin contains specialized sensors, known as C-tactile afferents, that are particularly receptive to soft, soothing touch and temperature similar to that of human skin, factors that are also thought to facilitate emotional regulation,” she said.
Prof Katerina Fotopoulou, at University College London, said the research provides a bird’s-eye view of the health benefits of touch interventions.
She cautioned that the work cannot provide more specific conclusions, such as the specific type of touch that may be associated with specific health benefits.
Dr Susannah Walker, at Liverpool John Moores University, agreed, noting that many of the studies considered were small and included different types of touch and different measures of their outcomes. “That means it’s hard to draw firm conclusions about why they work,” she said.
Fotopoulou added that the research could fuel new work in the field, including how touch can be used in conjunction with other treatments.
“It is a historical accident that we have prioritized talking over touch or other somatic therapies in the past few centuries. This review gives us the necessary emphasis and confidence to redress this balance with further, careful study on touch interventions,” she said.
