Most people find comfort in a hug after a stressful day or someone holding your hand when feeling down, but a new study has found that touch actually benefits a person’s physical and mental health considerably.
Researchers at the Netherlands Institute of Neuroscience found that consensual touch has a variety of different benefits to your general wellbeing, and the most interesting part is the touch doesn’t have to be from a human.
Study reveals benefits of touch
The study concluded that touch “substantially improves both physical and mental wellbeing” via reducing pain, anxiety, depression, and stress.
Plus, those with physical or mental health problems benefit even more from touch than healthy adults. In all cases, the touch must be consensual.
Interestingly, the study found that the person touching you, how they touch you, and the duration of their touch doesn’t make a difference in terms of impact.
For example, a long-lasting massage by a therapist could be just as effective as a quick hug from a friend, but the frequency of the touch is important.
The more often a touch is offered, the greater the impact. So, a quick hug could be even more impactful than a massage if it is given more frequently.
Touch doesn’t have to be human
The study found that the touch doesn’t actually need to be by another human, and object or robot interventions can be just as effective at improving physical wellbeing.
“There are lots of people in need of wellbeing improvements, perhaps because they’re lonely but also because they may be inflicted by clinical conditions,” author Frédéric Michon said. “These results indicate that a touch-robot, or even a simple weighted blanket has the potential to help those people.”
However, while robot touch is good at improving physical health, it isn’t as effective in advancing mental wellbeing. Mental health disorders like anxiety or depression benefit more from human touch.
Michon explained that’s because these people require an “emotional component” alongside the touch which cannot be provided by a robot.
Newborns impacted by touch
Researchers also found that newborns benefit significantly from touch, but the person conducting it is far more important. When a parent touches their baby, the benefits are greater than a healthcare worker or other human.
Another of the study’s authors, Packheiser, said this knowledge that babies benefit from the touch of their parents can be extremely impactful in countries where premature births are high, as it’s easily implementable.
This study was carried out by researchers from the Social Brain Lab at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience and the University Hospital Essen, who conducted a large-scale analysis of studies exploring touch interventions.
