The pandemic made the world realise the importance
La pandémie a révélé à quel point à quel point le contact humain est important
of human contact THE ECONOMIST
Le toucher : indispensable à notre survie.
Nous accordons souvent une importance capitale à notre vue et notre ouïe. La perte du goût et de l'odorat, symptôme du coronavirus, ont également été amplement discuté depuis le début de la pandémie. Mais qu'en est-il du toucher ? D’après The Economist, ce sens souvent délaissé serait pourtant indispensable à notre survie, et représenterait un véritable signe d'appartenance sociale...
It has been 11 months since anyone hugged Larry. The 62-year-old accountant lives alone in Chicago, which went into lockdown last March in response to covid-19. He has heart problems so he has stayed at home since then. The only people to touch him have been latex-sheathed nurses taking his blood pressure. Larry describes himself as a “touchy-feely” person. He lies in bed, he says, yearning to have someone to hold or to hold him.
2. The pandemic has been an exercise in subtraction. There are the voids left by loved ones who have succumbed to covid-19, the gaps where jobs and school used to be, and the absence of friends and family. And then there are the smaller things that are missing. To stop the spread of covid-19 people have forsaken the handshakes, pats, squeezes and strokes that warm daily interactions. The loss of any one hardly seems worthy of note.
3. And yet touch is as necessary to human survival as food and water, says Tiffany Field, director of the Touch Research Institute at the Miller School of Medicine, part of the University of Miami. It is the first sense to develop and the only one necessary for survival. We can live with the loss of sight or hearing. But without touch, which enables us to detect such stimuli as pressure, temperature and texture, we would be unable to walk or feel pain. Our skin is the vehicle through which we navigate the world.
4. But not until the pandemic, with its widespread social distancing, have such vast swathes of the population been deprived of friendly physical contact for so long. Humans need touch to form close relationships. To improve its chances of survival, Homo sapiens evolved to live in groups. Humans “need to interact with each other”, explains Alberto Gallace, a psychobiologist at the University of Milano-Bicocca, which may explain why, like other social animals, they have developed a neurological system designed to respond to affectionate touch.
5. Stimuli applied to the skin at a certain pressure and speed—“basically a caress”, says Dr Gallace—activate a dedicated nerve fibre in the skin. Stimulating this fibre lights up
parts of the brain responsible for pleasure, releasing a cocktail of hormones, including dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin, that soothe anxiety and make us feel happier. 6. The importance of touch starts early. A review of scientific literature conducted in 2016 found that babies who had skin-to-skin contact with their mothers immediately after birth were 32% more likely to breastfeed successfully on their first attempt than those who did not. Several hours later, they also had better heart and lung function and higher blood-sugar levels.
7. The positive health effects continue. Touch depresses levels of cortisol, a hormone produced in response to stress. In 2014 researchers at Carnegie Mellon University observed that healthy adults who were hugged more frequently were less likely to get colds, perhaps because such embraces are a way of communicating affection, and people who feel cared for are less likely to fall ill. 8. A lack of touch, by contrast, is damaging. Children who are not cuddled tend to develop certain cognitive skills later than their peers. A lack of touch may fuel aggression.
9. Without regular contact people can become “skin hungry”, a state in which they experience less touch than they want. The few studies that have been done into skin hunger suggest it is harmful. A survey of 509 adults from around the world in 2014 suggested that being deprived of touch was linked to loneliness, depression, stress, mood and anxiety disorders and secondary immune disorders.
"CUDDLE THERAPISTS"
10. The pandemic supercharged that. In a poll of 260 Americans who had been under lockdown for a month last April, conducted by Dr Field, 60% said that they longed for physical contact. 11. Some were trying to mend this before the pandemic. In 2015 Madelon Guinazzo and Adam Lippin founded Cuddlist, a company which trains “cuddle therapists”. They suspected that many people longed for “platonic, mutual, consensual touch that’s purely about affection”, says Ms Guinazzo. That need was not being met, she argues, because of the “hypersexualisation” of touch in America.
12. Larry, the accountant from Chicago, began seeing Ms Guinazzo three years ago. He was uncomfortable with the idea of paying for hugs but his desire for contact exceeded the brief embraces he received from friends. He was surprised to find that the shoulder rubs, hugs and hand-holding brought him comfort and “a sense of joy”.
13. The pandemic has made many more people aware of their craving for touch, says Ms Guinazzo. Her business has suffered, but once covid-19 ebbs she expects demand to surge. People need to touch people, not just screens.