OUT OF TOUCH

Human contact is vital for wellbeing – and you can reap the benefits from a distance

This time last year, ‘keep your hands to yourself’ became a government edict. What followed was a mass craving for physical contact – termed skin hunger – that’s been inextricably linked with loneliness. As we cautiously plan for life after Covid, WH explores the link between your hands and your happiness

f you could reach out for anyone’s hand right now, whose would it be? The small, sticky squeeze of your just-walking niece? Maybe it’s the interlocked fingers of a successful fourth date, the stroke of your grandma’s satin skin or the firm handshake that says the job you’ve been slogging away for is finally yours. Whichever palm you pick, we suspect you’ve given the question a great deal more thought than you would have done this time last year, when your biggest contact dilemma was misjudging whether someone was going in for one cheek kiss or two.

It was only when the world lost touch last March that people realised the power of all things tactile to convey emotion profoundly, meaning instantly and comfort deeply. In the many months since, reams of data have sought to prove what you’ve probably felt for yourself during lockdown: that touch isn’t just nice to have; it’s essential to your physical and emotional health. So, as we mark one year since the start of one of the largest randomised control trials in history, what has losing touch taught us about having it?

The award for the most prophetic piece of research published in 2020 goes to those behind The Touch Test – a large global study into the social role of touch, which just so happened to take place between January and March last year. Collaborators from Goldsmiths University, BBC Radio 4 and the Wellcome Collection gathered data from 40,000 people in 112 countries, asking if they liked to touch, how often they touched others and how physical affection affected their mental health. Researchers found a striking touch-happiness correlation: those who rated touch positively recorded the highest wellbeing scores, and those who’d touched most recently were the least lonely. Even then, we were social distancing, albeit subconsciously; 54% felt they didn’t get enough touch.

‘We were already on the road to working autonomously, connecting virtually rather than in person and holding a smartphone as a substitute for a human hand,’ says chartered psychologist Suzy Reading, author of Self-care For Tough Times. You knew, of course, that hugs trumped likes, but it wasn’t until screen time went from fun distraction to your only form of human interaction that you realised by how much. In April, the Office for National Statistics began investigating just how widespread contact-starved loneliness was. One in seven Brits (14.3%) had felt so lonely during the previous seven days that it

affected their wellbeing. Living alone upped the odds to 57%, and there were similar patterns for those who were single. It’s not a coincidence that levels of loneliness were higher among those more likely to be starved of both conversation and touch, adds Reading. ‘Touch is the most significant way we seek safety and comfort.’ Without it, your brain goes into defence mode. The resulting stress can increase heart rate and muscle tension, and lead to racing thoughts, difficulty sleeping and focusing and, though unconfirmed by scientific research, the urge to kidnap your neighbour’s cat for a cuddle.

PALM READING

Think back to that crowded commuter train and it’s easy to disregard the value of touch when you’re pressed shoulder to shoulder, inhaling day-old armpit. But it’s a sense that’s important from before birth – foetuses experience touch in the womb – and the only one that’s with you until death. Sight and hearing fail, and both taste and smell ultimately fade. Being held is what makes babies bond with their parents and it’s why children in orphanages often self-soothe by repeatedly rocking back and forth. Harry Harlow, one of the first psychologists to perform (the now controversial) bonding experiments in the 1960s, found that if he separated a baby monkey from its mother, it would cling to a cloth-covered wire surrogate rather than a wire surrogate with milk. The monkey was so desperate for affection that it picked touch-based nourishment over actual nourishment.

This in-built longing for contact, known as skin hunger, isn’t something you grow out of as an adult; it’s a desire that exists within skin itself. The skin is covered with mechanoreceptors – sensors that detect different touch sensations, such as vibration and pressure – and nerve endings, which respond to temperature and pain. These sensations are transmitted from the skin to the spinal cord and brain, where it’s the job of the somatosensory cortex to process what touch is going on in different body parts. But it doesn’t just recognise that someone’s scratching your back and oh my god, up a bit, to the

‘Touch is the most significant way we seek comfort’

left; the somatosensory cortex also has a direct line to your brain’s emotional processing areas, meaning touch and emotion are completely interlinked. When you hug, hold hands or feel friendly touch, your brain releases oxytocin (adorably dubbed the ‘cuddle hormone’) – the neuropeptide used in brain communication to foster trust and bonding and dial down anxiety, too.

A happy accident, this isn’t. New research is demonstrating that skin has evolved specifically to reap these social support benefits. One of the leading names in the field is Professor Francis Mcglone, who leads the Somatosensory & Affective Neuroscience Group at Liverpool John Moores University. He’s spent his career working out what gets on your skin’s nerves – in a good way. He tells WH that there are two types of touch nerves in the skin. ‘Fast nerves tell you that an event has occurred on the skin, so they orient attention to the body, while slow nerves called C-fibres project to the brain, to areas that process emotion,’ he explains. Neuroscientists have known about this double system, and its role in pain, for some time. If you burn yourself, it’s the fast system’s reflex that pulls your hand away and gives you a sharp pricking sensation; a few seconds later, the C-fibres make you experience deep, throbbing pain. ‘We’ve discovered recently that there’s a similar duality for touch,’ Professor Mcglone continues.

‘As soon as you’re touched, you feel it on the skin. But depending on contextual factors, such as who is touching you and how, after a few seconds, the C-fibre that responds to gentle touch will leave its mark in your emotional brain.’

He believes these slow C-fibres for touching exist purely to facilitate social bonding and, by watching how the nerves behave while skin is being touched, his team has identified what they respond to best; gentle touch, as close to skin temperature as possible, at an optimum caress speed of 3cm to 5cm of skin per second. Before you reach for a stopwatch, this stroke speed is the default velocity you use when comforting a baby or touching your partner. Essentially, it’s evolutionarily embedded inside you in order to keep you touching and bonding. As for hugs? A 20-second squeeze is the sweet spot to release oxytocin.