“The benefits of hugging are really amazing,” Tiffany Field, director of the Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine, told Yahoo News. There are not only physical benefits when a person is hugged, but also emotional and mental health benefits.
Field explained that when you are embraced, the pressure from the hug stimulates pressure receptors under the skin, which slows down the nervous system, and, in turn, less stress hormone is released. “When you have less stress hormone, you save your natural killer cells, and they kill viral cells, bacterial cells and cancer cells.”
Field went on to point out the unfortunate irony of social distancing during the pandemic. “At a time when we need a lot of physical stimulation, like hugging, we’re getting too little of it. And what that is bound to do is not only make us less healthy because of the fact that we have higher stress hormones. And then we have fewer immune cells that can give us physical illness.”
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