machado: skin-to-skin contact is critical to healing, recovery and mental health. imagine if touch was a standard of health care?
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"social touch" helps anchor our emotional, mental and physical health. getty
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“that stuff is so important,” said a woman who was sitting on her porch, eating a green pear. her black hair was tightly tied into two braids that lay on either side of her face. she stepped down the wooden stairs to pet my blind pug, archie.
the woman was referring to a couple across the street who had been locked in a close embrace for quite some time. it all started about ten minutes before. one of the guys was making his way down the street holding a big coffee from the local coffee shop. he was limping, his leg wrapped in a long black brace. there were deep red scratches on one arm, and a white bandage on the elbow of the other arm. as he walked gingerly, head down as he looked at his phone, the thick brown curls on his head bounced slowly. he glanced up and a big smile appeared on his face. his expression was so lit up that everyone nearby — the woman on her porch, a man carrying a baby on his chest, two teenage boys dressed in soccer gear — followed his gaze down the block to the corner, where a shorter guy in yellow shorts and black sandals was standing.
“how are you feeling?” he called out, tilting his head to the side and putting a hand on his heart.
as they embraced, the woman said she was a personal support worker at a rehabilitation hospital. her specialty was people living with brain injury.
“i believe in the power of touch,” she said, gesturing with one arm to the couple, now walking together, the taller guy heavily leaning on his partner for support.
touch helps with healing and recovery
she went on to talk about the astonishing recoveries she had seen in people never expected to recover, successes that she connected to their families and friends who would hold them at night as they chased sleep because of pain, massage tired limbs and not hesitate to throw an arm around their waist if it meant a short walk down the hospital hallway. even people managing mental health challenges did better, she said, if they had someone willing to give them a hug or even shake their hand.
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“it’s just so important to connect with another body when you are hurting,” she said, adding that she had worked in all kinds of health care facilities and wished that doctors understood how important physical touch was to healing and mental health.
certainly, the get-better effect of close connection is not a new phenomenon. one of the earliest studies on the benefits of touch was done in 1922, finding that rats that were handled ( “petted and gentled”) were less timid, apprehensive and high-strung than those that weren’t. and, of course, we’ve long known about the importance of touch for babies, not only in terms of factors like regulating temperature, heart rate and breathing, but also development: babies deprived of touch often experience delays in growth, and can even die.
sex makes you a better person by improving your mental health
touch deprivation, also known as touch starvation or skin hunger, has implications for adults as well, according to psychology today, with levels of anxiety and depression being inversely related to the amount of physical connection one receives. (and we’re not talking about sex here, although consensual sexual intimacy has the same positive effects. in fact, the experts say getting it on makes you a better person by improving your emotional health. it also increases trust in your relationships, improves memory and even makes you happier.)
so if you are one of the lucky ones who is having regular, enjoyable sex — loving skin-on-skin connection — with someone you adore, woot to you. for the rest of us though, it’s the more accessible, and sometimes unnoticed, “social touch” that helps anchor our emotional, mental and physical health: hugging, a handshake, stroking an arm, handholding, patting a knee, or a casual kiss on the cheek. feeding or bathing someone — think of the role of a caregiver — also counts.
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these “social touches” have been proven to decrease loneliness and generate the warm, fuzzy feeling of comfort and security. add in the fact that they also lower blood pressure, reduce pain and boost the immune system, and you might wonder why skin-to-skin contact, like reaching out to hold a patient’s hand or patting a caregiver’s shoulder, isn’t a standard part of the way health care providers do business?
undoubtedly, covid messed us up. no one was touching anyone — no handshakes (even the fist-bump disappeared for awhile), no hugs, lots physical distancing — and we paid a heavy price with heightened anxiety and increased loneliness. in fact, in 2021, 40 per cent of canadians reported feeling lonely some or all of the time, with single people and those living alone feeling the most lonely. those numbers didn’t include long-term care facilities, where residents were not only forced to isolate in their rooms and visitors weren’t allowed, but protective equipment that covered the faces, hands and bodies of health care providers made any kind of meaningful touch or connection next to impossible. and the impact is worth mentioning: researchers found that loneliness — which existed in ltc long before covid-19 — understandably reached all-time highs during the pandemic, increasing risk of depression, suicidal thoughts, aggressive behaviour, and anxiety.
indeed, there’s nothing like a pandemic to make touching someone else — even just a handshake — feel a bit, well, off-putting. but now that we have insights into the negative effects of social isolation, has our health care system taken note?
technology and lack of time means doctors hardly touch patients anymore
according to dr. richard gunderman, a professor at indiana university, the answer is no. in fact, “contact between a doctor’s hand and a patient appears to be on its way out,” he says.
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with doctors under pressure to see patients in less time than ever before, a plethora of diagnostic tools that make contact between doctor and patient redundant, and the increasing use of virtual technology for appointments, there’s just no time for touch. and it’s a great loss for us.
“despite the rise of scanners, robots and other new medical technologies, the physician’s hand remains one of medicine’s most valuable diagnostic tools,” he writes in an article for the conversation. “touch creates a human bond that is particularly needed in this increasingly hands-off, impersonal age.”
he also talks about the critical role of touch in the building of connections and community. and yet, it doesn’t seem to matter, if the woman in braids’ perspective is accurate. like so many other things in health care, it’s every person for themselves when it comes to social touch in today’s post-pandemic world. and every caregiver for the people they look after.
it’s worth noting too, however, that satisfying your innate need for touch doesn’t have to mean skin-to-skin contact with another human — especially if that’s not your thing. so don’t get weird about it. try massage therapy, or a spa treatment that involves touch, like a pedicure or a facial. weighted blankets and cuddling pets have also been shown to emulate the same positive nervous system response as physical touch. long showers or baths are other options.
the bottom line is that it’s not how you get your touch that matters necessarily, it’s that you get it. and it becomes doubly important when we’re hoping for any kind of healing or recovery. and so, if we know for sure that humans benefit from skin-to-skin contact within their regular day-to-day life, imagine how much better off patients and caregivers would be if small acts of physical connection were considered standard of care?
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lisa machado is the executive producer of healthing.ca.
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