Hu­mans like to be touched and hugged. When we are pleased and hap­py, we hug. When there is de­spair and sad­ness, we look for some­one to hug. If there is no one around, we hug our­selves. Is­land peo­ple, or small-town peo­ple, like to be touched more than city peo­ple. To some ex­tent, touch­ing/hug­ging is a cul­tur­al thing.

Touch is the ear­li­est sense to de­vel­op in the fe­tus. Ba­bies can thrive with­out vi­sion, with­out hear­ing and with­out smell but not with­out touch­ing. Touch, not food, binds the in­fant to the care­giv­er. Ba­bies who are fed and not hugged do not at­tach as se­cure­ly to the moth­er and may grow up as in­se­cure adults.

Hugs are anatom­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent than touch­es. It in­volves bring­ing oth­er bod­ies in­to close con­tact and wrap­ping arms around them. Un­like touch, a hug lasts sev­er­al sec­onds and usu­al­ly con­veys a spe­cif­ic mes­sage, com­fort, a greet­ing, af­fec­tion or con­grat­u­la­tions. Hugs are in­ti­mate. Touch­ing, how­ev­er, is more ver­sa­tile and may range from the ca­su­al, pro­fes­sion­al pat on the shoul­der to an in­ti­mate squeeze but lo­calised.

Hugs trig­ger the re­lease of pow­er­ful neu­ro­chem­i­cals. First, dopamine or the plea­sure hor­mone, which in­duces feel­ings of hap­pi­ness and sat­is­fac­tion. (It’s the one re­lat­ed to drug and smart­phone ad­dic­tion). Then there is sero­tonin, of­ten called the an­ti­de­pres­sant hor­mone. It el­e­vates mood, con­trols anx­i­ety and di­min­ish­es our feel­ings of lone­li­ness. Fi­nal­ly, the love hor­mone, oxy­tocin, which low­ers blood pres­sure and heart rate and in­creas­es in­fec­tion-fight­ing cells in the blood and strange­ly, li­bido.

In chil­dren, good hugs, lov­ing hugs, switch on an­oth­er es­sen­tial hor­mone, growth hor­mone, which makes chil­dren grow. It turns out that we have dif­fer­ent neu­ro­log­i­cal re­cep­tors em­bed­ded in our skin that re­spond to pres­sure and pro­duce these var­i­ous hor­mones. Cer­tain ar­eas of our body have more than their share of these dopamine or sero­tonin or oxy­tocin re­cep­tors. For ex­am­ple, our backs are full of them. Hence the well known habit of tap­ping or rub­bing an­oth­er’s back dur­ing a hug.

Kan­ga­roo hug­ging or skin-to-skin hold­ing is a well-known way to help new­borns reg­u­larise their vi­tal signs, breath­ing, blood oxy­gen lev­el and so on. It helps moth­ers re­cov­er from child­birth for the same rea­sons. It al­so strength­ens the re­la­tion­ships be­tween the ba­by and the hold­er, be it the moth­er or fa­ther. There is a sug­ges­tion that the amount of phys­i­cal hug­ging at an ear­ly age af­fects the mol­e­c­u­lar struc­ture of DNA with epi­ge­net­ic dif­fer­ences that help de­ter­mine how genes are ex­pressed.

We al­so know that when care is pro­vid­ed with 4-hands, that is with one per­son com­fort­ing while the oth­er does med­ical or care­giv­ing tasks, the vi­tal signs of pre­ma­ture in­fants re­main more sta­ble.

There are good hugs and bad hugs. Both give chil­dren feel­ings. When chil­dren get good touch­es such as hugs and kiss­es from their par­ents, that makes them hap­py. When peo­ple they do not know hug and kiss them, that should make them un­easy or un­hap­py. Chil­dren are usu­al­ly very quick on pick­ing up bad hugs Their feel­ings here should not be doubt­ed.

The num­ber of hugs seems to be im­por­tant. The fa­mous say­ing is “Four hugs a day for sur­vival. Eight hugs a day for main­te­nance but 12 hugs a day for growth.” Four sat­is­fies our ba­sic emo­tion­al needs and com­bats feel­ings of lone­li­ness. Eight main­tains emo­tion­al sta­bil­i­ty, re­duces stress and strength­ens so­cial bonds. Twelve pro­motes per­son­al de­vel­op­ment, se­cu­ri­ty and im­proves emo­tion­al health.

Then there is the time the hug lasts. A 10-sec­ond hug helps the body fight in­fec­tions, ease de­pres­sion and re­duce fa­tigue. But a 20-sec­ond re­al­ly hits the “sweet spot” and gets those love­ly hor­mones flow­ing, low­er­ing cor­ti­sol, re­liev­ing stress, en­hanc­ing im­mu­ni­ty and low­er­ing blood pres­sure. And the more hugs you get, the bet­ter you feel.

Of course, you can pre­tend to hug a per­son and not re­al­ly hug them. A re­al hug is called a “deep hug.” Deep hugs have all the ben­e­fits of or­di­nary hugs but seem to re­lax mus­cles more, re­leas­ing ten­sion and pro­vid­ing re­lief from phys­i­cal pain and aches through in­creased cir­cu­la­tion to soft tis­sues. Gen­tle pres­sure on the ster­num, like pres­sure on the back, may stim­u­late the thy­mus gland, reg­u­lat­ing and bal­anc­ing the body’s pro­duc­tion of white blood cells.

Deep hugs fos­ter trust and cre­ate a sense of safe­ty and are es­sen­tial for boost­ing self-es­teem de­vel­oped through in­ti­mate con­tact with par­ents, sib­lings, friends and lovers.

In the world we live in to­day, where every­thing seems dri­ven by tech­nol­o­gy and an in­creas­ing­ly iso­lat­ed lifestyle, the an­cient prac­tice of hug­ging comes to us as a har­bin­ger of peace and hap­pi­ness.