As human beings, we instinctively hug our children. We do the same with those we love, especially in challenging times. To us, it is a way to offer comfort, understanding, and reassurance. But according to research, hugging someone, especially for more than three seconds, could have a profoundly positive impact on both people. We could indeed call hugging those we love a form of therapy - cuddle therapy - because it makes you feel better. But how exactly does cuddle therapy affect our mental and physical health? And can we use it to our advantage?
According to research, cuddle therapy has many benefits related to our mental health and overall well-being. The question is, how does it work and why?
Cuddle therapy, or just hugging someone, puts various subconscious processes into motion. So, what happens when we hug?
When hugging someone, our brain releases a hormone called oxytocin. This hormone, made in the hypothalamus, is stored in your posterior pituitary gland and acts on the limbic system once released into the bloodstream. Oxytocin plays a key role in various aspects of human behavior and is also involved in the male and female reproductive systems. In women, it plays a role during labor and delivery as well as in the lactation process. The hormone may induce feelings of contentment and reduce feelings of stress or anxiety.
Research indicates that oxytocin may also address muscle and joint pain. The diverse benefits of oxytocin may result from its close association with the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal (HPA) axis.1
Furthermore, oxytocin may lower your cortisol level and heart rate. It does this by helping to inhibit the production of adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH). This hormone is produced in the pituitary gland and, when released, stimulates the production of cortisol, the stress hormone.2
As a point of interest, oxytocin is also often referred to as the love hormone. This is because it tends to spike when during an orgasm.
Cuddle therapy may promote dopamine production. Dopamine is a hormone that acts like a neurotransmitter, or a chemical messenger. While we often refer to dopamine as the "feel good" hormone because of its beneficial action on the brain’s pleasure centers, it is also involved in sleep, movement, memory, motivation, and attention.
Dopamine dysfunction resulting from oxidative stress may result in various health problems.3 We can include a decline in cognitive function among these health issues. The neurodegenerative disease Parkinson’s for example, is associated with low dopamine levels as well as mood disorders like depression.
Besides promoting dopamine production, cuddle therapy may also promote the release of serotonin and endorphins into your blood.
Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that fulfills the function of a hormone. It carries messages from your central nervous system to the peripheral nervous system, or from the brain’s nerve cells to other parts of the body. It plays an essential role in digestive health, bone health, blood clotting, sexual function, and mood.
Endorphins, released in the brain’s pituitary gland and hypothalamus, are natural hormones that also have a variety of beneficial functions. They may have a positive effect on your mood, lower stress, and help alleviate pain.
Hugging may have a balancing effect on your parasympathetic nervous system. While your sympathetic nervous system plays a role in your fight or flight response to stress, the parasympathetic nervous system is involved in providing signals that the state of stress has passed. It encourages your body to go into a state of rest.
Cuddle therapy may help to form a balance between these two systems. In so doing, it may help to reduce stress and thus support adrenal function.
Cuddle therapy may support the health of your immune system. This is because the gentle pressure on the body when hugging may help stimulate your thymus gland. The thymus gland, situated in the neck, produces T-lymphocytes that the immune system needs to function correctly. T-lymphocytes play a key role in fighting infections and killing off cancer cells4. They also direct your body’s immune response through their interaction with B lymphocytes so that your body can get rid of foreign pathogens.
Your body makes use of hormones to communicate. They regulate multiple bodily processes and functions. These include:
Your hormone production can, however, become affected when your body experiences stress. The HPA axis, through neurotransmitters, activates your body’s automatic NeuroEndoMetabolic (NEM) stress response when you experience stress. The NEM stress response affects all body systems, including hormone production.
One of the first things that happens during NEM activation is that the adrenals produce increased amounts of cortisol. This is important for your fight-or-flight response, which causes a decline in metabolic function, an increase in heart rate, and many other responses. In addition, the production of certain hormones may decline or cease due to the demand for increased stress hormone production.
All systems and processes usually go back to normal once the stressor passes. Sometimes, however, stress persists, as does the change in hormone production. Put simply, it can lead to a hormone imbalance.
However, hormone imbalance symptoms vary widely. They may encompass mental health issues, loss of libido, sleep issues, and many more. Adrenal fatigue may result from overworked adrenals battling to keep up the demand for increased stress hormone production. Adrenal Fatigue Syndrome (AFS) is the non-Addison's form of adrenal dysfunction, where the body's stress response cannot keep up with life's chronic stressors.
Cuddle therapy may prove a valuable tool in your arsenal of weapons for addressing this issue.
Cuddle therapy may have a healing effect on many levels. We could largely attribute these effects to the release of certain chemicals when we hug.
These are just a few of its benefits.
A hug allows you to communicate without saying anything. It can imply you share someone’s sorrow, or it can imply an "I love you." But it can also help you strengthen relationships, especially between significant others. This is because when you hug your partner, both of you may experience oxytocin release which reduces stress and promotes feelings of happiness. In addition to this, hugging your children, especially babies, may strengthen the bond between mother and child due to the release of beneficial hormones.
Regular hugging sessions may improve self-esteem in not only adults but also children. The act of touching tells babies they are loved and special. The feelings we have as babies from loving touches carry on into our adult lives. This is because we have their memory embedded in our nervous system. So, each time we receive a hug as an adult, we experience similar desirable results. At the same time, they enforce our ability to love ourselves. This ability improves our self-esteem.
Cuddle therapy may help reduce stress and anxiety. The release of hormones while cuddling can calm you down. They may also help lower your blood pressure levels as well as your stress hormone, i.e., cortisol, levels. Reducing cortisol levels may induce the production of other much-needed hormones and take some stress off your adrenal glands.
The hormones released with cuddling therapy may help you get a better night’s rest. They may not only help improve your quality of sleep but also your amount of sleep.
Regular hugging may also improve cardiorespiratory homeostasis. This refers to the balancing act your heart needs to play regarding the blood flow through your veins and thus your entire body. In other words, the oxytocin released due to cuddle therapy may modulate blood pressure levels. And it also reduces stress, anxiety, and inflammation. These factors all contribute to heart disease.
Hormone imbalances may result in weight gain as well as a decreased ability to lose it, no matter how hard you diet or exercise. Food can also play a psychological role in gaining weight, because certain foods induce the release of feel-good hormones. These are the classic "comfort foods" that you eat to feel better.
By stimulating the release of feel-good hormones, cuddle therapy may thus help you feel better without food and curb your appetite. This could support weight loss.
Cuddle therapy may provide a natural alternative to painkillers in some instances. People with chronic pain tend to have lower oxytocin levels. Oxytocin may block pain signals. This means that regular hugs may help reduce chronic pain due to the release of this hormone.
People with severe stress tend to have a higher incidence of infections and inflammation. Yet research indicates that cuddle therapy may protect you from certain infections like the common cold. Furthermore, frequent hugs may even help prevent an infection from worsening.6
Your gastrointestinal tract is responsible for about three-quarters of your immune health. However, your gut and brain share a strong link. In other words, your brain influences your gut and vice versa. An increase in oxytocin boosts the T-regulatory cells that help balance our immune health.
Inflammation is the result of an immune system in action. However constant inflammation can result in the manifestation of inflammatory health conditions. Oxytocin, however, also helps reduce inflammation by reducing certain pro-inflammatory cytokines.
Cuddling with your infant makes you feel closer to them. You also become more attuned to their wants and needs. Regular cuddles with your babies may result in less crying and better sleep – for both parent and child. Furthermore, cuddling with your baby may help ease any pain they may have, calm their breathing, increase their oxygen levels, and increase their survival rate by 33 percent. It may also promote healthy brain growth and reduce their risk of infections and other health issues.
The good thing about cuddle therapy is that you can practice it anytime, anywhere. So, if you see a loved one, hug them. It is the best, easiest, and cheapest form of therapy out there.
Although hugs typically last for about three seconds, a long, twenty-second hug is best as it may have the most benefit for both body and mind. Of course, you can hug your loved ones for longer if you like.
As to hugging frequency, aim for at least four hugs a day. Eight hugs a day are great for maintenance, while twelve hugs a day may stimulate vast improvements concerning various areas of your mental and physical health.
When you make cuddle therapy a family lifestyle habit, you may see vast improvements in your family members’ physical and mental health. It only takes a few minutes a day to incorporate multiple hugging sessions.
If you have many stress-related health problems and hugging might not be enough, consider following Dr. Lam’s Nutritional Adrenal Fatigue Recovery Program if you or someone close to you have adrenal fatigue. The program will help you turn your life around. Full of actionable tips and tricks, the program will soon have you feeling better than you have in years.
Ito, Etsuro, et al. “A Novel Role of Oxytocin: Oxytocin-induced Well-being in Humans.” Biophysics and Physicobiology, vol. 132–139, no. 0, 1 Jan. 2019, https://doi.org/10.2142/biophysico.16.0_132.
Allen, Mary J., and Sandeep Sharma. “Physiology, Adrenocorticotropic Hormone (ACTH).” StatPearls - NCBI Bookshelf, 8 Aug. 2023, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK500031/#:~:text=Adrenocorticotropic%20hormone%20(ACTH)%20is%20a,and%20Cushing%20disease.%5B1%5D.
Olguı́n, Hugo Juárez, et al. “The Role of Dopamine and Its Dysfunction as a Consequence of Oxidative Stress.” Oxidative Medicine and Cellular Longevity, vol. 1–13, 1 Jan. 2016, https://doi.org/10.1155/2016/9730467.
Zhang, Enkui, et al. “Roles and Mechanisms of Tumour-infiltrating B Cells in Human Cancer: A New Force in Immunotherapy.” Biomarker Research, vol. 11, no. 1, 9 Mar. 2023, https://doi.org/10.1186/s40364-023-00460-1.
Cohen, Sheldon, et al. “Does Hugging Provide Stress-Buffering Social Support? A Study of Susceptibility to Upper Respiratory Infection and Illness.” Psychological Science, vol. 26, no. 2, 19 Dec. 2014, pp. 135–147, https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614559284.
Cuddle therapy supports adrenal health by promoting a healthy hormone balance and supporting the immune system. It also boosts good-feeling hormones like serotonin, oxytocin, and dopamine, improving mood, inducing feelings of relaxation, and lowering stress levels.
