The Importance of Touch For Our Human Immune System

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Touch improves everything and can relieve us from a lot of miseries.

It’s a physical need like sleep, exercise, and relationships and has the following benefits:

• Touch strengthens our immune system significantly, while a lack thereof weakens it drastically. • Touch helps overcome injuries.
• Children grow more when they are touched and their cognitive development is affected by touch. (On the other hand mental problems like mood disorders or eating disorders are very often associated lack of touch).
• Touch can help us overcome depression and anxiety.

Harry Hollow examined touch deprivation: He took monkeys away from their mothers. These monkeys got everything except touch. The result was that the monkeys didn’t grow as much, their cognitive development was impaired and they even displayed autistic behavior.

A cruel real life example is what former Romanian dictator Ceaucescu did. He took away a lot of children from their parents, especially if their parents were dissidents. 150,000 kids were raised in homes. These kids were around 3-10% smaller, way below IQ 100, their motor development was impaired significantly, and they showed signs of autism.

Touch is so important…and so are hugs! Psychologist Virginia Satir states: “We need 4 hugs a day for survival, we need 8 hugs a day for maintenance, we need 12 hugs a day for growth” and Jane Clipman found out that if we give at least 5 (nonsexual) hugs a day, after 4 weeks, our happiness level goes up significantly.

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