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Holding Hands Can Ease Pain
BY SHELLEY DANZY
It's
been over 50 years since Beatles John Lennon and Paul McCartney sang "I
Want to Hold Your Hand," about just how happy touching made them feel
inside.
They
probably had no idea that their poppy little ditty had a basis in scientific
fact.
According
to a February 2018 study published in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences, researchers at the University of Haifa (Israel)
have figured out a solution when "lovebirds" are chronically hurting:
the transference of empathy and the pain-reducing power of holding hands.
The
National Institutes of Health's Center for Complementary and Integrative Health
reports that 50 million American adults experience
chronic or severe pain.
And
while all you need is love, in fact, there are still some 25 million U.S.
adults living with daily chronic pain. That's almost as many as the
entire population of Texas.
The
research team recruited 23 heterosexual romantic couples.
The
women, the "pain receivers" in these experiments, received pain
stimuli via EEG recordings, under four conditions:
1) alone (without partners);
2) with partners, but without physical contact;
3) holding hands with their partners (the "pain
observers") while receiving pain; and
4) holding hands with a stranger.
In the
third condition, because of the partner's touch, the women experienced less
pain.
It seems
that hyperscanning, or this brain-to-brain coupling by the act of hand-holding
while in pain, may have a soothing, analgesic effect, like the skin-to-skin
touch that is beneficial to premature babies.
In
grownups, this interpersonal touch can help regulate responses to stress,
increasing trust and emotional well-being.
Since
various techniques monitor synchrony, the physiological activity of several
people at the same time, empathy is considered to be a key prosocial behavior since social touch increases interpersonal physiological
coupling during pain.
Lead
researcher Pavel Goldstein penned an article that mentions this physiological
activity, an interpersonal synchrony between people as
they "take part in extreme or prosaic social situations."
From
fire-walking rituals and tear-jerker movies to choirs singing, and yes, the
ultimate, googly-eyed love stares that make romantic couples, well, even more
googly, researchers found evidence that women with highly empathetic partners
reported increased pain reduction.
This
study is in line with earlier research which
suggests communicating numerous emotions with touch, including decoding anger,
fear, love and gratitude.
However,
this current study acknowledges that mechanisms identified as social
touch analgesia (pain-relief without loss of
consciousness), remains widely unknown.
There's
more research to be done, for instance, focusing on clinical implications of
these findings and even implications of empathy training.
According
to Goldstein, "it's unlikely that this
research will solve the problem of painkillers."
For
now, it's worth a try. Depending on what ails you, you may want to reach for
your honey's hand to hold.
NOW
THAT'S INTERESTING
One of the very first
innate responses an infant displays is a hands-on approach, known as the palmer grasp reflex.
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Holding
hands can actually ease pain, helping to regulate responses to stress, while
increasing trust and emotional well-being.
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