Holding Hands Is Natural Pain Relief
The touch of a loved one can synchronize brain waves and make you feel better
When you were a little kid, what was the first thing you did when you fell down and scraped your knees? You ran to your mom or dad for a hug. Now, science suggests that loving touch really may have the power to heal, not only emotionally but physically, too.
Research presented at the annual Society for Neuroscience meeting in Chicago last week confirmed what parents worldwide have always known: Touching and empathizing with a loved one helps relieve feelings of pain. But something mom might not have known is that touch also synchronizes people’s brain waves in a way that may dull the pain.
“When we share the pain of others, basically we’re activating our brain in the same neural system that we activate when we feel firsthand experiences of pain,” says Simone Shamay-Tsoory, a psychology professor at the University of Haifa in Israel, who led the research.
Shamay-Tsoory’s team demonstrated this phenomenon in a series of experiments. First, they tested how the physical touch of either a stranger or a romantic partner affected people’s perception of pain. Holding hands with their partner helped people feel better when they received a heat stimulus to their arm that felt like a mild…
