A ‘dead’ baby brought back to life — not with state-of-art technology, but a mother’s warm, loving hug. This could be straight out of a Bollywood film. But this heart-warming story is a fact.
In 2010, Australian Katy Ogg gave birth to premature twins, Emily and Jamie, 14 weeks early. While Emily survived the birth, her twin did not, and after 20 minutes of trying to revive him, the doctors pronounced him clinically dead.
The grieving parents held the baby, and the mother continued to hold Jamie against her for more than two hours, cuddling him and speaking to him.
Much to everyone’s shock, after two hours, the baby started gasping. Initially, doctors thought it was a natural reflex. But it began to happen more frequently. And then the baby opened its eyes.
Hugs are powerful, and not just in politics. The hugs you get from the time of your birth could define your health, your IQ and even, to some extent, your home environment. In the 1980s, ‘kangaroo care’, a sort of non-stop skin-to-skin hugging of a newborn baby by the mother, was ‘discovered’. It began in Bogota, Colombia, where 70% of premature babies simply died as there was a shortage of incubators and infection rates were high. Babies were then kept with their mother, who hugged them against their bodies.
What researchers witnessed can be termed ‘miraculous’: babies born 10 weeks early were going home within 24 hours. The benefits were numerous.
Babies hugged this way by their mothers had a more stable heart rate, breathed in more oxygen, had more stable breathing, slept longer, gained weight faster, even their brains developed faster.
As medical interventions go, research shows that for premature babies, kangaroo care with the mother and family members can be better than being in the incubator. They also had a better survival rate, gained more weight and went home sooner.
The hug effect also lasts long. A follow-up study on such babies 20 years later revealed that they were less absent from school, earned more, and had significantly larger volumes of cerebral grey matter in the brain. ‘Preemies’ who received kangaroo care also reported more protective and nurturing parents.
Grown-ups also seem to benefit from hugging. A hug can pep one up on a difficult day, making it very good therapy.
In one study of how warm physical contact impacts blood pressure, couples were split into two groups. Everyone had to undergo a stressful act. Members of one group had to hold their partners’ hand for 10 minutes followed by a hug. The other group sat quietly for that length of time. After stress, the group that received hugs were recorded with lower blood pressure and less increase in heart rate compared to those bereft of hugs.
Another study of 400 adults showed that those who were hugged regularly had better immune systems and were less likely to fall sick. It is also a welcome painkiller.
The miracle molecule behind hughealth is oxytocin, the ‘love hormone’. Oxytocin is responsible for the warm fuzzy feeling of being in love. But it appears to do much more. Hugging releases the hormone. In turn, oxytocin causes a reduction in blood pressure, and in the levels of cortisol, the ‘stress hormone’.
Physical touch also leads to the increase in chemicals like dopamine and serotonin. Dopamine is linked to the reward centre of the brain. It causes both the cocaine-user’s high, as well as the high of the hugged. Low dopamine levels have been implicated in diseases like Parkinson’s and in mood swings and depression.
Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that tells the brain cells to regulate a person’s feelings. Low levels of serotonin have been linked to depression. So, hugs can be mood-elevating.
Research in this area is only beginning. In health, if all else fails, there’s always the hug. And, as demonstrated recently, in politics too.
This blog originally appeared in The Economic Times blog.