Hugging loved ones was something that many people missed the most during the pandemic. Indeed, many of us didn’t know how crucial contact is for maintaining many areas of our health, including our mental health, until we were unable to provide hugs to our friends and family. The good news is that hugs offer numerous health advantages in addition to being enjoyable. Our sense of touch is what makes hugs feel so pleasant. It’s a very vital sense that enables us to communicate with others by forming and preserving social relationships in addition to enabling us to physically explore the world around us. These c-tactile afferents have effectively developed into “cuddle nerves” and are usually triggered by a very particular type of stimulation: a light touch that is similar to skin warmth, such as a hug or caress. C-tactile afferents are thought to be the brain input stage that signals the enjoyable and rewarding parts of social tactile interactions like touching and hugs. At 14 weeks gestation, touch is the first sense to function in the womb. The soft touch of a mother offers several health benefits from the moment we are born, including reducing heart rate and encouraging the development of brain cell connections. The activation of c-tactile afferents in our skin during an embrace transmits messages to the brain’s emotion processing networks through the spinal cord.
