I came here today to talk about my FAVORITE THING EVER: HUGS!
How many hugs do you think you get a day? Did you know that the recommended number of hugs is 8 to 12 a day? You’re probably not getting even half of that are you? It’s sad but it’s true, hugs are underestimated nowadays so I chose to come here today to tell you a bit more about them!
 

The dictionary defines a hug as the act of embracing someone or something with your arms, keeping that person or object close to your chest, being a way of showing affection, love or friendship. But how are hugs important in our lives? What positive things do they bring us?

Well, in fact, hugs are gestures of affection used in every culture around the world, especially in some European countries, like Portugal, and some south America countries. Actually, did you know that Portuguese is the only language in the world in which is common to write “Um abraço” (a hug) at the end of a letter, usually between men? We usually don’t write “hugs” at the end of letters in English. That shows how common this gesture is in Portugal and Brazil.
 

But since when are hugs important? Since, birth we humans have an innate need to be cared for, creating bonds and trust in people since very early in our lives. Babies need touch and physical affection to have a proper psychological, physical and emotional development.

An example of this need that some of you might know appeared on the show “Grey’s Anatomy” (one of my favorite shows, you should watch it), when a premature baby, with very few chances of survival, got significantly better and ended up surviving, simply because he was hugged with skin-to-skin contact while asleep, instead of spending the night alone and intubated.

Even though this is an example from a tv show, this case is real, and in fact there have been many hospitalized babies to have raised their chances of survival by the use of this technique, which already has a name “kangaroo care”.
 

However, physical contact isn’t a need only since birth, but it comes from a primal necessity that we share with some other animals. A study was made by Harry Harlow in which he separated a group of baby monkeys from their mothers and gave them two options of surrogate mothers to choose from.

One of the mother monkeys was made of metal wire and had a feeding bottle with milk for the babies, while the other was made of terry cloth but didn’t have anything to feed the baby monkeys. After giving the baby monkeys both of those options, Harlow decided to see which mother the babies would choose to spend their time with.

Obviously, the monkeys chose to spend their time with the terry cloth mother, even though she did not feed them. Even going to the wire mother from time to time to feed themselves, the babies always returned to the comfort of the terry cloth mother.

This study proved that monkeys, like us humans, need to be cared for and offered affection and not just someone that feeds us, contrary to what Harlow predicted and contrary to what was defended by John Watson, Father of Behaviorism, in his book “Psychological care Infant & Child”, in which he said that mothers should not show too much affection to their children in order not to conditionate them to have unrealistic expectations about love in the future and, consequently, not having negative effects in their lives.
 

“When you are tempted to pet your child remember that mother love is a dangerous instrument. An instrument which may inflict a never-healing wound, a wound which may make infancy unhappy, adolescence a nightmare, an instrument which may wreck your adult son or daughter’s vocational future and their chances for marital happiness.” John B. Watson
 
 
But what effect do hugs that can make them so important? Neurologically, when we are hugged our nerves send a message to our brain that induced the production of hormones like oxytocin, that can lower blood pressure and levels of cortisol, known as the main stress hormone.
 
A study made in 2010 proved just that, by splitting couples in two groups, one in which they spent time hugging while in the other not, after ten minutes, the couples of the hugging group presented a much lower blood pressure and heart rate, and a maintenance of a low blood pressure leads to a good cardiovascular health.
 

These consequences make hugs loved by many, given that, besides the health benefits, hugs relax both people involved in the action. That way, many people may benefit from hugs and not know it. For example, people with autism may hate all forms of physical contact and avoid it, or on the other hand, crave it and actually have a very big need for it, depending on where they fall in the spectrum.

Another case is that people with autism can be non-verbal and have difficulties expressing how they feel, and a hug could be a simple and good way to communicate them with others or simply a good way to calm down when they feel overstimulated or anxious.

However, this is not the case for everyone with autism, given that the spectrum is very diverse and there are autistic people who avoid all forms of physical contact.
 

But why are there people who like hugs more than others? A study made in 2012 by Suzanne Degges-White revealed that children that grow up surrounded by people who frequently hug each other are far more likely to follow those same footsteps and become huggers in the future than children who grow up in a family of non-huggers.

Actually, according to Professor Darcia Narvaez of the university of Notre Dame, few hugs and physical affection during childhood lead to an underdevelopment of the oxytocin production system, that makes people not even learn to appreciate hugs and therefore not become huggers.


Summarizing, I think hugs are ways of showing affection that are too underestimated in their power because they have a grand importance not only since birth but since our ancestors, given that they are a way of communicating our feelings and creating bonds with other people.

Moreover, hugs have many health benefits and reduce stress that they can be benefic to everyone, even people with autism, who initially we think avoid all forms of physical touch.

However, liking hugs is not for everyone and the childhood that everyone has determines weather they will be more likely to become huggers or not, depending on the way they were raised, the people that surrounded them during that period of their lives or even people’s culture.

This way, I would like to conclude that we should give more hugs to people and show them that we care about them!