I am not always the most popular person in the house. I am ok with that, in fact, sometimes I relish the role. Especially when I get off the exercise bike after a hardcore session. I am dripping with sweat, even though two fans have been blowing on me the whole time. I stagger up the stairs, and approach one of my daughters in the kitchen, leaving sweaty footprints behind me. I hold my arms out for a hug, and bleat “Hugs”. She turns and looks at me, and I croak again “Loves. Hugs. Hug me.” She screeches “Dad, you are GROSS. Don’t touch me.” I croak again “Loves” and lurch closer, sweat dripping off my elbow. “DAD, LEAVE ME ALONE” is the shriek as she waves a fork in my face. It is maximally annoying to her. Also, it never gets old.
Once I am showered up, dry, clothed, and back in my right mind (according to my daughter), she will consent to a hug. Which is a good thing. For both of us. It does not just feel good, it alters our biology as well. It turns out that getting a hug reduces the level of cortisol the person experiences the next day.[i] This will ring a bell for you, because in the previous post, we asked how a lousy marriage quadrupled the risk of recurrence of breast cancer. We saw that unhealthy conflict patterns in all stages of marriage increase the levels of cortisol. And excessive cortisol damages DNA, suppresses the immune system, and facilitates weight gain. All of these facilitate a recurrence of cancer. Naturally, we want to look at what reduces excessive cortisol. One factor is to change the patterns of unhealthy conflict in relationships. If couples handle conflict well, there is less cortisol in their bloodstream.
Another dynamic that keeps cortisol levels lower is affectionate touch. This was shown when couples kept a diary of how much time they spent in physical contact with each other, (both sexual and non-sexual). A pattern popped up immediately, the more time that a couple spent in physical contact that day, the lower the level of cortisol that each experienced.[ii]
Now the ever-present keener among you will have looked up the studies I mentioned and be waving their hand in the air in objection. I both love you and hate you. I love that you are passionate about using psychological factors to reduce cancer. That is awesome. But you do make a LOT of work for me. So yes, dear and detested keener, you are right. The studies I mentioned just observed what happened over time. They were not experiments, where people were randomly assigned to different conditions. If you randomly assign people to different levels of touch when they are stressed, then you can draw clearer conclusions as to the role of touch on cortisol.
In the past, psychologists used to give electric shocks to people to stress them. This was a little crude, so psychologists figured out something more subtle, but still highly stressful. They observed that more people are afraid of speaking in public than of dying. The stressor was to do a public speaking task. They had to do a mock job interview with two strangers. This dragged on for 5 minutes. The person then had to do another 5 minutes of mental arithmetic in front of these strangers. There also was a conspicuous, and hostile looking, video camera taping the speeches. This social stress test is a doozy for getting people anxious.
Now that we have the stressor, researchers wanted to look randomly assign people to different levels of touch and support to assess their cortisol levels. There were three groups of people who experienced this stress.[iii] The first was the control group, and they were people who were in a long-term romantic relationship. They showed up alone for the experiment, sat by themselves, did the mock job interview, then did the mental arithmetic, and then left by themselves. They were miserable human beings.[iv] The second was the social support group, where both partners in a romantic couple showed up to the lab. One could give verbal social support to their partner for 10 minutes, before the partner had to do the public speaking. The third group of couples was the physical touch group. They showed up with their partner, who could give them a neck and shoulder massage for 10 minutes before they had to do the public speaking. Turns out that the massage was the clear winner. Women who received 10 minutes of massage had the smallest increase in cortisol after the stress of public speaking.
And now I see another hand shoot up among my readers, and this time, it is not from a keener! It is a slightly grumpy older person, complaining that they have never received 10 minutes of massage from their spouse. How does this study apply to them? How will they be able to lower their cortisol, and improve their health? Well, I commiserate with you. My wife is a fabulous woman but is not at all prone to rubbing my neck for 10 minutes either.
Researchers noticed this point and tried a different stressor and a shorter intervention. This time, the stressor was for each person to stick their hand in a bucket of ice water with fingers spread.[v] They were to keep it there for 3 minutes, if they could. Often, they could not. They would yank their hand up from the ice cubes in water before the deadline. They may or may not have said some very bad words about how cold it was. The men hung in for an extra 20 seconds longer than the women. Before the guys get too puffed up, the women rated it as a more unpleasant, stressful, and difficult experience than the men did. The stress also showed in their physiology. As expected, everyone had higher levels of cortisol after keeping their hand in freezing water than before the experiment started. This is natural, cortisol is the hormone released when the danger is ongoing, and being in freezing water for multiple minutes is stressful.
The interesting part of the experiment is that half the couples were told to hug each other for 20 seconds before putting their hands in freezing water. The other half of the couples in the experiment had no physical contact. The results lined up nicely. If the couples hugged, then the women had significantly less cortisol after the stressor, than the women who did not cuddle. If the couples hugged, then their heart rates were also lower, compared to the couples who did not touch.
We now have another rope in the weapon against cancer, the net to trap this monster. It is physical touch. The more hugs or physical touch that people receive, the lower their level of cortisol. The less cortisol in the body, the less DNA damage there is, and the immune system is more active. This is part of the reason people with good marriages have lower recurrence of cancer. When couples are faced with stressful situations, hugs as brief as 20 seconds will lower cortisol for them, compared to people who are not cuddled.
The conclusion is simple. Part of your weapon against cancer is to hug the people around you. Or cuddle as you watch a movie together. It relaxes them. It communicates that you are there for them, that they are safe. The tension unwinds in their bodies. Their cortisol decreases, and their immune system perks up with these positive messages. And my daughter would like to remind you to be scrubbed clean, rather than dripping with sweat, before you go for a hug. You will get a much warmer reception.
Dr. Eric Kuelker
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