All animals with a nervous system respond to touch--
all of them.
It's that important.
Even single-celled organisms have some semblance of touch.
It's the simplest form of life, and it can feel things!
Cell membranes and nuclei, they're just
filled with some cytoplasm.
And if you poke them, they will react.
Even paramecium will move away from the poke.
Plants-- you might think of them as just these things that
sit over there in the corner of your house,
or outside where you probably can't go right now.
Even plants move when responding to touch.
The idea of physical interaction is ingrained in our very cells,
in our very being.
When the world was utterly silent,
touch was already there.
When the world was dark, and we couldn't see anything,
and we couldn't taste anything because there was no taste,
there was no smell yet, touch was already a thing.
Touch was the first sense.
And yet we know very little about it.
Touch is the final frontier for sensory neuroscience
because animals needed to evolve it.
And why did we evolve to touch?
Cells needed to grope around in the water of the world
to find nutrients-- no oxygen, no light, just feeling
around, floating, and pushing their way
through the ancient seas.
And yet, even with all of that, we
didn't really start to get into touch and research
into not touching until after World War II.
Scientists realized skin hunger, or touch deprivation,
was a thing.
OK.
Let's kick into it.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Hi, hi, hi.
I'm Trace.
Welcome back, physical beings.
This is Uno Dos of Trace, and thank you for returning.
If you are new, this is episode three and a series of five.
So watch this.
Sure, please.
Do, please.
Don't go anywhere.
Just stick around and watch.
But I will be referring to stuff that's already happened.
So if you haven't watched all the episodes in this series,
go back and watch those two.
So far, we've talked about where touched lives
in the brain and the body, and what touch really means to us.
And it turns out it means a lot.
And also today, we're going to talk about what happens
when we don't touch each other.
Have you touched someone recently?
If you haven't and you have the opportunity to,
would you take it?
Do you find yourself daydreaming about touching another person?
Not in a sexual way, just wanting a hug, or a handshake,
or a high-five, or a slap on the back.
Wanting to sit next to someone at a restaurant
and just feeling them there physically being next to you.
They may not even physically touch you that often,
like it's just their shoulder bumping against yours.
But it almost feels like you know you're real then, right?
Now, touch deprivation is really interesting
because it essentially means you want to be touched.
You want physical contact.
This is something that I think a lot of us
are experiencing for the first time.
But there are communities on this planet,
in this world, in our countries, in our homes,
maybe, that experience this often.
Think about communities of people who are disabled.
They might not be able to get physical contact when
they want it.
They might not be able to have a hug.
They may never be able to feel their own body in the same way
as someone who isn't disabled.
Skin hunger and touch deprivation is a common topic
amongst the disabled community.
And so if anything, we should empathize
with them who experience it more now because many of us
now understand what it's like.
After World War II, there were controversial experiments
by Harry Harlow.
He separated baby rhesus macaques from their mothers,
and he gave those baby rhesus macaques two options--
a mannequin macaque with a bottle of milk
that was made of wire and wood or a mannequin macaque
with no milk made of cloth.
And then they wanted to see what the macaques would do.
Wow.
The baby macaques went to the cloth one with no food.
They got no reward of food from going to that.
But they wanted it.
They needed it.
They needed touch.
That is skin hunger.
Infants also need this.
They need touch.
They need it as much as they need food and water,
say child development specialists.
Skin hunger was studied again in orphanages
after the fall of communism in Romania.
It turns out they didn't have enough people to take
care of the babies.
They weren't hugged.
They weren't cuddled.
They weren't loved in that way, physically.
Neurologist David Linden told Vox,
quote, "they were depressed and had high instances
of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder as they got older."
They also had problems physically.
"They had physical ailments like weakened immune systems
and skin ailments."
And this was just because they believed that they
weren't touched as babies.
This is why NICU babies and preemies are still
taken out of their incubators and environments of safety.
They take them out even though that
might be considered dangerous.
They take them out and they put them
against another human's skin.
Studies have shown this skin contact can
affect body image with touche as a child, violence
in adolescence.
Humans-- they need touch.
And skin hunger is that feeling that you just
need to touch someone.
And I'm sorry if I'm making that worse by talking about it
so much.
But I think it's important.
And I think it's important that we hear
from people who understand it.
So with that in mind, I have a guest,
our first one of this series, my friend Diana Klatt.
She is an epidemiologist.
She posted something about touch deprivation on her Instagram,
so I called her.
My name is Diana.
I am an epidemiologist.
I do data analytics but also science communication.
And you can find me at the podcast Global Caveat,
and on Instagram, @klattalyst, and in the deep world
of epitwitter @dianaklatt.
You posted a thing about touch deprivation,
which was so great.
So I wanted to call you and talk about it.
I think it's a no-brainer saying that physical touch is
the thing that is going to just forever be changed, right?
Dr. Fauci said that he thinks that Americans should never
shake hands again, which is just wild when you think about that.
Because so many people shake hands the minute
they greet each other, especially if you're in the US.
People in Europe, especially Italians,
are so used to greeting each other with the cheek
kisses and everything.
And they obviously can't do that now because that's even more
contact with spit and stuff versus just shaking hands.
It's definitely interesting.
And with more people using social media and more people
using technology, we were already
decreasing the amount we touch each other.
And even though we don't touch a lot in the US,
I think that people don't recognize how much they
actually do touch people when they're engaging with people
in in-person meetings, or at lunch, or dinners,
or having coffee with people.
Just a graze on the arm or something,
or laughing and touching someone, or showing condolence,
or trying to comfort someone-- you're still
touching them a little bit.
You might not be super touchy.
And not everyone is very touchy.
But there are still elements of touch in our day-to-day lives.
Have you noticed touching in your own life that
has kind of diminished?
And how do you feel about that?
The last time I gave someone a hug
was actually before recording this.
Before the pandemic, I was not a very touchy person at all.
And I felt that at the very beginning
because I did live alone before.
And I moved to go live with friends instead.
It was really getting to me, to not be around anyone.
I had gone to visit my mom and I stood across the yard
from her without being able to touch her.
And that was really difficult for me.
And since I have now been living with friends,
it's made a huge difference.
But also, I have found that I am much more frequently hugging
people because I just feel like I need something
to help reduce the stress.
Because I'm definitely more anxious in my day-to-day life.
At the very beginning of when this
got upgraded from an epidemic to a pandemic, I was living alone.
I started acting very strangely but not necessarily--
it's not just because I'm a strange individual, whatever.
It's because I didn't know what to do with myself.
And I felt like I needed to continuously do things.
So I started cleaning a lot more,
which required me to touch a lot of things, right?
And I actually polished my floors twice, my wooden floors,
so they would be slippery.
And I feel like that's not quite a normal thing.
But it really felt nice to have that completely different
texture or a different feeling on the bottom of my foot.
But also, after I polished my floor twice,
a friend offered for me to come stay with them.
And I immediately did that so I wouldn't be alone,
which I think makes a huge difference for me personally.
If I had to continue being alone,
I don't know how I would feel.
Touch doesn't have to be intimate or sexual.
Touch can be anything, right?
There is a lot of different ways to have meaningful touch.
And I think that's a very important thing to make clear.
People frequently conflate the two, sexual intimacy and touch.
But meaningful touch is so important in so many
different aspects.
How does someone know they have touch deprivation?
I feel like it's going to present itself differently
in everyone.
So not everyone is going to react the same way.
Right now, a lot of people are feeling loneliness in general.
And I think that if you are experiencing loneliness
but it feels deeper--
and I don't know how to describe that better
than saying if it's deeper, achy, or concerning to you,
that it might not just be from the fact that you're alone.
For other people, it might show up in--
maybe they start having more obsessive behaviors.
So maybe like how I said earlier, I was cleaning a lot.
Maybe you start cleaning a lot because you
need to do something. and that's a very tactile thing, cleaning.
Or other touchy behaviors, or fidgeting, you're
holding something a lot-- it could
be because you're trying to stimulate
some kind of touch sensation.
And I say this coming from place of this
is how I was feeling when I was living alone before I chose
to come stay with friends.
Because I felt that aching.
And I am someone that I enjoy having time
to recover and recharge alone.
But getting to be with other people-- and like you said,
getting to choose when to recover alone or be
around other people made a huge difference for me.
But I noticed that aching feeling deep inside of me.
In terms of loneliness and being such a loneliness,
I started crying.
Because a huge aspect of physical touch is that it helps
reduce your stress.
So increased levels of stress-- it makes
sense because you have nothing to help
increase the amount of oxytocin, and endorphins,
and everything else that helps you feel good
and relieve your stress being produced in your body
that you would normally get from touch.
When I was in school for physical therapy,
one of the things that we were told to do
was to keep a quarter in our pocket
to help increase our ability to touch things and be
able to palpate different muscles.
So in order to increase our sensitivity at our fingertips,
we used to try to make out every single letter
on a quarter in your pocket.
And that can just increase your amount of sensation
just by touching the same thing over and over again, or very
intensely thinking about what you're touching,
or trying to feel for something.
And just even on the surface of a quarter,
there's a lot of different feeling.
So that's definitely something.
Or everyone can just get an old phone and practice T9 again
and texting that when you feel the buttons.
[LAUGHS]
Something else you could consider doing, especially
for those that are living alone, is to get a weighted blanket.
That's something you can do to help
with the feeling of the compression from a hug.
I'm definitely hugging every single person
once I can, even if that means that I have to be completely
cloaked in something, like.
But you can also hug yourself.
Think about that.
Those are different ways that you can feel that.
I think this is still great.
You still get the compression and also
a little bit of a stretch.
[CHUCKLES]
So to wrap, something that I've been thinking about a lot
is empathy.
I mentioned it earlier.
Maybe we'll have more empathy for people
once we get out of this situation
and we can touch more, we can be around other more.
But the thing that I keep coming back to
is people who experience this all the time.
I mentioned earlier communities who
may not be able to experience touch
when they want or may never be able to experience
physical touch because of their physicality, their bodies,
their location.
But something that I think anybody--
it would include this population,
but anybody can experience--
is prison, jail, being under arrest.
We've been inside our houses for days, months, weeks at a time.
This is not unlike somebody who is
confined to an area under house arrest or in prison.
But we trap people in places.
We jail them.
And many Americans don't believe that that
is enough of a punishment.
Now that you have been in your house for as long as you have--
you can't go to Baskin Robbins--
is asking you not to leave enough of a punishment?
Do I also need to deny you good food, and entertainment,
and camaraderie, and social time, things
that people complain about that prisons have
because it's good for mental health?
Can you empathize more with a prisoner
than you used to be able to now, just
with the very light version of this?
Imagine if not only you couldn't leave your house
but your house was only one room.
Imagine if you could only leave that one room when told.
That's horrifying to think about now, especially.
I mean, at least for me, I can really empathize with people
who are trapped in a place that they cannot leave.
And that is a huge, huge punishment all on its own.
Why would we want people to suffer even more?
Can't we empathize more now with that?
I would hope that as a society, we can now empathize with
people who are in jail, who are in prison, that cannot leave.
They're in this quarantine situation every day times 10,
times 100.
Touch is so important that it actually
boosts our immune system.
According to a 2014 study reported by Time
magazine, quote, "whether receiving hugs--
and more broadly, social support--
gives the perception that one is cared for,
it could make people less susceptible to one
of the viruses and common colds."
They actually had 404 adults who self-reported their feelings
for two weeks.
And then they physically exposed the adults to cold virus
on purpose, which is so crazy.
They had social support of them.
And that social support was monitored.
And more social support meant that they
were less likely to come down with a cold.
That's how much social interaction can affect people.
Video chatting, like what we're all doing now,
it releases bonding hormones and happy feelings
just like physical touch does, though it's not perfect.
I think we all can feel that now that we've done it for a while.
It's not a perfect replacement to interacting
with human beings in person.
But it is a little bit of an analog.
So video chatting and phone calls
can reduce the touch deprivation and help replace it
in terms of social connection by like 70% to 80%.
And you see that a lot of times with people
that are in long-distance relationships, right?
People are very capable of using this
as their primary way of connecting and maintaining
deep connections.
This might not necessarily be a tip for your work colleagues
unless have any close with your work colleagues.
Carving out some time to ask about how people are doing
and what they've been up to, or what's making them happy.
But it definitely helps to be able to share
those things with people.
And also, just maybe reach out to someone
you haven't talked to in a while or maybe someone you usually
just have texting conversations with, you can just be like,
hey, are you free for a video chat or a call?
And that could definitely increase
the amount of social connection you're getting versus texting--
although texting is very tactile even though we're all
on smokescreens.
Do something that isn't just sitting
with your face in the middle of the screen.
Dance.
Sing.
Exercise.
Play games.
If you are lucky enough to have someone around that you
can touch-- a brother, a mother, a dog, a partner,
touch that person.
Give them a hug.
Shake their hands.
I'm sure you're already doing it without thinking about it,
but make sure you do it and think about it
at the same time.
Be on the couch.
Let your limbs touch each other.
It's fine.
Do it.
It's not sexual.
It's just physical contact.
If you have an animal, pet that animal.
Touch it.
Play with it.
Wrestle with it if it's big enough.
It's good for you.
If you're by yourself, touch things
in your house-- your couch, your wall, your floor, your bed.
You have a plant?
Touch the leaves of your plant.
Touch different surfaces.
Lift things.
Be tactile.
It's not a replacement for touching another human,
but it will help settle your touch debt.
Your skin hunger will be lessened because of it.
Now that we know how physical contact works,
and what happens in the brain, and what
happens in our emotional centers,
and why it's important to touch, let's
find some stories about how touching can change over time.
The next episode is going to be really cool.
Because we're going to start talking about touch illusions,
what happens with people who cannot touch--
physically, they're kept from touching others.
And I have a really amazing interview
that I'm very excited about with an astronaut who
spent a lot of time in space and couldn't touch another person.
So subscribe to get all of the episodes in the series.
Make sure you go back and watch the episodes--
if you didn't already--
of the first two sections of this.
And of course, I am Trace, and I thank you for tuning in.
I'll see you in the future.