Dr. Giulia Enders

They will get tired after a while.

Just like when you hear your favorite song over and over again, you don't like it so much at the 20th time.

So this is when you exhaust them a little bit.

And so knowing these things sometimes just changes a little bit the way that you behave.

The interesting thing is that we oftentimes feel like we have to get things from a pill or from some medication when we don't feel so well.

And one discovery that science has made with the skin is that it can actually provide effects that are very similar to some pills to calm your nervous system, for example, just to touch.

And one of the nice experiments, experience for this was about personal synchronization.

So people will lay in a tube and someone will hold their hand that they know and like very much.

And after a while, you see that their heart rate will be very similar, their skin conductivity, which stands for, you know, nervousness and yeah, being a bit stressed, for example, this will get to a nicer, lower level.

And even, you know, their blood pressure.

And so you can see that the calmer person will calm down the more nervous person just by touching their hand.

They don't even see each other or hug.

And this was one phenomenon that was proven again in following experiments.

So it's actually quite a solid thing to state now that there is such a thing as

interpersonal synchronization.

And we also see these effects from other things like preterm born babies, people that have ADHD or autism that don't like to be touched necessarily so much.

But when someone hugs them or touches them that they know and feel okay with, then you can also see that it's physically very good for them.

So we have in all different settings, also patients on intensive care units, seen these effects from just touch, from just skin on skin, that are very calming and very healthy and sometimes do more than just swallowing a pill.

Well, we have some hypotheses.

We see that there are some sensors in the skin, some neural cells that are just there to perceive nice touch, calming touch, like emotional touch.