New study highlights the benefit of touch on mental and physical health

If your doctor was competent at all, s/he would ensure sex was available in the hospital. 

All the benefits of sex are in this post: 

For Some, Sex Is Better Sleep Aid Than Pill, Small Survey Finds

And all these:

Sexual Frequency Predicts Greater Well-Being, But More is Not Always Better

 

Sex after stroke

 

Sex linked to better brain power in older age

Sex: The Ultimate Full Body Workout

 

Better Memory From This Extremely Pleasurable Activity - Sex

 

WHY SEX IS BETTER FOR YOUR BRAIN THAN SUDOKU 

 

Sex linked to better brain power in older age  (Put this in here twice because it's so important!)

The latest here: If your competent? doctor isn't getting both done at the same time, I would question the use of the word competent!

New study highlights the benefit of touch on mental and physical health

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience - KNAW

image: 

Through a large-scale analysis, researchers at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience have uncovered the ways in which consensual touch can benefit a person’s physical and mental wellbeing.

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Credit: Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience

Through a large-scale analysis, researchers at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience have uncovered the ways in which consensual touch can benefit a person’s physical and mental wellbeing.

You might recognize the comforting feeling when someone offers you a hug at the end of a stressful day or strokes your shoulder when you’re feeling down. But the question remains: can touch really help you feel better, and does it matter who it’s from or how they touch you? To explore these questions, researchers from the Social Brain Lab at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience and the University Hospital Essen conducted a large-scale analysis of studies exploring touch interventions.

The benefits of touch on mental and physical health

Does touch truly improve someone’s wellbeing? It is an easy question to ask but more complicated to answer. Individual studies often only focus on specific instances and may contradict each other. Combining all these studies together for a large-scale analysis offers a clearer answer: yes, touch substantially improves both physical and mental wellbeing, for example via reduction of pain, anxiety, depression, and stress in adults. But in fact, those with physical or mental health problems (and therefore most in need of support) benefit even more from touch than healthy adults. “This is especially relevant considering how often touch interventions are overlooked” Packheiser, first author, adds.

“A key question of our study is to leverage the hundreds of individual studies out there to identify what type of touch works best,” adds professor Keysers, director of the Social Brain Lab. “What if you don’t have a friend or partner close by to hug you? Would touch from a stranger or even a machine also help? And how often?. The study clearly shows that touch can indeed be optimized, but the most important factors are not necessarily those we suspect.”

Interestingly, the person touching you, how they touch you, and the duration of their touch doesn’t make a difference in terms of impact. A long-lasting massage by a therapist could therefore be just as effective as a quick hug offered by a friend. That is, until the frequency of the intervention is considered. The more often a touch intervention is offered, the greater the impact. A quick hug could therefore be even more impactful than a massage if it is offered more frequently.

Human or non-human touch?

The next question was whether touch intervention needs to be human at all. As it turns out, object or robot interventions can be equally effective at improving physical wellbeing. “There are lots of people in need of wellbeing improvements, perhaps because they’re lonely but also because they may be inflicted by clinical conditions. These results indicate that a touch-robot, or even a simple weighted blanket has the potential to help those people”, last author Frédéric Michon explains. However, the benefits of robot and object interventions are less effective for mental wellbeing. Mental health disorders like anxiety or depression might therefore require human touch after all, “perhaps suggestive of the importance for an emotional component associated with the touch”, Michon point out.

While the researchers were equally curious about human-to-animal contact, studies exploring this question are still lacking. “It would be useful to see whether an animal’s or pet’s touch could improve wellbeing, and inversely if they also benefit from it, but unfortunately there simply aren’t enough studies, or properly controlled ones, for us to draw any general conclusions on these topics”, Michon clarifies.

Touch interventions across ages

When the team looked into the impact of touch on newborns, they found out that newborns also benefited significantly from touch. However, the person conducting the touch intervention was more important: the benefits of touch are higher when done by a parent instead of a healthcare worker. “This finding could be impactful”, Packheiser adds. “Death rates due to premature births are high in some countries and the knowledge that a baby benefits more from the touch of their own parent offers another easily implementable form of support for the baby’s health”.

Due to a lack of studies, it proved difficult to draw conclusions about children and teenagers. “Large scale studies like this help us draw more general conclusions but they also help us identify where research is lacking”, Michon explains. “We hope that our findings can steer future research to explore lesser-known questions. This includes animal touch, but also touch across ages, and in specific clinical settings like autistic patients, another category that has not been explored extensively”.

Source: Nature Human Behaviour

The dead fairy sign

Does your doctor have a protocol for fairy touch prevention for stroke prevention? It has only been hundreds of years for your doctor to come up with a prevention solution for fairies.  Is hundreds of years enough time for your doctor to do something?

The dead fairy sign

BMJ. 1998 Aug 8; 317(7155): 396.

doi: 10.1136/bmj.317.7155.396

PMCID: PMC1113672

PMID: 9694758

Graham Lewis, general practitioner, Hampton, Middlesex

Copyright and License information Disclaimer

Insight is reflecting on the words of others. In medicine this means listening to your patients. My memorable patient was a little old lady, who remarked towards the end of a long Monday morning surgery, “Oh, doctor, you have just killed a fairy.” Wondering if my ears needed syringing, I was creating a list of possible psychiatric diagnoses as the patient continued, “Didn’t your mother ever tell you, every time you sigh you kill a fairy?” I was forced to admit that she had not.

This was surprising because a childhood spent in Cornwall had given me a healthy respect for, and knowledge of, the unworldy. I had recently bought my wife, whose family was full of such odd sayings, a copy of A Dictionary of Omens and Superstitions. This book provided no reference to sighs, fairies, and death.

From then on each time I started to sigh mental images of fairies falling from the skies, dying in mid-flight, began to haunt me. These were not the fay, gossamer winged creatures pictured by Arthur Rackham that are again in fashion. My fairies were the original Celtic fairy or piskie. These are amoral creatures, childlike in nature, and capable of great malevolence. In folklore they were held responsible for those otherwise inexplicable episodes of misfortune that afflict us all. Indeed, until recently, being touched by such a fairy was commonly recognised as the cause of a stroke. These were not creatures willfully to destroy, for—like bees—would not the death of one cause the rest of the swarm to fall on you? My sighing days were over and I began to observe others.

Within the practice it struck me that certain patients singlehandedly slay fairies at an almost genocidal rate. On entering the consulting room they have slaughtered several before seating. More lie mortally wounded as the first sentences are uttered. These patients usually present with a list of multiple symptoms or complaints. These patients are difficult to manage, frequently returning with yet more worries or symptoms. My newly discovered mental imagery now revealed a trail of fairies, dying fairies, spiralling down like sycamore seeds in the autumn winds, as these patients left the room.

I now understood why, whatever the advice I proffered, they would soon return with yet more woes. For dogging their steps, growing ever more malicious, were the surviving fairy brethren. Angered by the untimely demise of their kinsmen, they would now ensure misfortune to guarantee the patients’ return. It dawned on me that a chance remark by a little old lady had revealed a new category of patient. These were not just depressed, stressed, or heartsink. They were fairy killers.

Some patients, caught early enough may, like me, benefit from this novel insight. The more Rambo-inspired all seem to have been blinded (by the fairies?) to any possibility of insight. An attempt at explanation only lead to the sort of puzzled look I originally gave the little old lady. Any effort to push the concept is unnecessarily dangerous. The patient could leave the list or, worse still, the local community mental health team might begin to pay me undue attention.

However, now as they leave the room from a supposedly final consultation I can unfailingly spot the patient who will shortly return with yet another tale of woe. For as the surgery door closes, there lying on the floor (visible only to those with eyes to see) and gasping its last breath is a small dying fairy.

And the little old lady? I never saw her again.

Same Intervention–Different Reorganization The Impact of Lesion Location on Training-Facilitated Somatosensory Recovery After Stroke

Fucking useless research without a stroke protocol writeup for survivors. This simple task is what our fucking failures of stroke associations are unable to do because it is too much like work. And survivors will continually get screwed until that changes. 

Same Intervention–Different Reorganization The Impact of Lesion Location on Training-Facilitated Somatosensory Recovery After Stroke

1. Leeanne M. Carey, PhD1,2⇑
2. David F. Abbott, PhD2
3. Gemma Lamp1,2
4. Aina Puce, PhD2,3
5. Rüdiger J. Seitz, MD2,4,5
6. Geoffrey A. Donnan, MD2

1. ¹La Trobe University, Bundoora, Victoria, Australia
2. ²The Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
3. ³Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA
4. ⁴LVR-Klinikum Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany
5. ⁵University Hospital Düsseldorf, Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf, Germany

1. Leeanne M. Carey, PhD, Occupational Therapy, School of Allied Health, College of Science, Health and Engineering, La Trobe University, Bundoora, Victoria, 3086, Australia. Email: l.carey@latrobe.edu.au

Abstract

Background. The brain may reorganize to optimize stroke recovery. Yet relatively little is known about neural correlates of training-facilitated recovery, particularly after loss of body sensations. Objective. Our aim was to characterize changes in brain activation following clinically effective touch discrimination training in stroke patients with somatosensory loss after lesions of primary/secondary somatosensory cortices or thalamic/capsular somatosensory regions using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).  

Methods. Eleven stroke patients with somatosensory loss, 7 with lesions involving primary (S1) and/or secondary (S2) somatosensory cortex (4 male, 58.7 ± 13.3 years) and 4 with lesions primarily involving somatosensory thalamus and/or capsular/white matter regions (2 male, 58 ± 8.6 years) were studied. Clinical and MRI testing occurred at 6 months poststroke (preintervention), and following 15 sessions of clinically effective touch discrimination training (postintervention).  

Results. Improved touch discrimination of a magnitude similar to previous clinical studies and approaching normal range was found. Patients with thalamic/capsular somatosensory lesions activated preintervention in left ipsilesional supramarginal gyrus, and postintervention in ipsilesional insula and supramarginal gyrus. In contrast, those with S1/S2 lesions did not show common activation preintervention, only deactivation in contralesional superior parietal lobe, including S1, and cingulate cortex postintervention. The S1/S2 group did, however, show significant change over time involving ipsilesional precuneus. This change was greater than for the thalamic/capsular group (P = .012; d = −2.43; CI = −0.67 to −3.76). 

Conclusion. Different patterns of change in activation are evident following touch discrimination training with thalamic/capsular lesions compared with S1/S2 cortical somatosensory lesions, despite common training and similar improvement.

Quantifying the sensory and emotional perception of touch: differences between glabrous and hairy skin

So when your therapist is trying to bring back sensation to you are they trying to get all 5 factors and the emotional ones also?
http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fnbeh.2014.00034/full?
Rochelle Ackerley1,2,3*, Karin Saar2, Francis McGlone3 and Helena Backlund Wasling1

    1Department of Physiology, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden
    2Clinical Neurophysiology, Sahlgrenska University Hospital, Gothenburg, Sweden
    3School of Natural Sciences and Psychology, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, UK

The perception of touch is complex and there has been a lack of ways to describe the full tactile experience quantitatively. Guest et al. (2011) developed a Touch Perception Task (TPT) in order to capture such experiences, and here we used the TPT to examine differences in sensory and emotional aspects of touch at different skin sites. We compared touch on three skin sites: the hairy arm and cheek, and the glabrous palm. The hairy skin contains C-tactile (CT) afferents, which play a role in affective touch, whereas glabrous skin does not contain CT afferents and is involved in more discriminative touch. In healthy volunteers, three different materials (soft brush, sandpaper, fur) were stroked across these skin sites during self-touch or experimenter-applied touch. After each stimulus, participants rated the tactile experience using descriptors in the TPT. Sensory and emotional descriptors were analyzed using factor analyses. Five sensory factors were found: Texture, Pile, Moisture, Heat/Sharp and Cold/Slip, and three emotional factors: Positive Affect, Arousal, and Negative Affect. Significant differences were found in the use of descriptors in touch to hairy vs. glabrous skin: this was most evident in touch on forearm skin, which produced higher emotional content. The touch from another was also judged as more emotionally positive then self-touch, and participants readily discriminated between the materials on all factors. The TPT successfully probed sensory and emotional percepts of the touch experience, which aided in identifying skin where emotional touch was more pertinent. It also highlights the potentially important role for CTs in the affective processing of inter-personal touch, in combination with higher-order influences, such as through cultural belonging and previous experiences.

Much more at link.

Rochelle Ackerley^1,2,3*, Karin Saar², Francis McGlone³ and Helena Backlund Wasling¹

• ¹Department of Physiology, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden
• ²Clinical Neurophysiology, Sahlgrenska University Hospital, Gothenburg, Sweden
• ³School of Natural Sciences and Psychology, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, UK

The perception of touch is complex and there has been a lack of ways to describe the full tactile experience quantitatively. Guest et al. (2011) developed a Touch Perception Task (TPT) in order to capture such experiences, and here we used the TPT to examine differences in sensory and emotional aspects of touch at different skin sites. We compared touch on three skin sites: the hairy arm and cheek, and the glabrous palm. The hairy skin contains C-tactile (CT) afferents, which play a role in affective touch, whereas glabrous skin does not contain CT afferents and is involved in more discriminative touch. In healthy volunteers, three different materials (soft brush, sandpaper, fur) were stroked across these skin sites during self-touch or experimenter-applied touch. After each stimulus, participants rated the tactile experience using descriptors in the TPT. Sensory and emotional descriptors were analyzed using factor analyses. Five sensory factors were found: Texture, Pile, Moisture, Heat/Sharp and Cold/Slip, and three emotional factors: Positive Affect, Arousal, and Negative Affect. Significant differences were found in the use of descriptors in touch to hairy vs. glabrous skin: this was most evident in touch on forearm skin, which produced higher emotional content. The touch from another was also judged as more emotionally positive then self-touch, and participants readily discriminated between the materials on all factors. The TPT successfully probed sensory and emotional percepts of the touch experience, which aided in identifying skin where emotional touch was more pertinent. It also highlights the potentially important role for CTs in the affective processing of inter-personal touch, in combination with higher-order influences, such as through cultural belonging and previous experiences.
- See more at: http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fnbeh.2014.00034/full?#sthash.Bs2axso0.dpuf

Woman's Touch Zaps Man's Opioid System

You'll have to ask your doctor if this is good or bad for your social life. I don't have to worry about this.

Woman's Touch Zaps Man's Opioid System

A couple of paragraphs to tease you.
Endogenous opioid release was diminished in men when they were softly stroked by their female partners, providing a clue to brain mechanisms involved in social relations, a researcher said here.

"[Social] touching deactivates the opioid system," he told attendees at the Society for Neuroscience's annual meeting. Although it may seem paradoxical, it actually confirms earlier studies that had found an inverse relationship between endogenous opioid activity and social success, Tuominen said.
For example, one recent study found deactivation of the opioid system was associated with social acceptance, while others showed increases in opioid activity in the context of social rejection.

The current study, Tuominen said, "may help to understand the complex relationship between psychiatric disorder and problems in social life."