Who knew there was a perfect way to cuddle? Cuddling is one of the gestures that can give someone comfort and warmth, and to know that there’s a way to do it perfectly is quite interesting! Scientists from Toho University in Japan studied the effect of different hugs on infants. Yahoo News has the details:
By monitoring heart rates for the infant and using pressure sensors on the adult's hand, the researchers assessed the baby's reaction to just being held, a hug with medium pressure, and what they called a "tight hug."
According to the results, published in the journal Cell, babies were soothed more by a medium-pressure hug than just being held but the calming effect decreased during a "tight" hug.
The researchers kept the length of the hug to 20 seconds as "it was almost impossible to avoid infant's bad mood during a one-minute or longer hold or hug," they admitted in their paper.
Unsurprisingly perhaps, for infants older than 125 days, the calming effect was greater when receiving a hug from a parent than from a female stranger.
So, the perfect hug is considered to be medium pressure from a parent, the scientists believe.
The infants are not the only ones who feel the benefits of a comforting hug, the research showed.
Parents also exhibited significant signs of calmness while hugging their child.
image via Yahoo News