Why the King is in favour of the healing powers of the hug

King Charles III had a surprisingly close encounter when he met New Zealand’s Black Ferns rugby union team at Buckingham Palace this week. Photo / Getty
When Queen Elizabeth was on the throne, it was widely known that the monarch should not be touched unless she extended her hand first – and then only for a handshake.
With King Charles, it seems, things could not be more different. On Wednesday the King found himself at the centre of a group hug from New Zealand’s women’s rugby team, which rapidly turned into a scrum.
Far from taking offence, the King, who was diagnosed with cancer in February, and has avoided lengthy travel to New Zealand on his doctor’s orders, told the Black Ferns that he found their “warm hug” to be “very healing”.
It’s a feeling many of us will recognise. Physical touch is “much more important than we imagine”, says Robin Dunbar, an emeritus professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of Oxford.
“I think we all know how powerful hugs are somewhere deep in our subconscious,” he says, “but because the world is so dominated by vision and speech, it isn’t something that we tend to reflect on.”
American psychotherapist Virginia Satir is credited with the finding that we need at least four hugs a day to “survive”, eight to “sustain” and 12 to “thrive” – an idea backed up by a 1995 study, which found it takes four hugs a day to alleviate symptoms of depression.
Though many of us still prefer to keep our physical contact with strangers to a brief handshake, “having someone say that I feel this warmth, that I’m prepared to give you a big hug, may be just what you needed in that circumstance, to give you the sense that you belong to that community,” says Dunbar, hence why the King’s scrum-hug was so impactful.
Here’s all that a warm hug can do for your health, and why all of us should be seeking out more of them.
Many of us know that in moments of disaster or struggle, a good hug can make tension melt away. It’s the most important piece in our “social toolkit”, Dunbar says, among strategies such as joking with friends, eating a good meal with a group or offloading about the day with a family member.
All of these, and most of all a hug, can “dissipate stress completely and leave us feeling much less hassled and stressed”.
It’s a phenomenon backed up by research: one study published in February found our stress levels are lower the morning after we receive a hug, with another finding a hug can reduce the amount of the stress hormone cortisol released into the bloodstream, especially in women.
We didn’t evolve the ability to hug as a disease-busting behaviour, but it has very much turned out to be one, Dunbar says.
Hugs prompt a rush of feel-good endorphins to be released in the brain, which help to relieve pain. “It turns out that that endorphin system also triggers knock-on effects in the immune system, giving a boost to your natural killer cells,” he says.
Hugs can also increase the amount of feel-good hormone oxytocin in our systems, which some studies have shown could reduce inflammation and even help physical wounds heal more quickly.
Those who hug frequently experience less severe symptoms when they have a cold, one 2018 study found.
In all the major research into why some of us live longer than others, one important factor has prevailed.
“The single best predictor of mental health, physical health and even how long you live is the number and quality of close friendships you have, with the optimum number being five,” says Dunbar.
That isn’t because popular people have more hardy genes but “simply because of what you do with close friends”, he explains: “a lot of laughter, singing, dancing, eating together, sharing emotional stories, and above all things constant physical touch”.
All of these behaviours – and principally physical touch – reduce stress and boost immune response, leading to a longer life. In Finland, which Dunbar’s research has found to be Europe’s “huggiest” country, life expectancy is one year greater than that of other nations on the continent.
Hugging isn’t just a friendly gesture but a crucial sign of affection that “replaces social grooming in primates, which for them is their principal bonding mechanism”, says Dunbar.
Of course, this is “clearly not the sort of thing we do with strangers in the lift, because the whole nature of physical contact is very intimate”, he says.
While people do use hugs to signify they would like to have a closer relationship with someone they like and approve of but don’t yet know well – much like the King and the Black Ferns – “you know immediately whether they’re doing it with meaning or artificially”, Dunbar adds.
If you’d like to know how someone truly feels about you, and benefit from all the longevity-boosting perks that come with a sense of belonging, then, a hug is a great way to test the waters.
Many of us react to the best or worst of news by reaching for a hug with a loved one. In either case, doing so boosts our mood, Dunbar says, perhaps more strongly than any other social behaviour.
Physical touch is “the best antidepressant medicine you can get, and it’s free”, says Dunbar. “It lifts you and makes you feel that the world is not such a bad place.”
One recent review of more than 200 studies found hugs alleviate symptoms of depression and anxiety in people of all ages, though babies are far more responsive to physical touch than adults.
A colleague who drags themselves into the office despite a winter cold may well be doing so because of an abundance of hugs at home, says Dunbar, who believes loneliness is a major factor in absenteeism.
A lack of physical touch “causes you to feel depressed, so you don’t have the same resilience to things that you’d usually cope well with”, he says.
“If you’re feeling bolstered in this way then you don’t notice how miserable you feel. Migraines don’t hit so hard, for example, and with other aches and pains and even broken bones, you’re not going to get knocked back so much.”
This only holds if you’re happy to be hugged, however. One 2013 study found that oxytocin is only boosted through hugs when they come from someone we know well.
So if you’re the sort of person who’s allergic to hugs, don’t panic – you are likely already feeling the benefits from the few hugs that you do enjoy.