Hugging for 8 seconds raises oxytocin, is this safe?, by Science of Happiness

Nowadays, even hormones become fashionable. In recent times, the oxytocin she is presented almost like a sweet little princess from the stories.

The effects of oxytocin

In the body it is known that it promotes contractions in childbirth and in lactation it helps to create the attachment of the mother to the baby. At the cerebral level, it seems that it favors empathic and prosocial bonds. Through touch we also secrete oxytocin.

But as in any movie, not only a “princess” is needed, but also a “villain”. This paper falls on the cortisolthat hormone linked to a dysregulated stress system.

The solution is perhaps worthy of a children’s film, but certainly immature. ” Let’s hug for 8 seconds because it is said that oxytocin is generated and let’s reduce cortisol ”, she says to herself. By biologizing behavior to these levels, vision is greatly reduced.

And is that oxytocin is not just a sweet little princess. It is also the hormone that makes you have strong ties with your own group, but at the same time the relationship with strange or foreign groups decreases. In well-known decision-making experiments, such as the famous streetcar dilemma, oxytocin favors behavior that increases, rather than reduces, the distance between us-them, that is, it makes you feel more favoritism about the similar and more prejudice and exclusion of those who are different. Oxytocin in chimpanzees, for example, increases when they are in conflict with rival clans. It is not so much the hormone of love, but of empathy with those close to us and the rejection of those who are different. Far from a fairytale princess.

The other functions of cortisol

Expanded view of oxytocin, attention should be paid to the “villain”, cortisol. Although its role in chronic stress is well known, small and gradual spikes in cortisol in response to environmental stimuli are evidence of optimal adaptation. Produced in the adrenal cortex cortisol favors, among many other functions, to metabolize fats, hydrates and proteins or maintain the balance of water and electrolytes. Without cortisol, there would be no motivation or possibility to respond to the challenges that human life represents.

Reducing behavior to hormones is not appropriate

Hormones are not substances that represent good and evil within human beings. That vision, as famous as it may be, is more religious than scientific and speaks more about the person who shows it than about human biology.

And it is that all hormones depend on the context. Its functions, far from being unidirectional, are interrelated with each other. When you try to explain behavior from biology through oversimplification, you run the risk of introducing your own biases and prejudices into the equation. Neither testosterone is the hormone of violence, nor oxytocin that of love, nor cortisol that of agitation. The moral prejudices of the good guys and the bad guys should not be justified through biology. Does not fit.

You have to hug each other a lot out of affection and genuine compassion, without worrying about generating “oxytocin or cortisol or whatever you touch” and without a doubt reflecting, beyond an isolated hormone, who you are and who they are.

And, above all, do not set the stopwatch or count the seconds. It would be an instrumental and utilitarian embrace.

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