Show 998: The Health Effects of Touch
The People's Pharmacy
Joe and Terry Graedon
4.6 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 25 June 2015
⏱️ 58 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We don’t always pay attention to our sense of touch, though it is critical to survival. Sensations of pain, heat or cold protect us from injury. But the importance of touch goes far beyond that.
Pain and Pleasure:
Our sense of touch also provides us with great pleasure. Caress is an essential element of bonding between babies and their parents, and of course it is also part of the pleasure between sexual partners.
Around the world, people refer to chili peppers as hot and mint as cool. These perceptions are rooted in the physiology of touch.
Find out why we can’t tickle ourselves, how the sense of touch contributes to our enjoyment of food, and whether we can nurture our sense of touch.
This Week’s Guest:
David J. Linden, PhD, is a professor in the Solomon H. Snyder Department of Neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He is the author of The Accidental Mind, The Compass of Pleasure, and most recently, Touch: The Science of Hand, Heart, and Mind. His website is davidlinden.org
Photo credit: Jacob Linden
Listen to the Podcast:
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, I'm Joe Graydon. |
| 0:02.3 | I'm Terry Graydon. |
| 0:03.8 | Welcome to this podcast of the People's Pharmacy, where we bring you the stories behind the health headlines. |
| 0:10.2 | This podcast is brought to you by Redux Industries, makers of utterly smooth body cream. |
| 0:16.0 | 800-345-7339 on the web at utter cream.com. |
| 0:21.6 | What is it about a hug that's so reassuring? |
| 0:34.7 | We often take the sense of touch for granted, but it's essential for our well-being. |
| 0:39.8 | This is the People's Pharmacy with Terry and Joe Graydon. |
| 0:50.1 | The sense of touch allows for the pleasure of a caress, whether we're stroking a pet or cuddling an infant. |
| 0:56.6 | It allows for the bonding between parents and children, as well as between sexual partners. |
| 1:02.1 | We express our emotions as feelings. |
| 1:06.0 | That's because our sense of touch is profoundly intertwined with the neurological wiring that provides feedback on how we are interacting with the world around us. |
| 1:16.2 | Whether offering pain or pleasure, touch is central. |
| 1:19.8 | Coming up on the People's Pharmacy, the science of the sense of touch. |
| 1:25.3 | First, this news. |
| 1:30.1 | In the People's Pharmacy Health Headlines, noted nutrition experts are urging the departments |
| 1:36.3 | of agriculture and health and human services to forget about fat in the new dietary guidelines |
| 1:42.2 | for Americans. |
| 1:43.5 | The guidelines will be issued later this year, |
| 1:45.9 | following recommendations from an expert committee. Dr. Darius-Mozafarian of Tufts University |
| 1:51.9 | and Dr. David Ludwig of Boston Children's Hospital, write in JAMA that previous guidelines |
| 1:58.0 | telling Americans to limit fat contributed to the obesity epidemic. |
... |
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