Newsflash! Stroking is good for you

BBC News 11 September 2008: Stroking reveals pleasure nerve

This research has demonstrated the exact nerve type which stroking activates, and which is wired into the rewards system of the brain. These nerve fibres are similar to the ones that transmit pain, and another piece of research shows that "pain experienced by people exposed to a painful thermal stimulus, lessens when the region of the stimulus is simultaneously stroked". As a result, they make the suggestion that "stroking could be used to treat chronic pain".

It's an interesting piece of work because it shows something new about anatomy and physiology, but I object to the methodology and philosophy behind the research. Although they talk about the pleasures of social grooming, they nevertheless divorce the stroking experience in the study from the social context of everyday life. In order to standardise the stroking experience they had to build a stroking machine, and give it a clinical name: the rotary tactile stimulator. And by suggesting that stroking could become a treatment, they have medicalised something that is a completely natural and social response to the stresses of life. Taking it to its logical conclusion is farcical.

Will the stroking be administered by a nurse or doctor? Will a machine be involved, in order that optimal stroking is reproduced: "stroking speeds of about 5cm per second, while applying 2g of pressure per square cm"? Or will patients be allowed to visit other traditional stroking professionals, such as a massage therapist? Perhaps they could be trained to stroke themselves, or provide instructions for their family and friends to do the stroking?

I'd like to think that most close families spontaneously stroke each other anyway, but I know this is not true. I know adults who experience very little touch, and people who come from families where touch was not part of growing up. (Not to mention that manual therapists have been using touch since time immemorial to reduce pain and encourage improvements in health - although little of this is stroking exactly in the way defined here.) Perhaps I am naive, that the answer to this problem really is to provide an authoritative permission to stroke as part of a sanctioned, evidence-based treatment. But somehow, as with so much in modern medicine, it may be effective but it also, to my mind, misses the point.