Högskolan i Skövde

Human pleasant touches promote feelings of security, supportiveness, and wellbeing. Conversely, human unpleasant touches promote the body for either “fight or flight” or “short term acute stress” during emergencies, feeling of stress or danger. The promoted stress response is released from the hypothalamus by the sympathetic nerve system further to the spinal cord to reach the signals to the adrenal medulla, where stress hormones adrenaline is released. Adrenaline, which is characterized by a mimic sympathetic nerve system, interacts with α and β receptors on different organs. The aim for this study was to investigate whether the stroker (partner/stranger) touch effects on adrenaline hormone releases. The null hypothesis for this study entails a significant adrenaline reduction in partners’ touches compared with strangers’ touches. Indirect competitive ELISA method was used, and concentration data of a total of sixteen participants was obtained. Whitney-U test was carried out to compare group differences within stroker (stranger/partner) touches and adrenaline releasing level. In addition, correlation in adrenaline with noradrenaline and oxytocin hormones was obtained using Spearman’s correlation test. The significant p-value 0.05 was conducted. The result of this study showed no differences between stroker (partner/stranger) associated with adrenaline hormone release. Correlation between partner maximum (max) concentration data for both oxytocin and adrenaline had significant differences. However, max variables for adrenaline and noradrenaline within stroker did not show significant differences. The conclusion of this study is that the gentle touch stimulus used in this study was not enough to detect stress hormone in adrenaline.