title: Haptic medicine.
abstract: The paper introduces haptic medicine--healthcare based on loving touch for healing and preventing disease. We describe the effects of loving touch (a square inch of our skin has over 1000 nerves) on the body, brain and mind. We describe two web-based health education and media projects. The first, HYPERLINK "http://www.21stcenturymed.org" www.21stcenturymed.org is a place for health practitioners to start learning about touch and resources. The second project, Humans Without Borders, is a multi-lingual self help education website for everyday people. Teaching materials for these projects are based on our previous work with a form of haptic medicine known as psychophysiophilosophy with patients at Stanford Hospital, Kaiser Permanente and Lucille Packard Children's Hospital. We describe psychophysiophilosophy, relate motherly love to recent discoveries in neurosciences and give hints on ways to increase motherly love in each of us. We present a plan for moving into the future by re-introducing haptic medicine into our daily lives through self-help and as an adjunct for current physician practice. There is an exercise in self-help for the reader and an appendix of recent clinical research with profound benefits on the use of human touch for over 40 conditions.
authors.affiliation: Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Cindy
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Mason
authors.forename: Earl
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Mason
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D010173:Palpation; D013812:Therapeutics