--- title: Free Hugs! They Fight the Flu description: Hug-deprived people may get more severe colds canonical: https://time.com/3639908/heres-how-hugs-can-prevent-the-flu/ author: Mandy Oaklander article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-12-18T18:24:41.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:45:21.640Z article:section: Health og:title: Cuddle Up! Here's Why Hugs Prevent the Flu og:description: Hug-deprived people may get more severe colds og:url: https://time.com/3639908/heres-how-hugs-can-prevent-the-flu/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt20f44068d5cae552/6986961ef983e72fae04e403/cat-hugs.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1500 og:image:height: 844 og:image:alt: cat-hugs og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Cuddle Up! Here's Why Hugs Prevent the Flu twitter:description: Hug-deprived people may get more severe colds twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt20f44068d5cae552/6986961ef983e72fae04e403/cat-hugs.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Here's How Hugs Can Prevent the Flu > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Health Matters: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Health Matters is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. The latest health news and expert advice on living well. Health Matters makes the fast-moving world of health more useful, surprising and human, from the latest science and medical breakthroughs to practical ideas for living better. 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It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ## Video: This Flu Shot Is Not Like the Others [Watch (HLS stream): This Flu Shot Is Not Like the Others](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/1thSi60s.m3u8) (2:09)  _Published 2014-10-30. Some people may get a new flu shot that’s made with dog cells instead of chicken eggs_  by [Mandy Oaklander](https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/)  ## Mandy Oaklander Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME. Dec 18, 2014 6:24 PM UTC  Getty Images  by [Mandy Oaklander](https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/)  ## Mandy Oaklander Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME. Dec 18, 2014 6:24 PM UTC Want to stay well this flu season? New research suggests you can inoculate yourself with a hug—sort of. For a study published Thursday in the journal _Psychological Science_, researchers from Carnegie Mellon University had an inkling that hugs—as an indicator of social support but also because it involves touch—might pack a flu-fighting punch. Studies have shown that strong social ties can protect against stress, anxiety and depression, and the researchers wanted to see if they can be a buffer for a purely physiological diseases, too. The researchers discovered that it did. For two weeks, researchers from Carnegie Mellon University called up 400 people daily and assessed their levels of social support. They asked them if they’d been hugged that day, and if they were experiencing any conflicts or tension with people. The researchers then gave them nasal drops brimming with either the cold or flu virus, quarantined them for about a week in a hotel, and monitored their symptoms. (Everyone who participated in the study was compensated for their time, says study co-author Sheldon Cohen, professor of psychology at Carnegie Mellon.) Even though everyone was exposed to infection-causing drops, 78% who developed an infection and 31% actually got sick—meaning they had physical symptoms of illness. For the unfortunate third whose hugs weren’t enough to prevent physical symptoms of being sick, they at least got some big benefit: those who got regularly hugged and those who felt they had more social support had less severe symptoms than the hug-deprived. “There’s a lot of evidence out there suggesting that touch might be really effective at protecting people from stressors,” says Cohen, and this study adds to that very hug-friendly body of work. “It’s a communication to people that you care about them, and that you have a close intimate relationship with them.” And as for the ideal “dose” of hugs? Cohen says: “It looks like one hug a day might be enough.” ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] This year, your annual flu shot might be more high tech than the ones you've had before. For decades, flu shots could only be made with the help of hundreds of thousands of chicken eggs. Scientists grew the influenza virus in the chicken eggs. Then purified and modified it to go into the flu vaccine. But that process took months for the virus to grow. In 2012 the U. S. Food and Drug Administration approved an entirely new way of making flu vaccines. Bypassing chicken eggs altogether and using animal cells instead. The Novartis Plant in Holly Springs, North Carolina is the only facility in the U. S.. Approved to produce a cell culture- based flu vaccine known as Flucelvax. This Influenza vaccine is grown using cells from dog kidneys. And the process is much faster. Taking 65 to 75 hours. Compared to the months it took to grow with [ UNKNOWN ] [ MUSIC ] The process begins with growing enough kidney cells to serve as the viruses incubators. Over 20 days the cells are put into a culture that encourages them to divide rapidly. And as the cells grow in number they are moved into increasingly larger vats. They start out in 5 liter. Containers and end up in a 5000 liter tank. Once there, the cells are infected with the flu virus. These samples of virus arrive frozen and are chosen each year by the World Health Organization in the spring. They determine which flu strains they believe will be circulating later that year. Year. After the cells produce enough virus, the viral particles are strained out, purified, and treated so they can't actually cause flu but can still alert the immune system to mount a response against the virus. 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