High and Tight
Irradiated by LabRat
From the department of wild speculation, a thread I have noticed and wonder about.
One of the world’s oldest infant-care practices is swaddling, the practice of wrapping up an infant tightly enough to stop it moving its limbs around. While the potential risks and benefits of the practice are hotly debated (the practice fell out of favor for a few centuries and is now coming back), one thing just about everybody agrees on is that swaddling has an interesting tranquilzing effect on babies- wrap them up so they can’t move, and they stop crying/fall asleep/calm themselves faster. If done with regularity they get used to it and the effect seems to wear off/be less dramatic, but either way the effect on a baby who has never been swaddled is counter-intuitive: rather than struggling against restraint, their heart rates drop, their EEG pattern changes, and they are lulled. The effect is more dramatic and more consistent over the long term on premature babies, whose motor systems have developed less.
Speaking of motor impairment, one of Temple Grandin’s most famous innovations is the squeeze machine, initially developed to help her (and later, far more autistic children) cope with the severe overreaction to being touched that is often characteristic of autism*. I recommend reading the link, by the by; Grandin goes as well as she can into the sparse and scattered research out there on the effect of what she terms “deep touch pressure” on humans and other mammals. Swaddling falls under such pressure, as does the odd “rolling up in a gym mat” practice of calming autistic and hyperactive children that preceded the squeeze-machine idea, as does firm stroking and presumably massage as well. It’s never been an area of rigorous and intense research, but the general idea investigated is that such pressure, applied correctly (especially in a firm-release pattern, as in massage) has a reflexively tranquilizing effect on mammals. Given that the theory put into practice in the squeeze-machine form has a dramatic effect on autistic children and still a notably calming/relaxing one on adult college students not told what the machine was supposed to do, there may well be a real underlying physiological effect here that simply hasn’t been rigorously studied.
Which makes me wonder about other uses of the concept of partially restraining an individual in something that applies consistent, nonfocused pressure. A good shooting coat, for competitive high-power rifle shooting, provides stabilizing pressure when adjusted properly for any position the shooter takes; when in position, he is rigid and restrained, out of it, the pressure loosens. This is, of course, the point: the more stable a platform for the rifle the shooter’s body forms, the more precisely and consistently placed his shots can be.
This makes me wonder: rifle marksmen already practice self-calming techniques to counter the adrenaline of competition and make their heart rate and breathing steady and slow to better place shots, but are they getting more physiological benefit out of the jacket than just the stable platform? What would happen (other than a lot of fiddling trying to get the thing adjusted properly) if you stuck a much more novice rifle shooter in one, that had done essentially no work in independently self-calming before shooting?
Either way I suspect it would be easier to test the idea than it would be to test and popularize the concept of shooting prone while wrapped in a gymnastics mat.
*This is attributed to slightly impeded cerebellar development in the case of the autistic children. For what it’s worth, the cerebellum, which goes through a growth spurt during late gestation, is one of the areas a premature infant is most likely to have long-term problems with.
March 15th, 2011 at 4:07 pm
I like this– would love to know more, both as a shooter and biologist.
You know Grandin was scheduled to speak at St Johns Santa Fe last week? We wanted to go but couldn’t. On autism & animals– might be cool to get a transcript.
March 15th, 2011 at 4:16 pm
Oh damn, I wish I’d known that two weeks ago.
Yeah, it would… may look into that.
March 15th, 2011 at 8:17 pm
Did the un(der)trained shooter in the Hi-Power shooting jacket thing when I was 12/13 and a novice NRA Small Bore shooter (it was Dad’s and fit me well enough). Kinda a wash, I’m afraid. Not being familiar with the jacket’s fit when in the different firing positions compared to my normal shooting attire (T-shirt – under sweatshirt if cold enough) created at least as much stress on the firing line as competition ordinarily does. Took it off halfway through the third Saturday I tried it and called it a failed experiment. Talked Mom into buying me dark colored T-shirts instead (the justification for doing this at all; Mom complained about the gun oil stains on my white shirt’s right shoulder and left arm) (it was the mid-’60′s, the Brando/Dean kinda-rebel look thing was still making the rounds at the Drive-In).
For what it’s worth, I later discovered that a wet suit relieves much of the stress I experience when open water swimming/snorkelling. May be related effects.
March 16th, 2011 at 2:07 pm
We see this in the ER all the time. Some psych patients (not all, some get more riled up; but some) will be absolutely flipping out screaming and running in circles, and we’ll put them in restraints, and they’ll settle right down. Not “they know there’s no point in fighting” settle down (when you’re in a locked unit with a cop and three security officers and two aides, there’s already no point), but like they’re actually calmed by it. It’s not uncommon for us to restrain someone and have them almost immediately fall asleep.
And of course there’s bondage. Obviously a lot of people do it for purely sexyfun reasons, but other people do it in a way that’s not particularly sexual or even dominance-based–they just go into a very peaceful state when they can’t move. You see this particularly with suspension bondage–it’s often less “I was so horny/submissive” and more “I was just *floating*.”
March 16th, 2011 at 10:15 pm
We swaddled all our kids when they were infants. I even became fairly competent at it myself, though never as good as my wife. In addition to calming the child, it also makes the baby-bundle easier to handle. (think of the difference between a taco and a burrito)
The response must be biological. Don’t tell me you’ve never cocooned yourself in blankets or a sleeping bag on a chilly night.
March 17th, 2011 at 5:31 pm
Swaddling and firm touch pressure can be a help with dogs too.
You can buy a spendy wrap thingy to help calm your dog, or you can just look up instructions on how to use one or more wide ace bandages to do the same thing for nothing. This works surprisingly well in a lot of situations. (http://www.crvetcenter.com/bodywrap.htm)
I took a couple of seminars from a friend (the daughter of a chiropractor and and the ex-wife of a witch doctor) who teaches touch therapy for animals. I’ve been able to use what I learned to teach conditioned relaxation to dogs and to ease pain from various ailments and injuries.
Mindful touch is amazing and I think we use far too little of it in our world.
March 17th, 2011 at 8:07 pm
I don’t know what’s done nowadays, but when my daughters were born (20-17 year ago, yikes!), they taught me how to swaddle them in receiving blankets at the hospital. Of course, we lived in Hawaii and, unlike the hospital, had no air-conditioning in our home, so swaddling was mostly out. It did work, though.
And regarding massage, I find it interesting to see that some people just don’t like it. They dislike being touched, are extremely ticklish, or just can’t relax at all. My oldest daughter, for example, only lets me massage whatever is actively hurting her. She was pretty much useless as a practice client when I was in school, because she couldn’t stand to lie on the table and get a regular massage.