{"id":258,"date":"2021-12-26T16:07:02","date_gmt":"2021-12-26T16:07:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/procrastinomics.com\/?p=258"},"modified":"2025-01-14T19:14:56","modified_gmt":"2025-01-14T19:14:56","slug":"christmas-hugs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/procrastinomics.com\/?p=258","title":{"rendered":"Christmas Hugs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Dateline 12\/26\/21<\/strong>:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Well, congratulations procrastinators, you missed your deadline yesterday.\u00a0 Whether you couldn\u2019t think of a gift to give or you didn\u2019t have time to buy one or you were busy doing something else and \u2013 look at the time \u2013 you missed your window of opportunity, you showed up empty handed.\u00a0 Unlike most deadlines that you miss and no longer have to worry about, this one fills you with guilt.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When my son was young, he wasn\u2019t into crafting so come Christmas, he had nothing to give &#8211; but he had a plan.\u00a0 His fall-back gift was a hug.\u00a0 At the time, his sister thought it was a bit of a cop out (and a few other people too), but recently a good friend of mine enlightened me to the value of the hug.\u00a0 Turns out, a hug has tremendous physiological benefit.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When you hug someone (or a pet even) for several seconds, your brain begins to react and by 20 seconds you\u2019ve got the full benefit.\u00a0 The benefit comes in the form of serotonin, oxytocin and dopamine \u2013 three chemicals that your brain produces because, well, your human and that\u2019s what we do.\u00a0 Oxytocin is a hormone that is known to reduce stress and promote a calming effect making you feel safer and less anxious.\u00a0 Serotonin causes pleasure and reduces pain and sadness.\u00a0 Dopamine is the feel-good drug released by your brain \u2013 it helps to reduce depression among other benefits.\u00a0 The combined effect improves your health, strengthens your immune system and makes you feel loved.\u00a0 It\u2019s the best gift you can give \u2013 did I mention it\u2019s free!\u00a0 Merry (day after) Christmas!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Looking for that last minute Christmas gift.  Here&#8217;s one that delivers quicker than Amazon!<br \/>\n&hellip;<a href=\"https:\/\/procrastinomics.com\/?p=258\" class=\"more-link\"><span class=\"more-button\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Christmas Hugs<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":193,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[55,44,42,59,43],"class_list":["post-258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-protivity","tag-christmas","tag-dopamine","tag-hugs","tag-oxytocin","tag-serotonin"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/procrastinomics.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/shutterstock_1562123152-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1707&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/procrastinomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/procrastinomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/procrastinomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/procrastinomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/procrastinomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=258"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/procrastinomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":260,"href":"https:\/\/procrastinomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258\/revisions\/260"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/procrastinomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/procrastinomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/procrastinomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/procrastinomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}