UCLA STUDY ON FRIENDSHIP AMONG WOMEN

[Guest guest]

UCLA STUDY ON FRIENDSHIP AMONG WOMEN

 

By Gale Berkowitz

 

A landmark UCLA study suggests friendships between women are special. They

shape who we are and who we are yet to be. They soothe our tumultuous inner

world, fill the emotional gaps in our marriage, and help us remember who we

really are. By the way, they may do even more.

 

Scientists now suspect that hanging out with our friends can actually counteract

the kind of stomach-quivering stress most of us experience on a daily basis. A

landmark UCLA study suggests that women respond to stress with a cascade of

brain chemicals that cause us to make and maintain friendships with other women.

It's a stunning find that has turned five decades of stress research--most of it

on men-upside down. Until this study was published, scientists generally

believed that when people experience stress, they trigger a hormonal cascade

that revs the body to either stand and fight or flee as fast as possible,

explains Laura Cousin Klein, Ph.D., now an Assistant Professor of Biobehavioral

Health at Penn State University and one of the study's authors. It's an ancient

survival mechanism left over from the time we were chased across the planet by

saber-toothed tigers.

 

Now the researchers suspect that women have a larger behavioral repertoire than

just fight or flight; In fact, says Dr. Klein, it seems that when the hormone

oxytocin is released as part of the stress responses in a woman, it buffers the

fight or flight response and encourages her to tend children and gather with

other women instead. When she actually engages in this tending or befriending,

studies suggest that more oxytocin is released, which further counters stress

and produces a calming effect. This calming response does not occur in men, says

Dr. Klein, because testosterone--which men produce in high levels when they're

under stress--seems to reduce the effects of oxytocin.

 

Estrogen; she adds, seems to enhance it. The discovery that women respond to

stress differently than men was made in a classic " aha " moment shared by two

women scientists who were talking one day in a lab at UCLA. There was this joke

that when the women who worked in the lab were stressed, they came in, cleaned

the lab, had coffee, and bonded, says Dr. Klein. When the men were stressed,

they holed up somewhere on their own. I commented one day to fellow researcher

Shelley Taylor that nearly 90% of the stress

research is on males. I showed her the data from my lab, and the two of us knew

instantly that we were onto something.

 

The women cleared their schedules and started meeting with one scientist after

another from various research specialties. Very

quickly, Drs. Klein and Taylor discovered that by not including women in stress

research, scientists had made a huge mistake: The fact that women respond to

stress differently than men has significant implications for our health.

 

It may take some time for new studies to reveal all the ways that oxytocin

encourages us to care for children and hang out with other

women, but the " tend and befriend " notion developed by Drs. Klein and Taylor may

explain why women consistently outlive men. Study after study has found that

social ties reduce our risk of disease by lowering blood pressure, heart rate,

and cholesterol. There's no

doubt, says Dr. Klein, that friends are helping us live longer.

 

Friends are also helping us live better. The famed Nurses' Health Study from

Harvard Medical School found that the more friends women had, the less likely

they were to develop physical impairments as they aged, and the more likely they

were to be leading a joyful life. In fact, the results were so significant, the

researchers concluded, that not having close friends or confidants was as

detrimental to your health as smoking or carrying extra weight!

 

And that's not all! When the researchers looked at how well the women functioned

after the death of their spouse, they found that even in

the face of this biggest stress of all, those women who had a close friend and

confidante were more likely to survive the experience

without any new physical impairments or permanent loss of vitality. Those

without friends were not always so fortunate. Yet if friends

counter the stress that seems to swallow up so much of our life these days, if

they keep us healthy and even add years to our life, why is it so hard to find

time to be with them? that's a question that also troubles researcher Ruthellen

Josselson, Ph.D., co-author of Best Friends: The Pleasures and Perils of Girls'

and Women's Friendships (Three Rivers Press, 1998).

 

Every time we get overly busy with work and family, the first thing we do is let

go of friendships with other women, explains Dr. Josselson. We push them right

to the back burner. That's really a mistake because women are such a source of

strength to each other. We nurture one another. And we need to have unpressured

space in which we can do the special kind of talk that women do when they're

with other women. It's a very healing experience.

 

 

 

 

http://www.blueaction.org

A politician is a man who will double cross that bridge when he comes to it

http://babyseals.care2.com/