Solo Living, Travel, Mom Blogs!

Written by: Gail Berkowitz 4/4/2009 10:06:06 AM

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 spending time 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 Cousino 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." In one study, for example, researchers found that people who
had no friends increased their risk of death over a 6-month period.
In another study, those who had the most friends over a 9-year period
cut their risk of death by more than 60%.

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 confidantes 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 stressor of all, those women who had
a close friend 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."

Taylor, S. E., Klein, L.C., Lewis, B. P., Gruenewald, T.
L., Gurung, R. A. R., & Updegraff, J. A. Female Responses to Stress:
Tend and Befriend, Not Fight or Flight

Return to Top

Please credit sololady.com when sending out info from this site.


HOME PAGE ABOUT US BLOGS MESSAGES E-MAIL OTHERS ABOUT OUR SITE

Solo Lady Blog Topics

UCLA STUDY ON FRIENDSHIP AMONG WOMEN

Return to Top

HOME | PRIVACY POLICY | ABOUT US | CONTACT US ©2008 www.sololady.com

HOME | PRIVACY POLICY | ABOUT US | CONTACT US

©2008 www.sololady.com