This article was written for Annabel & Grace, which is now part of Rest Less.
This was sent to me recently from a girlfriend in the US. It is what we all know deep down, but now it is being taught! I love time with my girlfriends and have just embarked on dance classes for Jane and I with Ian Waite (Strictly Come Dancing fame). We drive together chatting all the way, then enjoy 90 minutes of hilarity with Ian. We must produce so much seratonin in that one evening a week. Anyway read on…..
They teach this at Stanford
“I just finished taking an evening class at Stanford. The last lecture was on the mind-body connection – the relationship between stress and disease. The speaker (head of psychiatry at Stanford) said, among other things, that one of the best things that a man could do for his health is to be married to a woman, whereas for a woman, one of the best things she could do for her health was to nurture her relationships with her girlfriends.
At first everyone laughed, but he was serious.
Women connect with each other differently and provide support systems that help each other to deal with stress and difficult life experiences. Physically this quality “girlfriend time” helps us to create more serotonin – a neurotransmitter that helps combat depression and can create a general feeling of well being. Women share feelings whereas men often form relationships around activities. They rarely sit down with a buddy and talk about how they feel about certain things or how their personal lives are going. Jobs? Yes. Sports? Yes. Cars? Yes. Fishing, hunting, golf? Yes. But their feelings? Rarely.
Women do it all of the time. We share from our souls with our sisters/mothers, and evidently that is very good for our health. He said that spending time with a friend is just as important to our general health as jogging or working out at a gym.
There’s a tendency to think that when we are “exercising” we are doing something good for our bodies, but when we are hanging out with friends, we are wasting our time and should be more productively engaged – not true. In fact, he said, that failure to create and maintain quality personal relationships with other humans is as dangerous to our physical health as smoking!”
So every time you hang out to schmooze with a girlfriend, just pat yourself on the back and congratulate yourself for doing something good for your health! We are indeed very, very lucky. So let’s toast to our friendship with our girlfriends. Evidently it’s very good for our health.